As a long-time athlete and fan of track and field, I admire women in the sport actively making contributions on and off the track to support current and future generations. Recently, some current and former Black track and field athletes are on the frontlines of ongoing debates regarding motherhood, the female identity, and inequities for Black women in various spheres. In honor of Black History Month and recognition of Women’s History Month approaching kickoff, here are a few women’s track and field athletes that are using their stories and accomplishments to recognize where women in sports are and how far it needs to go.
1. Allyson Felix
Allyson Felix is the most decorated U.S. Olympic athlete in Women’s Track and Field. Felix began her career as a high school sprints standout in California, focusing on the 100-meter and 200-meter events. Felix’s junior talents took her to the Paris World Championships in 2003 and the Athens Summer Olympics in 2004 at just 18 years old. Despite becoming a professional athlete right out of high school, Felix graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in Elementary Education in 2008. Throughout her track and field career, she competed in five Olympic games, 10 World Championships, and gave birth to a daughter in late 2018. The premature birth of her daughter, Camryn, opened the subjects of inequalities in black maternal health to the sports and political world, speaking to the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means in 2019 about current failures in the U.S. maternal healthcare system for Black women. She also wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that same year detailing that her then-sponsor, Nike, cut her salary by 70% after the birth of her daughter due to a then-intact maternity leave policy. Nike removed the policy from athletic sponsorship contracts following Felix’s public support later that year. USC will recognize Felix’s accomplishments in 2023 by hosting a ceremony to rename their current track and field stadium “Allyson Felix Field.”
2. Caster Semenya
Caster Semenya will go down as one the greatest women’s 800-meter runners ever. According to World Athletics, the South African athlete won gold at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympic Games and is currently holding the fourth all-time fastest 800-meter mark at 1:54.25 seconds. Although Olympic and World Championship years passed in 2021 and 2022, respectively, Semenya has yet to run an 800-meter race on the international field since 2019. This is due to the International Association of Athletics Federations’ ban regarding women athletes with high testosterone production and identifying as intersex or female in late 2018. The International Association of Athletics Federations says this ban aims to maintain standards for the female athlete by ensuring a “level playing field,” opening up the conversation for the rights of intersex athletes in sports. This 2018 international ban only applies to the 400m, 400m hurdles, 800m, and 1500m women’s races. Semenya and her lawyers immediately challenged the prohibition with the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland in 2019, both of which were ultimately rejected. After the failures of either case, Semenya attempted to run the 200m or 5000m at the then-upcoming Olympic and World Championships in 2021 and 2022. She ran the 5000m at the 2022 World Championships but had little success. During this time, she welcomed a child in 2020 and another newborn in 2022 with wife, Violet Raseboya, to whom she has been married since 2015. According to CNN, Semenya and her lawyers have been appealing the World Athletics’ ban since early 2021 with the European Court of Human Rights. On her Twitter account, Semenya says, “This fight is not just about me, it’s about taking a stand and fighting for dignity, equality, and the human rights of women in sport.”
3. Alysia Montaño
Alysia Montano made headlines in 2014 in the sports and women’s activist spheres when she ran the 800-meter race eight months pregnant at the U.S. Championships in Eugene, Oregon. I remember watching this historic race when I was just twelve-years-old thinking, “What is she doing?” It was a battle for Montaño to cross the finish line that day, clocking over thirty seconds shy of her personal best for the event. This event became the starting line for a long battle between pregnant elite athletes and athletic-sponsorship contracts. Like Allyson Felix, Montaño’s sponsorship or becoming a mom lay in a company’s hands. Her health insurance depended on her competing and performing in top race rankings, according to a 2019 op-ed in the New York Times by Montaño. Montaño revealed she was stripped of two separate deals by Nike and Asics throughout the pregnancy of her first child. Though I watched Montaño’s 2014 race in awe and confused about why she needed to run that 800m race in the first place, I had no idea it was to keep both her salary and health insurance to welcome her newborn daughter in six weeks safely. Montaño ran another 800 meters while four months pregnant with her second child in 2017 to qualify for the 2017 World Championships sporting a smile and a “Wonder Woman” character uniform instead. Montaño embodies Wonder Woman through her attempts to create adequate legislation surrounding maternity leave in professional sports and co-founding “&Mother”, a women’s rights-based group centered on mothers in the workplace where Allyson Felix currently serves on the Board of Directors.