September 19, 1988
It wasn’t enough for Jackie Joyner-Kersee to stop at the seven events of the heptathlon. She insisted on long jumping with the long jumpers, too. “Jumping has always been the thing to me,” she told TIME in a 1988 cover story. “It’s like leaping for joy, but of course there’s more to it than that.” Perhaps it was this dedication to her sport – well, many sports, actually – that vaulted Joyner-Kersee into the record books. Her 1988 record of 7,291 points is still the number to beat. “She is the standard this time,” TIME noted in 1988. It’s a statement that still rings true.