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≡ FELIX TO RETURN IN 2027? ≡
In an interview with TIME published on Monday, American Olympic star Allyson Felix, 11-time Olympic medal winner and now a member of the International Olympic Committee – now 40 – says she is ready to make a comeback.
She shared the idea with her brother and agent Wes Felix last June, but came out publicly only now. She told correspondent Sean Gregory:
● A lot of this is about Los Angeles, where she grew up, calling the concept “A Love Story With Los Angeles” and explaining “This is a once-in-a-lifetime homecoming. And it is the only thing powerful enough to pull me back.”
● She told Gregory, “So many of us have been told not to do the big, bold thing, You know, at this age, I should probably be staying home and taking care of my kids, doing all that. And just, why not? Let’s flip it on its head. Let’s go after the thing. Let’s be vulnerable.”
● Felix plans to return to training, with her longtime coach, Bobby Kersee, in October and would start competing again in 2027. She said of attending the Paris 2024 Games, “It was definitely mixed emotions.”
● “I know, at 40, I am not at my peak. I have no illusions about that. I’m very clear in what it is and what I want to see. And so I hope it’s seen that way. …
“I would probably be upset at myself if I just didn’t give it a try. However it turns out, I’ll still be there with my kids, hanging out and cheering everybody on.”
Felix would not be the first 40-year-old to compete at the Games; there have been more than 100 in track & field alone; Matt McGrath is the oldest U.S. track & field medalist ever at 48 when he won a men’s hammer silver at Paris 2024.
But she will be the first American 40-year-old with 11 Olympic medals to try a comeback:
● 2004: 200 m silver
● 2008: 4×400 m gold, 200 m silver
● 2012: 200-4×100-4×400 m golds
● 2016: 4×100-4×400 m golds, 400 m silver
● 2020: 4×400 m gold, 400 m bronze
Anyone who ever meets Felix is immediately impressed by her thoughtfulness, drive and the smarts that come from experience. Is she crazy?
Maybe crazy like a fox.
Coming back from injuries and losing most of 2020 to Covid, she made the American team for Tokyo 2020 (in 2021) in the 400 m finishing second at the Olympic Trials at 50.02 and then won a stunning bronze, running 49.46 at age 35. In 2022 she finished sixth at the U.S. nationals in 51.24 at age 36 and had a best during the season of 50.71. She won a Mixed 4×400 m bronze and a women’s 4×400 m gold at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
So has the event progressed beyond her? Yes, if you’re thinking about competing with 2025 World Champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the open 400; Felix’s best was 49.24 in 2015, now 30th all-time. But NO if you’re looking at perhaps a third-place spot or a relay team. Look at the times for third and sixth – usually the last relay spot – in the U.S. women’s 400 m nationals finals in recent years:
● 2022: 1st: 50.22 ~ 3rd: 50.67 ~ 5th: 50.84
● 2023: 1st: 48.74 ~ 3rd: 49.93 ~ 6th: 50.96
● 2024: 1st: 49.46 ~ 3rd: 49.78 ~ 6th: 50.68
● 2025: 1st: 48.90 ~ 3rd: 49.91 ~ 6th: 50.88
Can a 42-year-old Allyson Felix think about running in the mid-50 second range and making a sixth U.S. Olympic Team for 2028?
Possible, absolutely possible, especially in a preferred scenario where the U.S. Olympic Trials are held with a roaring crowd in the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in what would be essentially a test event for the new track installed for the 2028 Games.
You will hear a lot of comparisons with Jamaican (and later Slovenian) sprint great Merlene Ottey, who was born on 10 May 1960 and competed all the way to age 51 in 2011. What did she do in her 40s? In the Olympic year of 2004, competing for Slovenia at age 44, she ran 11.09 for 100 m and 22.72 for 200, ranking 12th and 28th in the world that year. And she reached the Olympic semis in Athens in both events that summer.
Felix has a full business career, plus her IOC work and raising daughter Camryn, 7, and son Trey, 2 with her husband Kenneth Ferguson. But is this a silly, self-obsessed dream?
Not for Allyson Felix.
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