Jackie Joyner-Kersee | The Vance Crowe Podcast | Episode 45

About this episode

Recorded just before COVID-19 dominated the show, Vance interviews Jackie Joyner Kersee — three-time Olympic gold medalist, six-time medalist overall, and widely regarded as one of the greatest heptathletes/track-and-field athletes of all time. The conversation opens on the mental dimension of elite performance: her underprepared 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (physically capable, not yet mentally tough), the "voice of resistance" both host and guest navigate, and her insistence that she never spoke ill of herself but instead built self-belief through consistency and visualization. A long middle stretch traces her origin story in East St. Louis — Coach Nino Fennoy's insistence on coaching girls despite funding pressure to drop them, unpaid volunteer coaches driving teams hundreds of miles to meets, and her eventual founding of the Jackie Joyner Kersee Foundation/Center, now marking 20 years of after-school programming (meals, tutoring, a "Winning in Life" leadership curriculum) serving a community she deliberately returned to rather than left behind. She discusses doping accusations she faced at her peak with no institutional backing to refute them, the demand for total honesty over false encouragement ("we don't tell people what the nature of reality is"), her late husband/coach Bob Kersee's tough coaching style reframed as care rather than cruelty, and a brief, direct exchange on transgender athletes in women's sports where she states a clear position (compete as born sex) grounded in physiological difference. The episode closes with an extended, genuinely curious live demo of a VR headset (Oculus, then $400) — she picks up the mechanics quickly, compares the experience to being physically present at the Olympics, and speculates on VR as a training and educational tool for kids who never saw her compete. Vance frames the foundation and the VR demo as parallel meditations on legacy: building something that "lives on" beyond the person who created it.

Key moments

• **[00:03:20–00:07:52]** Mental toughness as a learned process rather than innate trait: her underprepared 1984 Olympics loss and the "voice of resistance" framework she and Vance both use.
• **[00:33:07–00:35:26]** Coach Nino Fennoy's insistence on coaching girls' track despite funding pressure to cut the program, and unpaid volunteer coaches driving teams hundreds of miles to meets.
• **[00:56:27–00:58:00]** Direct, unhedged exchange on transgender athletes competing in women's sports, grounded in bone-density/chromosome arguments.
• **[00:57:32–01:01:48]** Recounting unsubstantiated doping accusations at her competitive peak and the institutional silence that let them stand unchallenged.
• **[01:02:16–01:04:41]** Reflection on personal-name-brand accountability: "everything I built is built around my reputation... my organization suffers and I suffer."
• **[01:14:42–01:20:44]** Live VR headset demo — her quick mastery of the controls, comparison to being physically present at the Olympics, and speculation on VR as a training/education tool.

Notable quotes

“I have not... there was a whole lot of reasoning, you know, nothing to back it up... I wish our federation or someone just would've came forward.”

“I want it to be embody the spirit and the soul. So whoever come through those doors will always feel that.”

“I think we are curious by nature... I was determined to master that thing.”