A Kind of Grace

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY SEP 29, 1997

After six Olympic medals and five world records, most achieved in the grueling heptathalon, Joyner-Kersee can indeed lay claim to being the "greatest." Here, with Sports Illustrated senior editor Steptoe, she tells of her rise to the top, starting with her childhood in East St. Louis, Ill., an industrial town on a downhill slide. She was raised in a loving if strict family, and early on found a coach convinced of her ability to keep advancing in her sports, both basketball and track. Nationwide honors began to come her way when she was in high school and continued at UCLA, where she claims she did not get the coaching she required. Then on the scene came Robert Kersee, who began as her coach, then became her husband. Besides surmounting the obstacles of being African American, poor and troubled by leg problems, probably from overparticipation in sports, Joyner-Kersee continues to face a far greater obstacle: severe asthma. Because she's sometimes careless about taking her medication, she has suffered life-threatening seizures. Her story is inspiring and absorbing.