Allyson Felix, the most decorated track and field athlete in history, who holds a record 20 medals at the World Championships and 11 Olympic medals, including seven gold, is travelling to Paris. However, this time she travels there not as an athlete but as a mom, in order to introduce the first nursery ever in an Olympic village during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Eva Metis Koutoumanou
Felix's nursery at the Olympics follows the announcement of Melinda Gates, who awarded Felix – among 12 people investing in gender and race equality globally – a $20 million grant. "I'm really focused on the health of black mothers and also on the community," she says.
"I really wanted to directly impact people who are most at risk of complications or even deaths due to pregnancy." Felix adds that she plans to use Gates' investment to support smaller organizations working toward improving black maternal health outcomes.
Beyond giving caregivers a place to feed and bond at the Olympics, Felix hopes to send a deeper message to the sports community worldwide.
"I think it really tells women that you can choose motherhood and also be at the top of your game and not have to miss a beat" Felix says.
"I really had to wait towards the end of my career to have children. Sometimes you have to choose that, but I hope that for my daughter, whatever she does, motherhood is something she desires, that she can have it at any point."
The first time Felix became a mom in 2018, she realized for good the challenges that sports moms face nowadays.
With a difficult pregnancy and an emergency caesarean section at 32 weeks, she also had to deal with companies that wanted to terminate contracts with her.
Until then, this was the case for all female athletes from the moment they announced that they would become moms.
But she changed that!
Now, the 38-year-old Olympic champion and mother of 2 children, asked for and succeeded in creating a nursery inside the Olympic village of Paris.
And for the first time, inside an Olympic village during the Olympic Games, there will be a nursery for mom athletes (and of course for dads too) and their children, so that moms who compete can be close to their babies, breastfeed them and play with them.
As the top American Olympic champion said: "I knew how difficult it was to compete at the top level since I had my daughter. Some practical problems were really difficult.
So when I became a member of the IOC Athletes' Commission (International Olympic Committee), I really wanted to be that voice for mom athletes and I just wanted to comfort them.
To have one less thing to think about and only worry about the pressure of the competition."
The nursery, located in the heart of Athletes' Village Plaza, will offer a private space for parents and their babies to play, breastfeed and escape the demands of the Olympic Games.
Felix hopes that this initiative – in which she has a major baby products company as an ally – will inspire more women to experience motherhood while continuing their sporting careers, without feeling like having to choose between the two.
The top American athlete "doesn't want any woman to feel they have to choose between profession and motherhood"
"Systems don't exist for mothers at all," Allyson Felix, who retired from professional racing in 2022, tells Fortune. "I'm just trying to use my voice and talk about some of these very basic things and try to see what we can implement."
"I don't know why it took so long," Allyson Felix continues, "I guess it has to do with not many women in decision-making and positions of power sharing their experience."
"I don't want any other woman to feel like she has to choose between her profession and motherhood, and certainly not have to hide that she's bringing a new life into the world," Felix said at an event, recalling that she trained at 4 a.m. so people wouldn't know she was pregnant!
"I feel like I couldn't go back. No one put me down and told me that, but that's what I felt," she said. "The mothers I saw were struggling. They were going through really tough times. They lost sponsorships and it wasn't an easy road."
The 38-year-old American Olympic champion with 7 Olympic gold medals - 11 medals in total in the Olympic Games - proved that as a woman and as a mother, she does not stop fighting and winning and this victory is a victory for all women.
