By Justin Vigil-Zuniga
Signal Sports Writer
The most decorated athlete in track and field history picked up one last World Championship medal on Friday.
Future Hall of Famer Allyson Felix raced in the second leg for the USA mixed 4×100 team at the World Athletics Championships at the University of Oregon.
Felix started with a bang and got out to a big lead after taking the baton. The record-setting Olympian was eventually run down by Dominican runner Marileidy Paulino. The USA team ended up with a bronze medal after finishing with a time of 3 minutes, 10.16 seconds. The Dominican Republic took home gold, finishing in 3 minutes, 9.82 seconds just before the silver-medal-winning Netherlands, which finished with a time of 3 minutes, 9.9 seconds.
The 36-year-old Felix showed she could still run with the best of them, alongside her teammates Elija Godwin, 23, Vernon Norwood, 29, and Kennedy Simon, 25. The three helped Felix earn her 19th World Championship medal to go along with her 11 Olympic medals.
Norwood got a great jump in the final stretch of the third leg, giving Simon a sizable lead to run with. However, strong anchor running from the Netherlands and the Dominican Republic turned the race into a nail biter.
Godwin and Norwood were also part of Felix’s bronze medal-winning 4×400 mixed team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
“It was really bigger than just the medal or the time or any of that,” Felix told the Associated Press. “It was actually a huge accomplishment for me to make it to that [Olympics] and to be able to talk to so many people who said they saw themselves in me.”
Felix has also been nominated for Best Female Olympian and Best Record-Breaking Performance at the ESPY’s. The track legend will find out Wednesday night if she’ll take home her seventh and possibly eighth ESPY award.
