The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Felix exits stage with 11th medal
TOKYO — Allyson Felix knows the way to the Olympic medals stand better than any runner alive.
She made her recordsetting 11th trip there Saturday, after starring as the headliner on a 4x400 relay win that featured a who’swho of American running.
With the gold medal dangling from her neck and the “Star-Spangled Banner” playing in the near-empty stadium, “I took a moment just to close my eyes and take it in one last time,“Felix said.
After the final race of the final Games of the 35-year-old sprinter’s career, Felix leaves the stage having won the most medals of any track athlete in U.S. history. It’s some list. She passed Carl Lewis, and now she only trails one person in the Olympic record book — Paavo Nurmi — the Finnish distance runner who won 12 between 1920 and 1928.
Felix, who a day earlier took bronze in the 400 meters to become the most-decorated woman in Olympic track, has no plans to go any further. In her mind, as a sprinter at least, she also has nothing left to prove.
“I feel at peace,” she said. “I went out, had all the confidence in these amazing women. I wanted to take it all in one last time around, and it was special.”
She still plans to sound an active voice for women, and especially for mothers who too often hear what she heard when she got pregnant with her now 2-year-old daughter, Cammy: That once women start having babies, their best athletic days are behind them.
But if she had any concerns about the future of her sport on the track, the 3 minute, 16.85-second jaunt she was part of in her last Olympic race — good for a 3.68-second romp over Poland — certainly put those to rest.
It was a 19-year-old, Athing Mu, who ran the anchor leg to secure Felix’s medal — the seventh gold in her collection of 11.
Sydney McLaughlin, the 400-meter hurdles worldrecord holder, celebrated her 22nd birthday by running the opening lap. She handed to Felix, who handed to another hurdler, Dalilah Muhammad, who is 31.
They had two things in common:
⏩ All won medals in their individual races over the nine days in Tokyo.
⏩ Also, not a single one is a 400-meter specialist.
McLaughlin and Muhammad are friendly rivals in the hurdles, where they went gold-silver. Mu won gold in the 800. Felix has always considered herself more of a 200 runner. Three of her 11 medals have come at that distance. Six of the medals have come in relays. All of those ones have been gold.
“I was just honored,” Muhammad said of her reaction when she was presented with Saturday’s eclectic lineup. “Of course she earned it, but she’s so deserving of it too. I’ve just been inspired by her throughout my entire career.”
Felix wasn’t the only inspirational woman on the track on closing night.
Sifan Hassan completed the previously untried triple — 1,500, 5,000, 10,000 — by winning a gold medal in the longest race.