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* As Joyner-Kersee bids farewell to track, she will be recalled as best female athlete ever.
Twenty miles separate East St. Louis and Edwardsville. Twenty miles and 18 years for Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
She took a course pockmarked with alarming adversity and decorated with nonpareil achievement, a voyage that elevated her from talented high school athlete, to the world's finest female athlete, to a solid foothold among the greatest athletes ever - regardless of sport or gender.
Eighteen years after leaving East St. Louis to attend UCLA, where she established herself as a world-class athlete, JJK returns Saturday for a finale - the U.S. Open: Track and Field's Farewell to JJK at Ralph Korte Stadium on the SIU-Edwardsville campus.
Saturday's competition - coming three days after she won the heptathlon competition at the Goodwill Games - is a forum for mutual appreciation. Joyner-Kersee, 36, will leap one last time into the sand pit and acknowledge her roots, the 10,000 fans who will in turn pay homage to a sporting legend.
The unequivocal significance of JJK is most endearing when set against the unkind circumstances under which she prevailed:
* A high school state champion in track and field and basketball and a volleyball standout, she was reared in a financially deprived environment.
* She was a two-sport All-American at UCLA whose mother died her freshman year.
* And she has been a six-time Olympic medalist - three gold, a silver and two bronze. That's more than any American female track and field athlete, and she withstood asthma, sore knees and a balky hamstring to do it.
"It was tough because my family barely made ends meet," Joyner-Kersee told Interview Magazine in June 1997. "We had a roof over our heads, but at times there were no meals on the table or there was no heat. I wore the exact same shoes for almost three years straight in high school. When I went to college, I took them with me because I thought I was going to have to wear them there, too. We just did the best we could."
The starting line
The Joyners did the best they could at 1433 Piggott Avenue, a four-bedroom, one-bathroom home cramped with two grandparents, two parents and four children.