Allyson Felix Continues to Impact Sports World Away from the Track

Allyson Felix has all of the accolades an athlete could ever dream of—she's a seven-time Olympic gold medalist and the most decorated female track and field athlete of all time. But she didn’t stop there. She is now making an even bigger impact away from the track as an entrepreneur.

Felix had an illustrious professional career as a sprinter, which featured more World Championships gold medals than Usain Bolt. After competing in Tokyo in her final Olympic Games and retiring last year, Felix is adjusting to a new life outside of competing.

“It’s been really different. I knew that there were challenges, but it’s really hard,” Felix says. “It’s a loss of something that I have loved since I was young, so it’s been a different relationship with sport now and figuring out what that looks like in my life.”

As she becomes accustomed with this new lifestyle, her mission of helping mom athletes get more sponsorships, opportunities, resources, and pay remains the same. One of the ways she helps women to have resources comparable to their male counterparts is with her company, Saysh.

“It came to be when I wasn’t fully supported through my pregnancy at Nike and I had asked for maternal protections," she says. "They were willing to give me time to come back from having a baby, but they weren’t willing to set that precedent for all female athletes. So I parted ways with them over that. My brother and I decided to do it ourselves and we really looked at it as an opportunity to create change ourselves."

What first started as a hope to create a shoe for Felix to wear when she was running turned into a mission to help all women, inside and outside of sports.

“As we went on that path, we learned that shoes haven’t been made for women. They are made up of a last mold, the mold of a man’s foot,” Felix said. “When we learned that, we were like, That’s crazy. We are really being lied to by companies and it’s just marketing that’s telling us that these are for us.”

Saysh is changing the women’s footwear business by helping to provide women who are moms with resources that weren’t available for them elsewhere. They have created a Maternity Returns Policy, through which women are provided with a new pair of shoes if their shoes don’t fit them anymore due to their shoe size increasing during pregnancy.

Felix’s most recent design launched yesterday as Saysh debuted their running shoe called the Felix Runner.

“I am really excited for all women to be able to experience it. It can be an elite shoe, but it is for every woman,” she says. “From running errands, to running a marathon, to everything in between.”

Her work is far from over as she continues to help create more opportunities for women in sports and is a role model not only for her daughter, but for other moms as well.

“I think it has to be a mainstream conversation. I think we are seeing so much momentum in women’s sports right now," Felix says. "I think we are seeing people invest in women’s sports. I think we have to continue to do that. We have to continue to raise the visibility."

As Allyson Felix continues to adjust to her new normal and fight for all moms, she talked about what she hopes her daughter, Camryn, knows about her mom: “I hope that she knows that her mom is someone who wants to fight on behalf of other people—really has strong beliefs of character and integrity and really wants equality for all people. I hope that I’m able to demonstrate those things to her and teach her how to become confident and hopefully be really thoughtful in the way that she moves in this world and thinks about other people just as she does herself.”