{"id":5970,"date":"2025-06-22T18:39:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T18:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/5970\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T18:39:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T18:39:16","slug":"allyson-felix-takes-on-nike-in-new-documentary-she-runs-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/5970\/","title":{"rendered":"Allyson Felix Takes On Nike In New Documentary ‘She Runs The World’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOn the track, staying in her lane was essential for Olympic champion Allyson Felix<\/a>, the most decorated track and field athlete of all time. To stray outside the lines would mean instant disqualification.<\/p>\n

\n\tOff the track, Felix faced a different kind of pressure to stay in her lane \u2013 keeping on good terms with her primary sponsor, Nike<\/a>. As for many top athletes, an endorsement deal with the company \u2013 the largest shoe and athletic apparel maker in the world \u2013 meant financial security in a career that by its nature is fleeting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt came as shocking news, then, when Felix publicly took on the company in 2019, writing a New York Times op-ed<\/a> that criticized the corporation\u2019s maternity policies governing its roster of female stars.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been one of Nike\u2019s most widely marketed athletes. If I can\u2019t secure maternity protections, who can?\u201d she wrote. \u201cIf we have children, we risk pay cuts from our sponsors during pregnancy and afterward. It\u2019s one example of a sports industry where the rules are still mostly made for and by men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Allyson<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAllyson Felix competes in the Women\u2019s 400m final at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on August 6, 2021 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChristian Petersen\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tHer story of incredible success in track and field, and her battle with Nike, is told in the documentary She Runs the World<\/a>, directed by Perri Peltz<\/a> and Matt O\u2019Neill. It just screened at the Bentonville Film Festival<\/a> in Arkansas after holding its world premiere June 5 at Tribeca Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was the type of athlete who I just put my head down,\u201d Felix observed during a Q&A at Bentonville moderated by Deadline. \u201cI did try to stay in my lane for so long. I was a people pleaser. I didn\u2019t want to ruffle feathers. And so this idea of speaking out was so uncomfortable, but I think the one thing that really gave me that push and that courage was becoming a mother \u2014 and becoming a mother to a daughter. It made me see the world in a different way and that there really was a need behind speaking out. It was still terrifying and uncomfortable and all those things, but there was definitely purpose behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2017, Felix\u2019s Nike contract came up for renewal. Then 32, Felix understood she couldn\u2019t hope to dominate her sport much longer. So did Nike, which offered her a 70 percent pay cut.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey thought I was just done,\u201d Felix says in the film. \u201cI felt discarded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Olympic<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tOlympic champion Allyson Felix<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTribeca Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tClauses were built into the proposed contract incentivizing Felix if she kept reaching podiums, and penalizing her financially if she didn\u2019t. Complicating matters for Felix, she very much wanted to become pregnant with her husband, Kenneth Ferguson. Recovering from a pregnancy would postpone attempts to rack up more medals, jeopardizing her income. It\u2019s a dilemma, of course, that male athletes don\u2019t encounter.<\/p>\n

\n\tOlympic gold medalist Joanna Hayes says in the documentary, \u201cPregnancy in sports has been the kiss of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the film documents, tense negotiations continued between Felix, her older brother Wes Felix \u2013 who manages her career \u2013 and Nike. Ultimately, brother and sister were able to get the company to slightly improve its offer, but Nike wouldn\u2019t spell out in the contract that it was offering specific protections tied to maternity. The clear inference is that Nike didn\u2019t want to establish a precedent for other women athletes in its stable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor someone like Allyson, as she said, staying in her own lane, being the good girl, doing the right thing \u2014 to go up against a company like that, it\u2019s phenomenal,\u201d executive producer Tonya Lewis Lee<\/a> observed at the Q&A. \u201cAnd not only that, I mean she got them to change their policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the New York Times reported<\/a>, within only a few months of Felix publishing her op-ed, following \u201cbroad public outcry and a congressional inquiry, Nike announced a new maternity policy for all sponsored athletes\u2026 The new contract guarantees an athlete\u2019s pay and bonuses for 18 months around pregnancy. Three other athletic apparel companies added maternity protections for sponsored athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMatt O\u2019Neill, the co-director, calls what Felix achieved a major win.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs you see as Allyson tells the story, and as you see as we tell the story, Nike does the right thing and the needle is moved and the industry changes,\u201d he said. \u201cFew people do the right thing every time right off the bat. And I think it is a success story for everybody that the industry can change, and change is possible, and things move in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tO\u2019Neill said Nike has not commented publicly on the film since its world premiere at Tribeca.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been a reaction to the film itself [from the company],\u201d he commented. \u201cBut we went to Nike with a series of questions [during production] because there\u2019s lots of things that are said in the film, and we wanted to have their point of view on things that were said. And based on that conversation, nothing changed in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Allyson<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAllyson Felix with her daughter Camryn at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team Trials on June 20, 2021<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSteph Chambers\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tFelix, now the mother of two \u2013 a boy and a girl \u2013 retired from competition in 2022, going out on top with gold at the World Championships in the 4 \u00d7 400-meter relay. That meet, fittingly, was held in Eugene, Ore., where the Nike empire was born.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been a very private person for the majority of my life and so it really was so different and a big decision to decide to do this,\u201d she said of participating in the documentary. \u201cDid I want to be this vulnerable? Did I want to share this story? And I think the answer that kept coming back was just I feel like it could help. I feel like it could have some impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"L-R<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R Allyson Felix, English Gardner, Tianna Bartoletta and Tori Bowie celebrate after winning gold in the Women\u2019s 4 x 100m Relay Final at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on August 19, 2016<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tQuinn Rooney\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring her career, Felix won multiple golds in solo events and in relays \u2013 the latter being the very definition of a joint endeavor. Speaking of She Runs the World, she keeps the focus on the production as a whole.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is an incredible team to get to work with,\u201d she said. \u201cThey just put me at ease; it was very comfortable through the years that they followed me and I think it was able to translate really, really well. But I think that was the whole difference is just the team and how amazing they are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the track, staying in her lane was essential for Olympic champion Allyson Felix, the most decorated track…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7513,7514,171,7515,53,2983,3777,7516,7517,7518,7519,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-5970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-allyson-felix","9":"tag-bentonville-film-festival","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-matthew-oneill","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-nike","14":"tag-olympics","15":"tag-perri-peltz","16":"tag-she-runs-the-world","17":"tag-tonya-lewis-lee","18":"tag-tribeca-festival","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114728479225027236","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}