Allyson Felix Says This Is What Pushed Her to That Spectacular Come-From-Behind Finish in the 400m at the US Olympic Team Trials

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.”