Odyssey to Oregon

2022 ODYSSEY TO OREGON

Championships, has been a Allyson Oregon but was topped by Tori MICHAEL A. GRANT

WALK GOOD, I n 2021, The USA’s Allyson Felix joined Jamaican sprint legend Merlene Ottey as the most decorated female athlete in global athletics, with 30 medals earned at the Olympics, World Championships and World Indoors combined. Though she does not quite match Ottey’s longevity in the sport, Felix is poised to hold the record all by herself when she makes her last appearance at Hayward Field this year, most likely in the 4x400 relay. Still only 36 in 2022, she has benefited from an early start, winning at the highest level in her teens. Felix was a phenomenon in high school, once clocking 22.11 for 200 meters in Mexico City in 2003, the year she was named national girls’ High School Athlete of the Year by Track and Field News. In 2005, still not yet 20, she would get the better of Jamaica’s Olympic champion Veronica Campbell in Helsinki to win her first world title at 200 meters. Having established her world‐ class bona fides so early, Felix created a sensation by waiving her NCAA college track eligibility to turn pro after high school – then shrewdly went straight to college anyway, with tuition paid by her sponsor. Her illustrious career, which she has managed with grace and class over five Olympiads and seven trips to the World

Allyson Felix powers down the straight in the 2005 World Championships 200 metres final. At left is Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell (4th) and at right, Christine Arron of France (3rd).

pageant of duels with Jamaican women. Except for that first encounter with VCB in 2005, the 2011 and 2017 World 4 00 meters, the 2017 World Championships 4x400 relay and the Tokyo Olympic 400‐meter final – five events – Felix has h ad the company of Jamaican women on the podium for every global medal she has won. Jamaicans also seemed to be at her heels at the Prefontaine Classic. Felix’s first encounter with a Jamaican athlete at Hayward Field came in 2007 in the 100 meters, where she finished third behind Torri Edwards and Muna Lee. Jamaica’s Sheri‐Ann Brooks was well beaten in seventh. The following summer, she returned to try her sprinting luck in

Edwards again, this time with three Jamaicans lining up with her: Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart, who were ahead of her and Peta‐Gaye Dowdie, who finished seventh. By 2010, Allyson had won the 200‐meter world championship twice and was building her reputation in the 400 meters. This time at “Pre”, she won a close one‐lapper in 50.27 seconds from Botswana’s Amantle Montsho (50.30) and Jamaica’s Shericka Williams (50.31). The 2011 edition brought many of the familiar names together again, this time with Montsho winning in 50.59 seconds, Felix third in 51.41 and Williams sixth in a time of 52.16. In 2012, the year she would finally get the better of Veronica Campbell‐Brown in an Olympic 200‐meter final, Felix won the