Nearly seven years after parting ways with Nike over its treatment of pregnant athletes, 7-time U.S. Olympic gold medalist sprinter Allyson Felix has no regrets.
“I look at the culture of female athletes now who are having children in the prime of their career, and I think that’s the biggest reward,” Felix told Front Office Sports on an episode of Portfolio Players. “That they are saying that its their choice, that they can come back to competing and have some of their greatest performances.”
Felix, who had been a Nike athlete since 2010, left in 2019 and penned an influential New York Times op-ed in which she said that during her contract renegotiations when she was pregnant in 2018, the brand proposed paying her 70% less than what she earned before, and refused to protect her contract in the event that she underperformed in the months after giving birth.
Around the same time, two other runners, Alysia Montaño and Kara Goucher, broke nondisclosure agreements with Nike to share they suffered similar fates as Felix. Notably, Montaño left Nike for Asics, which she said then cut her contract in half after she had another child.
In August 2019, Nike introduced a new maternity policy that guaranteed athlete pay and bonuses for up to 18 months around an athlete’s pregnancy. Asics also told FOS in March that it honors athletes’ full contracts through pregnancy.
Felix told FOS her fight with Nike, “was not something where I benefitted from, but to see the generation now being able to, that’s what it’s been all about.”
Following her departure from Nike, Felix joined Athleta. In 2020 she also founded Saysh, a footwear company focused on women’s sneakers. She’s also the founding partner of Always Alpha, a women’s sports talent management company, and a member of the LA28 Olympic organizing committee.
The issues regarding pregnant athletes in the running space still persist. In March 2026, U.S. marathon runner Emma Bates said she lost an endorsement deal with gel company UCan after she announced she was pregnant.
Ucan, in response, told FOS it had planned to end the partnership before Bates revealed her pregnancy—a claim that Bates’s agent rebuked.
Felix added that her battle with Nike was “a hard fight, and it was really unfortunate to me that it had to get to that place to bring about change” but also that “it was worth going through the storm to get here.”
