In 2018, Allyson Felix gave birth to her daughter, faced the harrowing intersection of athletes and motherhood. Three years later, the 35-year-old track and field icon is being heralded as the most decorated woman of the sport.
On Friday, Felix won bronze in the women’s 400-meter dash at the Tokyo Olympics and added a 10th career medal to her star-studded record. The bronze win also etched her into Olympic legacy as she is the only the second U.S. track and U.S. track and field athlete to win 10 Olympic medals. Surpassing her previous tie with Jamaican runner Merlene Ottey, Felix now matches Carl Lewis, who also won 10 medals and was a former standalone as the most-decorated U.S. athlete in track.
Congratulations @allysonfelix. 35 never looked so good. What an amazing career and inspiration. Now on to the relay.
— Carl Lewis (@Carl_Lewis) August 6, 2021
Rallying around the trackstar’s historic win, Lewis wrote to Twitter, “Congratulations @allysonfelix. 35 never looked so good. What an amazing career and inspiration.” Nodding to her upcoming race where she could potentially eclipse the standing tie between the two, Lewis continued, “Now on to the relay.”
While she flaunts six golds, three silvers and now a bronze, Felix says the experience of latter win differs because its the first one she’s clinched in her new stage of motherhood.
“It’s hard to describe because I feel like all the other ones, I was really just so focused on the performance. And this one, it’s just so much bigger than that,” Felix said to USA Today. “That’s all I can kind of explain it as – I was out there running, but I felt like I was a representation for so much more than just trying to get down the track.”
Felix has always remained transparent about returning to the sport after a difficult pregnancy that led to an emergency C-section marked the beginning of her motherhood to her two-year-old daughter Camryn. Notoriously facing off against Nike’s discrimination against pregnant athletes, the living legend also has remained a figure of resilience for other athletes who are mothers.
In 2019 op-ed in The New York Times, Felix revealed that her former sponsor decided to pay her 70% less of her previous earnings prior to her becoming a mom and would not guarantee that she wouldn’t be axed from the endorsement if she didn’t perform at the same levels in the months around childbirth. Responding to the backlash, the company later rescinded its stance and announced a maternity policy that guaranteed an athlete’s pay and bonuses for 18 months surrounding pregnancy.
