Tokyo 2020: Allyson Felix's bronze glitters as good as gold

Add as a preferred source on Google

Bengaluru, August 6: The 400M bronze that Allyson Felix won at Tokyo 2020 was as glittering as gold as it was the American track and field legend's 10th medal at the quadrennial extravaganza.

The 35-year-old's 10th Olympic medal broke a tie with Jamaican runner Merlene Ottey, and matches Carl Lewis, who also won 10 medals and was alone as the most decorated American athlete in track and field.

The victory for Felix comes nearly three years after she helped spearhead a conversation about the way women are treated in track, and sports in general.

She severed ties with Nike, which wrote in pay reductions to women's contracts if they became pregnant. Felix had a daughter in 2018.

She won the race wearing a shoe she designed for a company she created.

This is the first bronze medal of an Olympic career that spans back to the 2004 Athens Games.

Earlier, she had won six gold medals and three silver. She could go for No. 11 if the US puts her in the 4×400M relay final, which is set for Saturday (August 7).

While third place might have been a letdown in the past for Felix - famous are the snapshots of her crying in the recesses of the stadium after some hard-luck losses in Athens and Beijing - this one was nothing but sweet.

Felix has spoken candidly about the struggle to come back from a difficult pregnancy that led to an emergency C-section and put the lives of both her and her baby in jeopardy.

The American has spoken of the pressure she felt to return quickly, even when her body wasn't responding the way it once did.

She also overcame one of her biggest hurdles - leaving her well-cultivated private image behind to become a spokesperson for something much bigger, as per a report in the AP international news agency.

Last week, she gave voice to the topic that's been filtering through the Tokyo 2020 Olympics - the pressure to win.

"When I line up for a race, I'm normally afraid," she said in a heartfelt essay on social media, posted only hours before the race.

"I'm not afraid of losing. I lose much more than I win. That's life and I think that's how it's supposed to be."

But come the big day, Felix won it, then collapsed on the ground - smiling wide this time for third place, a result that put her alone in the record books.

That's the stuff the champions are made off