Not all fairytales have the perfect ending. In the final race of a career spanning two decades, and more medals than anyone else in athletics history, Allyson Felix left Hayward Field with bronze not gold in the mixed 4x400m relay as the United States were stunned by the Dominican Republic.
For a few magical moments, as Felix stormed to a 20m lead on the second leg and the crowd exploded with noise and love, she appeared to be rolling back the years. “I felt the love and I felt joy running,” she said afterwards.
And how it showed. But Felix is 36 now and she was closed down and reined in by the Tokyo 2020 individual silver medallist, Marileidy Paulino. Even so, the US still looked set to justify their status of 1-20 favourites until a desperate final 15m of the race, when Kennedy Simon was caught and the script was ripped up.
It was mighty close. The Dominican Republic won in 3min 9.82sec, with the Netherlands just 0.08sec back after a stunning anchor leg by Femke Bol. The US were third in 3:10.16.
At that moment one could hear most of the air and joy being sucked out of the stadium. Felix kept smiling, though, embracing her teammates and then hugging Sebastian Coe as she was awarded her medal by the World Athletics president. She was still beaming deep into the night when she spoke movingly of her final race and inspiring her three-year-old daughter, Camryn, who watched on.
“To be able to compete here in front of my own crowd at a world championship was something I had always wanted,” she said. “Obviously I am not in the prime of my career. But just to be able to finish it with Camryn in the stands, and to share that moment with her, means a lot.” Why isn’t Camryn with you now, she was asked? “She is getting ice cream,” Felix shot back, laughing. “She is three. She is living her best life.”
Felix leaves her sport having hoarded a stupendous tally of 30 Olympic and world championship medals over the past 18 years, a tally that may never be beaten. To put that into context, the closest to her in the all-time list, Merlene Ottey, had 23, while Usain Bolt had 21.
True, Felix does not leave a trail of scorching times in her wake. Her personal best over 200m, 21.69sec, ranks her as only the eighth best ever. But greatness is not measured on one stopwatch but over many and few can match Felix’s longevity, her range of events or her voice on important issues. She really was a 3D athlete.
More recently that voice has become amplified, especially after she became pregnant in 2018. At that point Nike were already proposing to reduce her contract by 70%. When she found the company would not add any protections for maternity leave, Felix became steelier and stronger. Her second life had begun.
“The last couple of years I have stepped outside of just the clock and the medals,” she said after the race. “And I never would have imagined that would be a place I would come to. But I have. And what I hope to do from now on is to really support female and mum athletes and carry on the childcare initiative I have. They are all going to be in my next chapter.”
Who knows where it will take her? Already Felix has set up her own women’s-only shoe brand, Saysh, while in May she announced an initiative with her sponsor Athleta and the nonprofit group &Mother to provide free childcare to athletes, staff and coaches for the first time in the history of the US championships.
Speaking a few years ago, Felix also mentioned being an ambassador for the global humanitarian organisation Right to Play, which led to her travelling to refugee camps in countries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Palestine. “I get to run for a living, and that’s great and fun,” she once told me. “But the work that Right to Play does is so much more important.”
Asked on Friday night what message she would tell her young self, Felix replied: “Every defeat, every failure, is an opportunity to get better. Earlier in my career I would sometimes get paralysed by disappointment. But there is so much to learn from every moment. Embrace the journey. All of it.”
As a motto to live life by, it does not get much better than that. Then again few have done it better than Felix – on or off the track.
Meanwhile it has been a frustrating first 24 hours of these world championships for Team GB, with a freak accident and a Covid case to add to Chris Thompson missing Sunday’s men’s marathon because of a visa problem.
The Tokyo 2020 pole vault bronze medallist, Holly Bradshaw, was left in tears after her pole snapped in a freak accident during the warm-up, and she was lucky to escape serious injury when she landed on her neck and slid down the mat into the pit. “It’s the first time it’s ever happened in my career,” she said. “I was crying in the box, sobbing. It was a massive, massive shock.”
Morgan Lake was also upset as she revealed that she was still testing positive for Covid despite being asymptomatic. “Absolutely heartbroken to have to watch in my hotel room and, while I am grateful to be feeling 100% fine, it’s even more frustrating to know that I am physically able to compete but can’t,” the high jumper said.
