Olympic track star Allyson Felix is headed to Paris this week—but not to compete on the track as she did for the last two decades. Felix, the most decorated Olympian in track and field with 11 medals, will instead be traveling with her family of four to launch the Olympic Village’s inaugural nursery to support parent athletes in partnership with Pampers.
“The systems aren’t in place for mothers whatsoever,” Felix, who retired from competing professionally in 2022, tells Fortune. “I’m just trying to use my voice and speak up for some of these pretty basic things and try to see what we can implement.”
The space at the village will give caregivers a private area away from the chaos of the day’s events to breastfeed or engage with their child in a quieter location.
“I don’t know why it has taken so long,” Felix tells Fortune, who sits on the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes Commission. “I would imagine it has something to do with not many women at the table and in positions of power sharing their experience.”
At a talk on behalf of The Lactation Network at Peoplehood Tuesday, Felix shared that while the nursery is in its beginning stages, she envisions an evolving space so athletes and their families don’t have to care for kids in isolation or silence and where the athletic community can “normalize childcare at sporting events.”
“I don’t want any other woman to feel like she has to choose between her profession and motherhood, and definitely not to have to hide bringing a new life into this world,” Felix said at the event, recalling how she would train at 4 a.m. so people wouldn’t know she was pregnant with her now five-year-old daughter.
“I feel like I wouldn’t have been able to come back. No one sat me down and told me that, but it’s what I felt,” she says. “The mothers I saw were struggling. They were having a really difficult time. They were losing sponsorships, and it wasn’t an easy road.”
Felix has been an outspoken advocate for maternal health since her own traumatic birthing experience. Her daughter was born two months early and spent a month in the NICU after Felix developed a severe case of preeclampsia. As maternal mortality in the U.S. disproportionately affects Black mothers, Felix has been investing in ways to improve outcomes and give women and moms equitable care. She has testified to the United States Congress about Black maternal mortality and spoken on the subject publically across the globe.
Felix’s Olympics nursery comes on the heels of an announcement from Melinda Gates, who gave Felix—among 12 people investing in gender and racial equity globally—a $20 million grant. “I’m really focusing on Black maternal health and also in the community,” she says. “I really wanted to impact people directly who are most at risk for complications or even deaths due to pregnancy.” Felix adds that she intends to use Gates’ investment to support smaller organizations working toward improving Black maternal health outcomes.
Beyond giving caregivers a space for feeding and bonding at the Olympics, Felix hopes to send a more profound message to the athletic community worldwide.
“I hope that the message is sent to all women that you don’t have to choose but that you can have a choice,” she says. “I really had to wait toward the end of my career [to have children]. Sometimes you have to choose that, but I hope that for my daughter, whatever she goes into and if [motherhood] is something she desires, that she can have that at any point.”
