‘She was unapologetically her’: Tori Bowie was a brilliant one of a kind

The post-race glory photoop is a time honored tradition, an occasion for athletes to get their hit of global adulation in case their compatriot fans forget to tune in to the medal ceremony. Tori Bowie never looked more resplendent than she was in a snapshot of USA’s 4x100m women’s team after their remarkable triumph at the 2016 Olympics.

Interlocked with Allyson Felix, English Gardner and Tianna Bartoletta in a postcard for #blackgirlmagic, Bowie served a little bit of everything on that hot and sticky evening at João Havelange Stadium on the penultimate night of the Games. She flexed serious power with those washboard abs and flashed pops of color with her fuchsia headband – a silken cousin to the bonnets many Black women use to preserve their locks. But instead of wearing it to bed, Bowie wore hers on the world’s biggest stage. Gardner says that was typical of Bowie: “never what the world asked for, always unapologetically her”.

In a sport where women of African descent dominate, Bowie, wrapped in the stars and stripes at her first-ever Olympics, literally planted a flag for Black women with darker complexions, showing how supremely comfortable they could be in their skin and confident in defining their own aesthetics. Girls in Ghana could see themselves in her. So too could teens from her native Mississippi. You could see why the style arbiters at Valentino tapped the former high school hoops star for a spokesmodel. Who’d look more convincing in a silk track suit cradling a basketball, set against Manhattan’s night lights?

That’s what makes the news of Bowie’s death, which was announced on Wednesday, so utterly gut-wrenching. Here was a 32-year-old woman who had already done so much: won state titles shortly after joining track in her teens, broke national collegiate records as an NCAA title-winning long jumper at Southern Miss. She made a living competing in a sport she loved at the highest level – not bad for a girl from Sand Hill, a bent stop-sign town smack in the middle of the poorest state in the union.

“She was 100% small-town Mississippi, and proud of it,” says her longtime coach, Lance Brauman, who helped Bowie move from long jump to sprinting. “She had no problem telling everyone in the world that’s where she’s from.”

Bowie was talented, a quick study – it’s no wonder she enjoyed success while still so young and green. “None of it took her by surprise,” Brauman says. “She thought she should be there.”

Bowie even had a knack for the dramatic entrance. To keep Bowie fresh for her individual events – the 100m and 200m – in Rio, USA Track and Field kept her spot warm on the relay team with Morolake Akinosun, a four-time college champion relay racer. Akinosun ran well in the first heat. In the second she saw the Americans’ hopes of defending their Olympic title imperiled when Felix, running the start leg, fumbled the handoff to Gardner. A video replay showed Felix had actually been bumped by Brazil’s Kauiza Venancio.

The Americans were disqualified, and then reinstated under appeal – and then forced to run a heat alone to secure a place in the final. Akinosun, who walked off the track after Felix lost the baton, called that heat “a glorified practice”. For everyone but her, as it turned out. Akinosun knew she was just a placeholder. “[Bowie] was top three in the US, and she did get the silver in the 100m and [bronze] in the 200m,” Akinosun said in a 2018 sitdown with RunBlogRun. “So she absolutely deserved to be on that anchor leg. It was disappointing, but I was still part of the relay team and got a gold medal as well.”

Because of their near-disqualification the US went from running the final in the middle of the track among the powerhouses to the inside-most