Felix adds to legend with 400 bronze
TOKYO — Someday in the future, when little Camryn Ferguson is old enough to understand, Allyson Felix will tell her daughter the story of what happened Friday night at National Stadium. She will tell her everything — what took place in those grueling and magic 49.46 seconds of sprinting, in those first 2¾ years of raising her, in those 35 indelible years of her mother’s life.
“The biggest thing I want her to know is, when you go out and do something, you do it with character and you do it with integrity,” Felix said. “You do it to the best of your ability, and that’s all anybody can ask of you.”
In the thick swelter of Japanese summer, Felix ran once around a brick-red rubber oval and into forever. At her fifth Olympics and first as a mother, in the final individual race of an Olympic career that began in 2004, Felix won a bronze medal in the 400 meters that made her the most decorated female track and field athlete in history. Her 10 medals, six of them gold, also placed her in a tie for most U.S. track and field medals with Carl Lewis.
Felix had never won a bronze medal before. Late Friday night, wearing a white Team USA tracksuit, Felix looked at it and smiled.
“All the other ones, I was so focused on the performance,” Felix said. “This one is so much bigger than that. I was out there running. But I felt like I was a representation of so much more than just trying to get down the track.”
In November 2018, Felix gave birth to Camryn. A complicated delivery threatened the lives of both mother and daughter. After she spent weeks beside Camryn in the neonatal intensive care unit, Felix decided she would recover and train for her fifth Olympics.
Nike, the shoe company she had represented at four Games, offered her a reduced contract as she healed. Since her late teens, Felix had been an impenetrable champion. The physical trauma of childbirth and the mental gymnastics of a sponsorship change left her vulnerable.
“That’s what gave me the most doubt of, could I ever get
back to myself?” Felix said.
The experience changed her. She had always been dignified and dominant while staying quiet about matters away from the track. Now, she wrote an oped decrying the treatment of women in track and field. She testified in Congress about the systemic disparities Black mothers face. She started her own shoe company, Saysh, built around the needs of female athletes.
“It’s been a journey for me to get the point where I had the courage,” Felix said. “That comes with experience in life. I’m happy I was able to get to this place, because there’s so much that needs to be done. It was just my own experience of going through it that really opened my eyes to all of it.”
Felix had always won medals. In the final years of her career, she altered industry policy and moved societal conversation. Friday night, she proved she could do both.
“Her legacy is showing everyone you can do whatever you want to do,” said 24year-old sprinter Gabby Thomas, a Harvard alum who won two medals at these Games while preparing for graduate school. “She hasn’t let anything stop her.”
Felix entered Friday night as both one of the most decoratedrunners in history and an underdog to win a medal. Six of the seven women lined up with Felix had run faster in 2021 than her best time this year of 49.89, which she clocked in Wednesday night’s semifinal. She had not run faster than 49.5 seconds since 2015, not even when she won silver in Rio de Janeiro.
“Nobody thought I was going to be here,” Felix said. “Nobody thought I was going to be in the final probably besides [Coach] Bobby [Kersee] and my family. I’m a fighter. The last couple years, it’s what I’ve done. I knew I just needed a chance.”
Wearing a necklace with a pendant in the shape of the Olympic rings, Felix walked to her starting blocks. Add up all the heats and finals since she was a teenager in Athens, and Felix had sprinted alone in 19 Olympic races and covered 4,500 meters. She had one more race and 400 more meters to run.
Felix bolted out of the blocks in Lane 9, farthest up the track, where she could see none of her competitors. “You feel like you’re alone,” Felix said later. “I had to give myself a shot. I had to go for it.” She stayed in front of the field until Shaunae Miller-Uibo caught her at the halfway mark on her way to a blowout gold.
The fastest women in the world saw Felix up ahead and tried to chase her down. The Dominican Republic’s Marileidy Paulino nudged past her on the inside coming out of the turn. Jamaica’s Stephenie Ann McPherson pressured. Down the homestretch, Felix gritted her teeth and flailed her arms. Felix is a beautiful runner. In the final 50 meters, grit overrode technique.
“Fight,” “Felix said.
“Fight. Dig.”
Felix smiled slightly as she crossed the line. She lay on her back on the track and stared up at the starless sky, lungs heaving, hands pressed to her forehead, sweat beading everywhere. She saw her name pop up third on the scoreboard and felt joy.
In July 2019, when Felix ran her first race as a mother at the U.S. championships, she labored through her first 400 meters in 52.20 seconds. The Olympics were a distant goal. Over two years of work, of fighting every day at practice, her doubt evaporated. It dissolved finally into the number that flashed next to her name: 49.46, her fastest 400 meters since she was 29 years old, since three years before Camryn was born.
“Tonight was really special,” Felix said. “Because I do feel like myself again.”
As Felix spoke to reporters late Friday night, Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce walked behind Felix, grabbed her shoulders and told her, “Congrats!” Fraser-Pryce, a 34-year-old who won two medals at these Games, gave birth to her son, Zyon, in 2017.