Death of a teammate, traumatic pregnancy, bruising pay war: how Allyson Felix survived it all to become a track legend…..
Felix’s 11 Olympic medals have made her the most decorated American track and field athlete of all time. She talks about her greatest battles inside and outside the stadium
When Allyson Felix won her final gold Olympic medal, at Tokyo 2020, it made her the most decorated US track and field athlete of all time. Eleven medals – seven of which were gold – over five consecutive Games. But that final gold, in the women’s 4x400m relay at the postponed Games, held in 2021, was all the more impressive given what Felix had been through since the previous Olympics. Just two years before, she had nearly died in childbirth, and now she felt she had a duty to tell the world about it.
“Although my mindset was completely dialled in to the task at hand,” she says, “I also knew that I was running for a bigger purpose.”
Felix had been 32 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with severe pre-eclampsia – a complication of pregnancy that causes high blood pressure – at a routine prenatal appointment. She was taken to hospital for an emergency caesarean. Her daughter, Camryn, was born weighing just over 2kg (4lb 8oz) and was in a neonatal intensive care unit for a month. “I was unsure if I was going to make it. If I was ever going to hold my precious daughter,” she later wrote.
“I think that being an Olympic athlete I took my health for granted,” Felix says today. “Even throughout my pregnancy.” It was only at 32 weeks, when “everything went south” that Felix realised how much at risk she was. Pre-eclampsia is 60% more common among Black women than among white women in the US – and rates for Black women are increasing, according to the Black Women’s Health Study. And yet, Felix says, she was never warned about the dangers until it was too late. “You just don’t imagine these complications happening to a top athlete,” she says. But she realised that her story was “not unique or rare. So many women of colour have a similar story and I really wanted to be part of a solution.”
She did not find it easy to speak out. “At the beginning, I was really unsure,” she says. “I wasn’t comfortable with sharing something so personal. But when I started to think about women who were affected, Black women, it made me understand that I needed to be vulnerable. Because going through that really changed me.”
In May 2019, she testified in front of a House of Representatives ways and means committee on maternal health and mortality, about what she described as the “most terrifying two days of my life”. She had noticed that her feet were swelling – a common symptom of pre-eclampsia – but she had never been told to look out for it. In her powerful testimony, she said doctors needed to start taking the health of Black women seriously in pregnancy.
“It was so out of my comfort zone,” she says. “But I knew that testifying would bring more attention to the issue.”
In April 2023, Felix was rocked by the news that her teammate and friend Tori Bowie, with whom she had won a gold Olympic medal in the 4x100m relay at Rio 2016, had died after going into early labour. In 2021, another member of that team, Tianna Bartoletta, nearly died in childbirth after going into labour at 26 weeks.
Bowie’s death was “devastating”, Felix says. “Thinking back to all of the relays we’d been in together, competing side by side. And to realise that she had these severe complications, in this day and age? It’s just tragic.”It prompted Felix to write a blistering piece for Time magazine that said her friend must not “die in vain”. In the US, Black women are two-and-a-half times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause as their white counterparts. In the UK, Black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. “We’re dealing with a Black Maternal Health crisis,” Felix wrote. “Here you have three Olympic champions, and we’re still at risk … I would love to have another child. That’s something that I know for sure. But will I be here to raise that child? That’s a very real concern. And that’s a terrifying thing.”
elix, 38, was born in 1985 in Los Angeles; her father was an ordained minister and her mother worked as an elementary school teacher. Her older brother and now agent, Wes Felix, was also a sprinter specialising in the 100m and 200m at a national level. Felix herself tried out for her school track team at 13 before going on to win dozens of titles on a regional and national level. Her talent, evident from a young age, is something she has consistently attributed to her Christianity. “My faith has always been the foundation, and it’s the reason that I ran,” Felix says. “I felt like I was blessed with this gift, and I always wanted to use it to the best of my ability.”
Part of this work is running her own footwear company, Saysh. Retirement has also allowed Felix to dedicate time to her family and friends, something that she struggled with during her career. “I love the small moments, I think because much of my career has centred on travelling for extended periods. For a lot of my athletic career I missed so many moments: I wasn’t present at funerals and at weddings and major life transitions for people. Now, although I’m still travelling, I’m able to be around for those really big life moments.”
She still sometimes thinks about the career she almost had. “I never grew up wanting to be an Olympic athlete, or even an athlete at all,” she says. “I wanted to be a teacher, and sometimes I think that it would have been a much simpler life. I’ve never been one to really crave the limelight or to enjoy those things.
“But then I look at the opportunities I’ve been able to have, and being able to see the world, and I know that I would never have been able to do that without the sport I love. And I always come back to being really thankful for the experiences that I’ve had.”
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