KERSEE STILL HAS AN EDGE

Track coach, 69, continues to inspire record-setting championship athletes

By his own admission, he has been a wanderer all his life, determined since childhood to chart his own course through the world.

So Bob Kersee, who has guided athletes to nearly 70 Olympic and World Championships gold medals, on some of the biggest moments of his career has chosen to follow a path not to parade his vindication in front of his critics or bask in glory, but to find a place of peace.

When Sydney Mclaughlin-levrone, one of his current superstars, first broke the 400-meter hurdles world record at the 2021 Olympic Trials at Hayward Field in Eugene, Kersee was a block away walking through a pioneer cemetery in the dark, retracing the steps of another restless soul, the late Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine, who often chased his own Olympic dreams past the same ghosts.

When Mclaughlin-levrone lowered the world record again weeks later in capturing the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo, Kersee was back at his hotel doing laundry, having left her after warm-ups as she walked with her fellow competitors from the practice track to the Olympic Stadium, his work complete. He was looking for a place to eat when she lowered the record yet again at the USA Track & Field Championships last June.

And when Mclaughlin-levrone broke the world record for a fourth time in 14 months, running a Beamon-esue 50.68 seconds at the World Championships in Eugene, Kersee was watching from his hotel room nearly two miles from the track.

Still, each time Mclaughlin settled into the starting blocks, Kersee’s presence was undeniable.

ERIC LALMAND — BELGA MAG/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Trainer Bob Kersee, right, and his wife, Jackie Joyner Kersee, second from right, run a long jump clinic in Belgium last August. Bob Kerseecoached athletes have won 43 Olympic medals, 28 of them gold, and 55 World Championships medals, including 40 gold.