(MONEY Magazine) – Jackie Joyner-Kersee is the greatest female athlete in the world -- maybe the greatest athlete, male or female. One of the things she does best is run races where she has to jump over hurdles. She's had to jump over a lot of hurdles in her personal life too. Jackie, who is 30 years old, is a track-and-field star; her specialties are the heptathlon (pronounced hep-tath-lon) and the long jump. In the heptathlon, athletes compete in seven events over two days: the 110-meter hurdles, the shot put, the 200-meter dash, the long jump, the javelin throw, the high jump and the 800-meter run. Jackie set four world records in the heptathlon. She won the silver medal (second place) in the heptathlon in 1984 at the Los Angeles Olympics, the gold medal (first place) at Seoul, South Korea in 1988 and the gold in 1992 at Barcelona, Spain. In the long jump, Jackie won the gold medal in 1988 and the bronze medal (third place) in 1992. That's a lot of medals! But Jackie's life didn't get off to a golden start. She grew up with her parents, a brother and two sisters in a small house in East St. Louis, Illinois that was little more than a shack. There was no heat and not a lot of money for food. Sometimes all Jackie had to eat at night was a mayonnaise sandwich! Jackie's father Alfred was a railroad construction worker, and her mother Mary was a nurse's aide. They had hoped to have higher-paying jobs. But they had dropped out of high school to get married when Mary became pregnant. They were very young when they married -- Alfred was only 14 and Mary only 16. Their first child was Jackie's older brother Al, who also grew up to be an Olympic athlete. Al won a gold medal in the triple jump in the 1984 Olympics. Jackie was born two years after Al. The Joyners ran a very strict household. The children could not go out to play until their homework was finished. Jackie was not even allowed to go out on a date with a boy until she was 18! ''My mother was afraid of her daughters' getting pregnant at a young age like she did,'' says Jackie. ''She was trying to tell us: Get an education. Be independent.'' ) The Joyners lived in a tough neighborhood. In the shack next door, men gathered to drink beer and play cards. People sold drugs on the street corners. Arguments sometimes ended with gunshots. ''Seeing all the drinking, gambling and drugs made me realize that I didn't want that kind of life,'' Jackie says. But that neighborhood was also where Jackie discovered the life she did want. When she was nine, she joined a track team sponsored by a community center on her block. In her first big race, Jackie finished eighth -- dead last. But she didn't give up. Her goal for the next race was to finish seventh or sixth. ''I didn't have to win,'' Jackie says. ''I just wanted to get better.'' When she was 14, Jackie watched the 1976 Summer Olympics on TV. She became a big fan of United States sprinter Evelyn Ashford, who was attending the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Jackie decided then that she also wanted to go to the Olympics and to UCLA. From that moment on, Jackie threw herself wholeheartedly into sports and school. In addition to running track, Jackie played basketball and volleyball. She competed in the five track-and-field events of the pentathlon (pen-tath- lon) in the Junior Olympics and was named national champion in her age group four years in a row. Her coach from the community center and high school recalls how Jackie's desire to be a star athlete helped her keep her life on course. ''She knew what she wanted to be, and she always kept moving in that direction,'' says Nino Fennoy of Lincoln High in East St. Louis. Jackie's dedication paid off. In her senior year, UCLA offered her a scholarship to play basketball. At UCLA, she also joined the track team. With the help of her coach, Bob Kersee, she made the most of her natural ability and became a world-class athlete. Jackie and Bob fell in love and were married in 1986. Jackie didn't work just on her athletic ability at UCLA. She wasn't sure how long her track career would last. So she studied history, speech, journalism and other things to prepare herself to work as a teacher or a counselor. Today, Jackie has homes in Los Angeles and in St. Louis, Missouri, which is just across the Mississippi River from East St. Louis. She often visits her old neighborhood to work out on the track and to talk to Coach Fennoy's teams about running and about life. Jackie also travels around the country, speaking to young people, telling them that with hard work, they too can overcome obstacles. That's something she wants to keep doing after she retires from sports. Now Jackie is training for the next Summer Olympics, which will be held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996. She will be 34, but she is as determined as she was at nine, when she first joined a track team. ''To win another gold medal here in the United States,'' she says, ''would be a great way to finish my career.''