U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : Joyner-Kersee Carries Torch : Track and field: Struggling Festival needed her name, and besides, she works for the sponsor.

Team Joyner-Kersee held a news conference Wednesday. That’s Jackie Joyner and Bob Kersee. Wife and husband. Athlete and coach. Business and manager. Left hand and right hand.

What’s in a hyphen? With Joyner and Kersee, almost too much. When Jackie Joyner-Kersee talks, Bob Kersee not only listens, he interrupts, interjects, interprets, extrapolates, underscores and, often, overrides.

The U.S. Olympic Festival was the reason for this latest exercise in point-counterpoint. Consider it Jackie’s personal Goodwill Games. Starved for name athletes because Ted Turner’s millions have lured most of them to Seattle later this month, the festival was looking none too festive before Jackie agreed to drop by and run a few relays, which Jackie ordinarily doesn’t run.

In other words, she’s here doing charity work.

“I’m here not so much to compete in an event as to lend my name and notoriety to the Olympic Festival,” Jackie said, not immodestly. “I was in the 1981, ’85 and ’86 festivals and I received a lot of publicity when I was considered a nobody. I think it’s important to uplight the Olympic Festival. That’s why I’m here.

“It is developmental. If it needs help, and if I can help it, I’m here.”

Bob, as always, had something to say about this.

“A lot of athletes would rather go to Europe than come to the festival,” he said. “If Jackie was in Europe, she’d be making a pretty penny, too.

“But if you’re going to support track and field, it’s not based on money all the time. . . . It doesn’t matter who you are--men or women athletes can find a way to support the Olympic Festival.”

Of course, support comes easier when you’re bound to a McDonald’s endorsement contract and McDonald’s has just poured loads of money into the Olympic Festival. McDonald’s to Jackie: Minneapolis is your kind of place . . . isn’t it?

“I’m sure they did want her here,” Bob said with a laugh. “But McDonald’s didn’t put any pressure on her.”

No. Just the golden arches logo on her back as Jackie took a lap inside the Metrodome and lit the Olympic Festival flame during last Friday’s opening ceremonies.

Jackie, the world record-holder in the heptathlon, isn’t competing in that event here. But she will in two weeks in Seattle.

“This is a good tuneup meet,” Bob said. Jackie instead will run in the 100-meter and 400-meter relays and is entered in the high jump and javelin throw--but only as an “exhibition” entrant.

“If I want to go for 7,300 (heptathlon points) at the Goodwill Games, I’m going to need the high jump and the javelin to be on.”

And Jackie is going for 7,300. Bob has decided so. Jackie currently holds the world record at 7,291 points, but Bob said: “If we’re going to break it, I don’t want to break it with 7,292. We’re shooting for 7,300 points. That’s the ultimate goal. I’d like to see her break that barrier.”

Bob has placed 7,300 points upon the pedestal because he’s been dissatisfied with Jackie’s efforts in recent meets.

“I guess it was around February that Jackie began to get a little spoiled,” he said. “She’d be getting six second(-place finishes), seven thirds, collecting her money--and not giving me my coaching fee.”

Jackie laughed.

“The last couple of months, I’ve been doing most of the cooking at home,” Bob continued. “Jackie’s been mad because I’ve been on her pretty hard.

“Jackie needs motivation. Back in ‘88, she had goals. She wanted to set the world record, she wanted to win the gold medal. Now, we’ve accomplished those goals, and she’s chasing her own record. You look at 7,300 points and think how difficult 7,100 was and how difficult 7,200 was, but once those goals are achieved, you have to redo them.

“Jackie’s motivated and wants to stay in the sport, but at times she complains at practice how the coaches and everybody else is bringing her down. All I know is that in ’86 and ‘87, she’d never take off to go to the Miss USA Pageant.”

Jackie reached over and punched Bob in the arm.

“I think Bobby is right about 50% of the time,” Jackie said.

Bob pressed onward, if not his luck.

“Coaching Jackie, nothing surprises me,” he said. “She can look shabby one week and still come out OK. . . . At Azusa this year, Jackie played around and still scored 6,700 points. She was ready to high jump well--and she pulled up. She was ready for a fast 200 (meters)--and she came out of the curve looking like me.

“I watched her long-jump at the nationals, running into a headwind on a poor surface, and she did seven meters three times. If half of that wind had been behind her, she’d have gone 7.30, 7.40, easy.

“If she worked on the long jump as hard as she does the heptathlon, she could be the first woman to go 25 feet. I’d hate to see her retire from the heptathlon, but if she focused on the long jump and maybe two hurdles, Lord knows what she’d be capable of.”

Eventually, a reporter was able to get a word in edgewise.

Question: How many more years does Jackie want to compete?

Jackie: “All my life . . . “

Bob: “That’s probably true.”

Jackie: “Actually, at one time, we were talking about going through ‘92, early ’93. But for now I’m leaving it open.”

Besides, what would Bob ever do if Jackie retired?