IAllyson Felix runs his first race in basketball shoes. Not with spikes, but in shoes worn by basketball player Gary Payton. Her trainer lets her sprint. He takes out his tape measure. He lets her sprint again. “Oh, you’re really fast,” he said, like he couldn’t believe it. In shoes made to jump high, not run fast.
Allyson Felix, 35 years old, has won six gold medals at the Olympics and two silver medals. She has won more medals than any other American runner. She is multiple world champion over 200 meters, she has won a total of 13 world championship titles.
And she is a woman who sends messages. Her topics: equality in sport, maternity protection in sport. Felix wants to show that both are possible to be a successful athlete and mother. Felix wants to be part of a movement in which women make each other strong through their statements. In 2020 Time Magazine voted her one of the 100 Most Influential People of the Year. Allyson Felix is a sprinting feminist.
Start, run, the fastest wins
“I just stumbled into athletics like that,” says Felix. She grew up in California, her father was a pastor and her mother a teacher. Her brother Wesley Felix used to be a track and field athlete. Because she wanted to make friends, Allyson took him to training – and stayed. She played basketball, inline skates and did gymnastics – a little bit of everything. But there was something in her that fits the sprint discipline perfectly. Start, run, and the fastest wins. Felix says of herself that she has always been a person who likes to measure herself against others. Whoever crosses the line first: wins.
Allyson Felix at the Tokyo Olympics
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Image: Reuters
Regarding her life after athletics, she says, “Finding other ways to find the same fulfillment that I get from competitions is what I think about a lot.” Allyson Felix loves competition. That is the reason why she always starts in the Olympic Games, she says. The competition, challenging yourself – for a long time the focus of your life. In an interview with the New York Times, she said: “I would do anything to compete.”
Can i be a runner?
First junior year at the University of South Carolina. Felix realizes that she is really fast. “My eyes have opened. Before that, I never believed that someone could just be a runner, ”she says in a podcast with American soccer player Kelley O’Hara. In 2004, at the age of 18, she signed her first professional contract. Felix, now a real runner.
And when Felix is walking, it looks easy. Her steps are long, her movements are fluid. Their running style is compared to that of a gazelle. Felix the gazelle galloping. US Finals 2021, June, the qualifying competitions for the Olympic Games. Felix sprints over 400 meters. In the stands: her daughter Camryn. After the run, Felix lies on his back like a beetle. She moves her arms and legs. Later she sits with her daughter on the tartan track. As in Rio, Felix starts over 400 meters. But something is different: They are her first games as a mother.
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