Joyner-Kersee Is Taking It Seven Events at a Time : Track: Two-time Olympic heptathlon champion is marching toward Atlanta and the 1996 Summer Games.

Joe Louis should have been this good. Or the 1927 Yankees. Or Red Grange. Or Wilt Chamberlain.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee doesn’t simply dominate her specialty, the heptathlon, she has reinvented it. She didn’t take her game to the next level, she put it out of sight.

And so after two Olympic gold medals in her specialty, a chain of world records, the six best performances of all time and the 21 best long jumps in U.S. history, why doesn’t she try something else, such as golf?

Answer: Wait until 1996. Then it will be tee time.

Joyner-Kersee, who turns 32 next month, wants to bow out by finishing her Olympic gold-medal run in the 1996 Atlanta Games.

“To finish up by winning another gold on U.S. soil--that’s very important to me now, and it’s the focus of my training,” she said recently after a workout at UCLA.

She’s preparing for a 50-meter race Saturday night in the Sunkist Invitational indoor track meet at the Sports Arena.

Joyner-Kersee won gold medals in the heptathlon at Seoul in 1988 and Barcelona in ’92. In Los Angeles, in ‘84, she missed the gold by 0.06 seconds in the final event, the 800 meters.

When she crossed the finish in the 800 at Barcelona, former U.S. men’s decathlon gold medalist Bruce Jenner was one of the first to greet her.

“You have proved to the world that you are the greatest athlete who ever lived, male or female,” he told her.

Many track fans agree.

Longtime statistician Scott Davis points out that besides posting the top 21 U.S. women’s long jump marks, Joyner-Kersee has 16 of the world’s top 20 heptathlon scores.

“To me, she’s the greatest female athlete ever, without question,” Davis said. “Her only challenger is Babe Didrickson.”

Didrickson won three gold medals in the 1932 Los Angeles Games, set world records in two events, and years later won the U.S. Women’s Open golf tournament by 12 strokes.

Like Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan, Joyner-Kersee does want to excel at another sport.

How about golf?

“I’ve played golf and I’ve learned it’s a lot harder than it looks, but it is something I want to do a lot of after Atlanta,” she said.

Joyner-Kersee, or JJK as she’s called, doesn’t like to reveal much about her abilities in golf, tennis, bowling and all other non-track activities. No scores, no names.

She says she never has scored below 100 in golf, but says that at times she is long and straight off the tee.

She wins at tennis, she says, but is prone to occasional “home runs,” adding:

“I think I could get pretty good at tennis. My foot movement is pretty good and track has given me good endurance, which is important.”

Bowling was a favorite weekend pastime during her UCLA days--when she was also a basketball standout--and is a sport she also wants to explore.

But for now, training for Atlanta continues while she also handles a string of endorsement and marketing contracts. She’s affiliated with companies making cars, sunglasses, shoes, soft drinks, insoles, bread, bottled water, cheeseburgers and computers.

And yes, she is a millionaire--one who has directed some of the money to her roots, East St. Louis, Ill.

Her Jackie Joyner-Kersee Community Foundation annually awards $500 to $5,000 scholarships to East St. Louis high school students.

She grew up in poverty there, becoming a high school sports star who was awarded a UCLA scholarship. Her brother, Al Joyner--who is married to former-sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner--was the 1984 Olympic triple jump champion.

Joyner-Kersee also is a millionaire with a leaky roof and allergies.

The Jan. 17 earthquake damaged the Canoga Park home of Joyner-Kersee and her husband and coach, Bob Kersee. The overbooked contractor has not had time to repair it.

She sees an allergist regularly when her workouts are interrupted by asthma/allergy attacks.

“It gets real bad, so bad it’s scary,” she said.

“Just the other day I was running easily around the UCLA intramural field and my windpipe started closing up. Then I started having hot flashes and a burning sensation in my throat.

“I’m allergic to some preservative restaurants put in salads, also to MSG, some green vegetables, peanuts and seafood.

“My allergies have been kind of a reverse factor in most of my competitions, because I worry so much about an allergy attack before a meet, I don’t eat much. That drops my blood sugar level down and it weakens me and makes me moody.”

So weak she can’t seem to break 8,000 points in the heptathlon. She has scored 7,000-plus six times. Only one other woman has achieved a 7,000-point total.

Some wonder why, in this modern track and field era, women don’t compete in their own 10-event decathlon.

Heptathlon events are the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shotput and 200 meters on the first day; the long jump, javelin and 800 meters on the second day.

The decathlon events are the 100 meters, long jump, shotput, high jump and 400 meters on the first day; the 110-meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and 1,500 meters on the second day.

“In the years ahead, maybe by 2000, I believe they’ll add events to make it a women’s decathlon,” Joyner-Kersee said.

“They could easily add the discus, but I’m not sure if people would want to watch women pole vault.”

Bob Kersee foresees a women’s decathlon with the added events being the 100, discus and triple jump.

Whatever, Joyner-Kersee has no serious rivals on the horizon.

Her closest opponents at Barcelona were Irina Belova of Russia and Sabine Braun of Germany, both in their late 20s.

“It’s questionable to me how much they’ll improve in the next two years,” Bob Kersee said.

“Jackie’s focus now has to be to just stay healthy and keep improving. We don’t know of any new rivals out there. We expect she’ll see the same people in Atlanta she’s competed against the past several years.”