Tough Times Ahead for Jackie : Track: Joyner-Kersee’s coach/husband plans to crack whip even though she wins at Forum.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s coach/husband was pleased when she won the 60-meter hurdles at the Times/Eagle Indoor Games Friday night at the Forum. But he wasn’t that pleased.

Bob Kersee told her she still has to be at UCLA’s Drake Stadium today at 9:30 a.m. for a workout.

“She’s going to train Saturday, take off Sunday and be back on Monday,” he said. “She’s not going to have fresh legs in a track meet again until June. I’m going to coach her like I did in ’82 and ‘86, when she was going from event to event and the only thing she had time to do was change her shoes. She’s spoiled.”

If you ask anyone who knows Jackie Joyner-Kersee--besides her husband--to think of a thousand adjectives for her, or even a million, spoiled wouldn’t be among them.

She is perhaps the greatest multi-event track and field athlete of all-time. The first woman to break 7,000 points in the heptathlon, she has held the world record in that seven-event competition since 1986. She was the 1987 world champion and the 1988 Olympic gold medal. Heptathletes, particularly great ones, are hardly spoiled.

But, Kersee complained, that’s old news.

He’s not disturbed because she lost all three of her high hurdles races before Friday night.

In her fourth race of the indoor season, she ran 8.01 and beat last year’s World Cup bronze medalist, Lynda Tolbert.

Kersee said this winter’s indoor meets are just training for the outdoor season.

What disturbs him is that she is not eager to be on the track every time the gun goes off. Not that she ever was, of course. Joyner-Kersee has always known her limits. But Kersee, who was being the coach instead of the husband, was trying to make a point.

He made sure that the media knew she had complained because he entered her in both the 60-meter hurdles and the open 60 meters.

“She ran two events and came back and said her legs were shaky,” Kersee said. “Jackie used to talk to me about her legs shaking after six or seven events.”

Joyner-Kersee admitted that sprinting isn’t her favorite event, although she ran respectably in finishing second, behind Michelle Finn but ahead of Jamaican Olympian Grace Jackson.

“If I’d had my way, I’d have been out the door after the hurdles,” Joyner-Kersee said. “Somebody was pushing me out there.”

She grudgingly acknowledged that her husband was right to do so.

“I really don’t like it,” she said, “but I have to get prepared for that because that is what the heptathlon is all about, going from one event to the next.”

That is what this year is all about for Joyner-Kersee, the heptathlon. Kersee wants her to compete in three--Mt. SAC, the national championships at Cerritos College and the Goodwill Games in Seattle. His goal, he said, is to have her ready by the Goodwill Games to break the world record of 7,291 points that she set in her last heptathlon at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

“As far as I’m concerned, the world record is in Seoul,” he said. “I want to bring it back to the United States.”

So Joyner-Kersee has to work weekends.

“She hasn’t had a Saturday workout since June of 1988,” Kersee said. “That’s not her fault. She’s really been busy with her charities and her sponsors. That was an excuse last year.

“But it’s not an excuse now. It’s time to cut back on everything else and get back into that heptathlon mode. Then we can see after this year whether she still wants to dedicate herself to this. It’s difficult.”

Kersee said he will know it’s time for them to quit when he finally lets her win one of their arguments about his coaching. He claims he is undefeated.

He may face the supreme challenge in June, when he will ask her to break 4 minutes 30 seconds in the 1,500 meters.

“If you see her doing a 4:28, you’ll know I’m still undefeated,” he said.