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Bob Kersee is an American track and field coach. For the UCLA Bruins, he was an assistant coach (1980–1984), head coach (1984–1993), and volunteer coach (since 1993). Athletes he coached include the late Florence Griffith Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee (whom he later married), Gail Devers, Allyson Felix, and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
Kersee has been called a "drug coach" referring to allegations that his athletes took performance-enhancing drugs. Angela Bailey testified at a Canadian government inquiry that Kersee couldn't train drug-free athletes. Darrell Robinson gave a notarized statement that Kersee supplied him with anabolic steroids. The Athletics Congress has declined to investigate their allegations.
Initially intending to become an NFL coach, Kersee instead became a track and field coach at the suggestion of his sisters. His training group is known as Formula Kersee.
He established his reputation for training elite level athletes, and continued working for the UCLA Bruins as a volunteer coach alongside his personal coaching. Amongst the famous athletes he has coached are Florence Griffith Joyner, Gail Devers, Al Joyner, Allyson Felix, Greg Foster, Andre Phillips, Kerron Clement, Shawn Crawford, Athing Mu, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, whom he later married.
He has been called a "mad scientist" of coaching, and is often criticized for not racing his athletes often.
American sprinter Darrell Robinson was also coached by Kersee at UCLA. In 1989, he made notarized statements to the German magazine Stern about him and other athletes using performance-enhancing drugs and about coaches including Kersee supplying them. Robinson said that Kersee told him that he gave his athletes the anabolic steroids Anavar and Dianabol, and that Kersee supplied him with one hundred tablets in a bottle labelled Anavar. Initially, the president of The Athletics Congress (TAC) said that Robinson's statements would be reviewed, but later the TAC director said that they questioned Robinson's reliability as a source for receiving $50,000 from Stern and the matter was not investigated further.
In 2008, Kersee denied there was a crisis of performance-enhancing drugs in athletics: "One, two, three situations and it scars everybody and that's absolutely ridiculous. I tell my athletes we need positive performances and positive stories." And about he said: "As long as all the other athletes are tested as much as mine are I'm happy."
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