written by erika janes photographed by daniel doperalski
here was a moment a year or so ago, shortly after Allyson Felix — the most decorated American athlete in Olympic track and field history — had retired from competitive running, when she realized she needed to rethink how she moved through the world. She had been working out near her home outside Los Angeles,
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written by galina espinoza | photographs by jessica chou
What Allyson Felix is Running Toward Now
On the eve of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the most decorated track and field athlete in U.S. Olympic history reflects on why finally being able to “show up as herself” is her new measure of strength.
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doing her usual, elite-level training program. And as she pushed through one punishing drill after another she suddenly just...stopped.
“I was, you know, taking myself to exhaustion,” Felix recalls. “And I kind of looked around and was like, I don’t have to be here.”
For someone who had emerged as a world-class athlete while still a teenager — she won her first Olympics medal, a silver in the 200 meters, in Athens at the age of 18 — it was a life-changing realization, one that Felix, 38, admits she is still grappling with. “It’s been an emotional journey,” she says. And those emotions were bubbling up during the video call for this cover story as she prepared to head with her family — husband, Kenneth Ferguson, 40; daughter Camryn, 6; and three-month-old son, Kenneth (nicknamed Trey) — to Paris, where for the first time in two decades she would be at a Summer Olympic Games as a spectator, not a competitor.
“I've done the Olympics forever. It’s a part of me — it feels like I should be getting ready!” she explains. “So I think there has been a sense of loss and grief for that part of my life that’s over.”
This mourning process is, of course, familiar to any woman moving into midlife — as is the sense of possibility Felix feels when thinking about how she might evolve now that her days aren’t centered around a track. “At this stage in my life, I just want to show up as myself. And I want to be unapologetic and comfortable in my own skin,” she says. “I would love to exude a confidence that’s almost effortless, so that I’m not even thinking twice about what I’m saying or things I’m doing. That’s all something I’m really excited to move more into.”
“At this stage in my life, I just want to show up as myself. And I want to be unapologetic and comfortable in my own skin...”
allyson felix
Finding a New Purpose
It’s surprising to hear someone like Felix, who retired in 2022 with 11 Olympic medals, and founded her own athletic footwear line, Saysh, in 2021, talk about struggling to feel confident. But as a teenage track phenomenon raised by a minister father and elementary school teacher mother, Felix was always aware she had people watching — and judging — her every move. “I’m a people-pleaser,” she says. “I’ve just always cared what people think, some of which comes from knowing there were a lot of eyeballs on me and feeling like I had to fit into a certain box.”
That box was one in which she was always getting faster, always winning — and during the stretches when that wasn’t happening, “it felt like a really big failure,” she says. Her relationship with success was equally complicated, albeit for very different reasons. “The moments when things finally did come together didn’t necessarily feel how I thought they would feel,” she explains. “I had built up winning Olympic gold to be like, My world will never be the same! I will come home, and everything will be perfect!”
She pauses to laugh at her younger self. “But everything was the same when I came home,” says Felix, who won her first Olympic gold medal when she was 22. “It took time to unpack that and understand that there will be beautiful moments along the way, and hard moments. That what it’s really all about is becoming.”
No wonder, then, that when asked about how she builds and maintains strength these days, Felix — who has gotten into exercise that “doesn’t feel like exercise,” including tennis, Peloton, and group fitness classes — emphasizes her mental and emotional health. “I look at strength as being able to really navigate situations,” she says. “Because storms are going to come in life, and how you move through them is what shows your character and integrity.”
Felix faced one of her biggest storms in 2019, when she went public with claims that Nike, then one of her biggest sponsors, had pressured her to return to competitive running only weeks after she’d given birth to Camryn — and offered her a meager 70% of her previous salary to do so. The conversation was heightened by Felix’s revelation that she’d nearly died in childbirth after developing severe preeclampsia, forcing her to deliver Camryn via cesarean section at only the 32-week mark in her pregnancy.
Following a public outcry, Nike changed its maternity policy — and turned Felix into one of the most high -profile advocates for maternal rights and health. “Seeing Cammie in the NICU, I had to find courage I didn’t know I had,” she shares. “Watching her fight through that time inspired me.”
Earlier this year, Felix received a $20 million grant from the Melinda Gates Foundation to support her work addressing the disproportionately high maternal death rates among Black women. Part of these efforts is Felix’s very open discussion about the differences between her first and second pregnancies. To conceive Trey, she underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF), then sought out a doula “who I knew would hear me and listen to me and make me feel safe,” she says, especially when it came to her desire to have a vaginal birth, which many doctors discourage after a C-section delivery. “It was great and made me feel really empowered,” she says. “And it motivated me, because I feel like all women should be able to make those decisions and have those choices as part of their birthing plan.”
Another one of Felix’s most passionately-held beliefs is that athletes should be able to pursue elite careers and motherhood at the same time. That’s why, as a member of the athletes’ commission of the Internal Olympic Committee, Felix partnered with Pampers to create a nursery in the Athletes’ Village at the Paris Games, so that competitors can visit, nurse, and play with their children while also preparing for their events.
This marks the first time free childcare is being offered onsite to Olympic athletes, and Felix — who won her final Olympic medal at the 2020 Tokyo Games, two years after becoming a mother — is understandably proud of this historic achievement. “It says that you can be at the peak of your career and, if you choose motherhood, we will support you,” she says.
It also sends a culture-shifting message that Felix believes will reverberate long after the Games: That mothers can still achieve anything they want to. “I think for a long time, people didn't even see moms as athletes. It was kind of like, ‘Oh, you’re a mother, you’re not as competitive,’” she says. “But moms are the most determined, the most motivated — you just figure things out because you have no choice. And you're constantly tested every single day.”
Dress: Lever Couture, Cuff: Alexis Bittar, Earrings: Defiaence
Dress: Lever Couture, Shoes: Jimmy Choo, Jewelry: Defiaence
Dress: Aknvas, Shoes: Saysh, Jewelry: Alexis Bittar
Dress: Lever Couture, Shoes: Jimmy Choo, Jewelry: Defiaence
allyson felix
“I look at strength as being able to really navigate situations... Because storms are going to come in life, and how you move through them is what shows your character and integrity.”
Felix is, of course, speaking from her experience as the mother of an infant son and a “very opinionated” six-year-old daughter. “She keeps me on my toes!” Felix confesses, adding that she writes daily in a gratitude journal to help keep from feeling overwhelmed. “As an Olympic athlete, my life was very structured. There was a rigid plan, and now all of that has gone out the window. I have to accept that I can only control what I can control.”
She’s also had to accept that she can no longer eat her favorite snack, Hot Cheetos, the way she used to. “I look back at my nutrition at 18 and it was just not what it should have been!” she says, laughing. “But I trained so much it all evened out. I miss being able to get away with that!”
These days, she relies on her husband, Kenneth, to share meal planning duties (“He usually cooks breakfast,” she says); he also stays home with their son, with big sister Camryn pitching in. “She is just in love with her brother!” Felix says. “She’s always giving him kisses and wanting to push the stroller. I mean, she definitely has her moments where, you know, she’d been used to getting all the attention. But yeah, she’s adjusting really well and it’s just precious to see them together.”
On July 20th, the family headed to Paris for the Olympics, where — in between Felix’s official appearances and work responsibilities — they plan to visit Disneyland, go for lots of long walks, and make playdates with the children of the many athletes Felix has befriended through the years. But the experience Camryn is most excited about is heading to Bercy Arena, where she can’t wait to watch her favorite athlete, Simone Biles.
“Cammie is taking gymnastics herself, and so being able to see someone who looks like her in the competition is just phenomenal,” Felix says. “Of course, when I told her we were going to see Simone compete, her first question was, ‘Am I going to be able to go out on the balance beam?’”
It’s clear how charmed Felix is by her daughter. In return, Felix hopes that — along with Simone Biles — Camryn will look to her mother as an inspiring example of grit and leadership. “I think I'm doing the most teaching by just living my life in front of her,” Felix says. “I'm trying to show her in the way that I work hard, in the way that I try to parent her and her brother, and in the way that I try to show up for our family, that strength can look like a lot of different things."
Learning to Go with the Flow
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