It’s Wednesday morning on the West Coast, and Allyson Felix is spending her only day off between competing at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Eugene, Oregon, chatting about the launch of her new lifestyle shoe and online women’s community, Saysh. Over the weekend, she officially qualified for her fifth Olympic Games with a strong 400-meter race that included a late-stage rally where she pulled from the back of the pack to second place, clinching her spot on Team USA.
Felix credits that extra push to one thing: the birth of her daughter, Camryn, now two. In 2018, Felix experienced a complicated birth, which ended in an emergency C-section and Camryn spending weeks in neonatal intensive care. It was after that traumatic experience that she became an advocate for reducing Black maternal mortality in the United States, including testifying in front of Congress about her experience, partnering with the March of Dimes, and appearing on the cover of SELF’s special issue on the Black maternal mortality crisis.
All of that came back to Felix as she ran down the track in the last meters of her race. “In that home stretch, I was thinking about all of the things before the race—the long days and the NICU and just the struggle to get back to feeling like myself,” Felix tells SELF. “And I was like, I have to do this. I have to keep fighting. So having Cammy and thinking about her and the world that she’s going to grow up in and just all of that is just a different motivation: wanting to be a good example for her and show her that regardless of your circumstances you continue to fight.”
Felix has spent the last few years in a swirl of struggle and triumph. In 2019, after giving birth to Camryn, Felix wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times that was critical of her previous longtime sponsor, Nike, for what Felix described as a lack of support while she negotiated a renewal of her contract while pregnant. Months later, she signed to women-focused apparel brand Athleta, becoming the brand’s first sponsored athlete (gymnast extraordinaire Simone Biles recently left Nike to join Athleta’s roster as well). Through it all, Felix had to juggle the demands of new motherhood while pushing her body as she trained for the Olympics.
Felix’s motivation goes well past the finish line: Felix and her brother Wes—her business partner and sports agent—hope to change not only the athletic world, but inspire change for women everywhere. Saysh, which the Felixes have described as “made for women by women,” offers two products: a $150 lifestyle shoe, built specifically for women’s feet, as well as a membership to an online community for women for $10/month. (In addition, Felix is racing in Saysh spikes built just for her.) “I think Allyson and I have worked really hard over the years to ask for change,” Wes explains. “We took it a step further a couple of years ago by exposing Nike with the op-ed and demanding that change, but I think we realized there’s something even more powerful than that. I hope we never stop asking and demanding for change, but now we have an opportunity to actually create it.”
Felix has said that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be her last. She now hopes that Saysh will be part of her legacy, something else to remember her for besides her eye-popping current count of 25 Olympic medals, one shy of the most medals of any American Olympic athlete in history. Now, she says, she wants to be remembered “as someone who fought for women and tried to create that change.”
It seems like Felix has already left a lasting impression. She mentions during our chat that she’s always grateful to hear stories from other women and mothers who “see themselves in me.” I ask her to share an example. She tells me about her post-race exchange with fellow mom Quanera Hayes, who took first place in the 400 meter and who will be making her Olympic debut in Tokyo.
“Going on around the victory lap at Hayward Field, multiple women stopped me. And the story that was most shocking was the winner, Quanera Hayes, who has a son who is just a month older than Cammy. And she just thanked me,” Felix says. “As a competitor, to have that moment that she shared with me that she wouldn’t be here doing what she did without the fight that I went through—it was just this moment of realization, like, this is what it’s about, this is why you go through those fights. Just seeing her with her son was really special for me.”
Related:
- Allyson Felix Is Headed to Her Fifth Olympic Games
- Allyson Felix Wants to Save Black Mothers
- Allyson Felix Signs With Athleta, Becoming Its First Sponsored Athlete