Joyner-Kersee Still Has the Touch : Track and field: She calls heptathlon victory over Braun ‘definitely my greatest triumph.’

In every athlete’s career, no matter how superb it has been for however many years, there comes a time when he or she must confront advancing age, younger and stronger competitors and, ultimately, defeat. Two-time Olympic decathlon champion Daley Thompson of Great Britain once called it “staring into the abyss.”

For Jackie Joyner-Kersee, it seemed that time had come before her final event Tuesday night at Gottlieb Daimler Stadium in track and field’s fourth World Championships.

That the world’s greatest heptathlete was able to surmount the obstacles and extend her winning streak in competitions she has completed to almost a decade was a credit more to her experience and perseverance than her once enormous, but now increasingly undependable, physical abilities.

She acknowledged that after her 40-point victory over Germany’s Sabine Braun, by far the narrowest edge Joyner-Kersee, 31, of Canoga Park, has had against an opponent since her last defeat, in the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Since then, she had won two Olympic gold medals, one world championship and set four world records in the heptathlon before arriving in Stuttgart. But she called this “definitely my greatest triumph.”

It was a night of triumphs for the United States. Michael Johnson and Butch Reynolds finished 1-2 in the men’s 400 meters, which was expected. Jearl Miles and Natasha Kaiser-Brown finished 1-2 in the women’s 400, which was not.

But it was the unanticipated duel between Joyner-Kersee and Braun that captivated the crowd of 46,200.

Already inspired by the 1-3 finish of Germans Lars Riedel and Juergen Schult in the discus throw moments before, the spectators rose when the final group of heptathletes entered the stadium Tuesday night for the last of their seven events, the 800 meters, and chanted, “Sabine! Sabine! Sabine!”

Beginning with the first day of competition Monday, Joyner-Kersee, Braun and Belarus’ Svetlana Buraga had enjoyed the lead at various times, but after the sixth event, Tuesday afternoon’s javelin throw, it was the German on top by a mere seven points over Joyner-Kersee. Buraga had slipped into a comfortable third place, where she was destined to finish.

To win her second consecutive world championship--she scored her first in 1991 when Joyner-Kersee was injured during the first day--Braun, 28, needed to finish the 800 meters within half a second of the American.

Although Joyner-Kersee’s personal best is four seconds faster than Braun’s, Joyner-Kersee had not run that time, 2:08.51, since 1988. In last year’s Summer Olympics, Joyner-Kersee’s 800 time was only two seconds faster than Braun’s.

Besides, Joyner-Kersee obviously was not near her peak condition in this meet. Her coach and husband, Bob Kersee, had feared that would happen, dissuading her last month from entering her favorite event, the long jump, in which she has won two world championships and one Olympic gold medal, to conserve her energy for the heptathlon. Without Joyner-Kersee in the competition, German Heike Drechsler easily won the long jump Sunday.

At the beginning of the heptathlon the next morning, Kersee immediately sensed trouble when his wife developed a fever. She did not win the 100-meter high hurdles, an event in which she once held the American record, for the first time since 1984 in a heptathlon. In fact, three of her four best events were included on the first day’s schedule, and she failed to win any of them.

She still began the first of the final three events with a lead of seven points over Buraga and 14 over Braun, then extended it by winning the long jump with a best of 23-1 1/4. That would have given her second place behind Drechsler in the open competition, but Joyner-Kersee could not relax because it had taken all three of her jumps to put one out that far.

Braun, meantime, settled for a best of 21-5 1/2, but she was furious because her third and longest effort was ruled a foul, even though it was apparent from the television replays that her jump was fair.

“It’s particularly bitter to have that happen to you in your home country,” she said.

Nevertheless, she composed herself in time to finish second among the 27 competitors in the javelin throw, which is Joyner-Kersee’s worst event, and regain the lead with only the 800 meters left.

Joyner-Kersee had not been in a position in which the 800 meters was important for anything other than establishing her final point total since 1984, when she entered the final event in the Olympics with a 31-point lead over Australia’s Glynis Nunn. She lost the gold medal by five points because she had no clear strategy for attacking the two laps around the Coliseum track.

She did not make that mistake again Tuesday night.

Joyner-Kersee remained on Braun’s shoulder for much of the first lap, made a move with 500 meters remaining, fell back to make the German think she was tiring, then surged in the final 200 meters.

Braun was unable to respond. She finished in 2:17.82, more than three seconds behind Joyner-Kersee’s 2:14.49. That gave Joyner-Kersee 6,837 points and Braun 6,797. Buraga finished with 6,635.

“Having that feeling of needing to give everything you’ve got for the first time in nine years, competing against the world champion from Germany in Germany, where, though you might be respected, you definitely are not the favorite, and to run an intelligent, tactical race, that was beautiful,” Kersee said.

“Her back was against the ropes, they were throwing punches from every direction, she knew the only way she could win is if she was the only person left standing, and she reached back and delivered the knockout blow.”

After all of that, Joyner-Kersee actually was too fatigued to do anything but sit by the side of the track and accept congratulations from her rivals. An asthmatic, she had so little wind left at the end that she was unable to take a victory lap.

“I guarantee you, this is going to be one of the moments she remembers for a long time because of how difficult it was,” Kersee said. “You sometimes take for granted what you have. This will remind her of what it’s like to be a heptathlete, when you have to go all out for seven events to win.”

Told that she might expect to experience that feeling a few more times before calling an end to her career, probably after the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Joyner-Kersee laughed and said, “I hope not.”

* ONE-TWO PUNCH: U.S. runners finish 1-2 in both finals of 400 meters, with the women pulling an upset. C9