This Rare Peacock Can Fly : Heptathlete Racing Toward Bright Future

UCLA heptathlete Kelley Peacock, wearing a jean miniskirt, sits on the aluminum benches at Drake Stadium and watches her Bruin teammates practice.

The sophomore from Van Nuys High did not qualify for the NCAA track and field championships and will not be helping the favored Bruins in Eugene, Ore., this weekend. But Peacock, 20, is anything but pessimistic about her young career.

According to her coaches, she will be favored to win the Pacific 10 Conference championship next year and should easily qualify for the nationals. And by the time she graduates in 1991, she is expected to be a strong candidate for the 1992 Olympic team.

By then, if she continues to improve at the same pace, she could be pushing 7,000 points, now the exclusive domain of the woman sitting a few rows away.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee, 26, the world record-holder in the heptathlon, relaxes with a towel draped over her head. The winner of the Sullivan Award as the country’s top amateur athlete last year, she could win both the heptathlon and long jump in the Seoul Olympics.

When she was Peacock’s age, Joyner-Kersee’s score in the heptathlon was 6,099 points, an NCAA record at the time.

Joyner-Kersee, a former Bruin star, still trains at UCLA, providing Peacock with a model and a goal. The mechanics of the world’s best heptathlete can be studied and pondered. So can her record of 7,518 points, more than 2,000 points higher than Peacock’s personal best.

An informal mentor, Joyner-Kersee has tried to teach Peacock more than just the right way to throw and run. A key element in the maturation of a heptathlete is patience. It is difficult enough to master one event, but seven can seem almost impossible considering their diversity: 100-meter hurdles; high jump; shotput; 200 meters; long jump; javelin and 800 meters.

“When Kelley understands what to do in the different events, it will come together for her,” Joyner-Kersee said. “But she can’t get frustrated by one event going badly. Heptathletes have their ups and downs in all the events.”

Despite sub-par performances in the javelin and high jump, Peacock still finished second to USC’s Wendy Brown in the Pac-10 meet this spring. Her 5,074 points--226 less than the NCAA qualifying standard--were 550 points better than her total last year, an improvement of more than 10%.

“I think she’ll have a 500-plus improvement next year,” said Calvin Brown, UCLA’s heptathlon coach. “She’s still learning. We spent most of the time on technique this year. Next year we won’t have to.”

When Peacock was winning three City Section championships as a senior at Van Nuys, she was versatile enough to win the 300-meter low hurdles as well as the long jump. That made her attractive to Bob Kersee, UCLA women’s track coach and husband of Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

At first, however, UCLA was not exactly attractive to Peacock. Peacock, a kinesiology major, was “intimidated” by the sprawling Westwood campus, and track made her feel even more insignificant. Coming off a dominating high school career “I expected to pick up where I left off,” she said. When she didn’t, “it was frustrating.”

“I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Peacock said, smiling. “But I do enjoy it now.”

And to make things worse, Peacock was hampered by tendinitis behind a knee for half her freshman year.

Despite limited experience, she finished eighth in the Pac-10 meet in 1987. And her progress this year pleased Kersee.

“She learned how to be a heptathlete,” he said. “She’ll have a good year in ’89.”

But will she ever be a Jackie Joyner-Kersee? Brown smiled. “Jackie is a once-in-a-lifetime performer,” he said. “Kelley will be good, but it will take a lot of hard work.”