Five Olympic Games, seventeen years of career at the highest level, thirteen titles of world champion and now ten Olympic medals. The American may not have won the title in the 400-meter event on Friday August 6, but at 35, she has shown record longevity in performance. In 2005, she became the youngest world champion in the 200 meters, at the age of nineteen. “You are getting older and everything seems harder”, she had quipped before the start of the Olympics.
In Tokyo, for her last Olympic participation, she added a bronze medal – beaten by Bahamian Shaunae Miller and Dominican Marileidy Paulino – in her awards cabinet, which alone could fill the halls of an American high school. It was the only metal he lacked: six in gold, three in silver and therefore one in bronze. “It was something that I felt I could accomplish. I feel like I’ve come a long way since every other Games. This one is just different ”, she said after the race.
In Rio, she had already equaled another queen, “Queen Merlene Ottey”, who also investigated the medals in another sense: three in silver and six in bronze. Never an Olympic champion – an anomaly – the Jamaican was already well behind in terms of Olympic titles.
Eleventh medal in the 4 x 400 meters
On Saturday, “Chicken legs” – her nickname since her early high school years – will also have the opportunity to add an eleventh charm in the women’s 4 x 400 meters final. On this occasion, the Californian, trained by the experienced Bob Kersee, would win another record: she would become the most medalist athlete of the Games – all sexes combined – in front of another idol of athletics made in the USA, Carl Lewis.
With one particularity, Allyson Felix has won only one individual title: the 200 meters of the London Games in 2012. The other five were won with her teammates in the 4 x 400 meters and 4 x 100 meters. Of his ten medals, Lewis has won seven in individual events, including an incredible quadruplet in the long jump between 1984 and 1996. Jamaican Usain Bolt, international sprint star of the past fifteen years, was himself. , stopped at eight medals, all in gold, including six solo.
But the record holder for individual Olympic titles is an American athlete from another era. The elastic man, Ray Ewry, gleaned his eight gold medals thanks to individual jumping events… without momentum between 1900 and 1908: the triple jump, the high jump and the long jump.
Victims of prejudice
Allyson Felix, who became a mother in 2018 to a little girl born prematurely, had to fight to return to competition: against the health concerns of her child and against prejudices. “My concern was not to win more medals. The most important thing for me was to come back, she congratulated herself. Earlier today I watched some of the videos we recorded when I was in the hospital with “Cammie” [sa fille Camryn] and on the track – those really, really tough times – that’s where I tried to tap into. “
After two difficult years – she failed for the first time since 2003 to qualify individually for the 2019 Worlds – her umpteenth Olympic podium rewards talent and courage. “It changed everything. It gave me a different motivation and it confronted me with many challenges. It’s even more meaningful to be on the track as a mom ”, she delivered about her motherhood.
In a tribune at New York Times, she had denounced the financial conditions imposed by her equipment supplier for athletes returning to competition after maternity. His pay had fallen by 70%. Felix had won his case and the new contracts now guarantee the payment of wages and bonuses for eighteen months after giving birth. “This is one of the examples of the sports industry where the rules are still mainly made by and for men”, she regretted.
In Tokyo, Allyson Felix will have once again proved that the history of Olympism was also written in women.
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