Allyson Felix considers comeback bid for Los Angeles Olympics in 2028
At 40, Allyson Felix is weighing a return that could make her 42 in Los Angeles, turning motherhood and longevity into a test of elite sprinting.
Allyson Felix is weighing a comeback that would send one of track and field’s most decorated athletes back toward Olympic start blocks at age 42. If she gets there, the Los Angeles Games, which open July 14, 2028 and run through July 30, would turn a retirement reversal into one of the defining longevity stories in women’s sports.
Felix’s record already places her among the most accomplished sprinters in history. She owns 11 Olympic medals, including golds in Beijing, London, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, and 20 world-championship medals, with 14 gold, three silver and three bronze. The possibility of adding one more chapter is striking not because Felix needs another medal to validate her career, but because she has already done more than most athletes ever dream of while also redefining what a sprinting life can look like after motherhood.
Her plan, if she follows through, is to begin full-time training with coach Bobby Kersee in October and aim to compete in 2027, a timetable that would give her a shot at Team USA for LA28. That path is steep. Olympic selection in the United States is unforgiving, and the women’s sprint field does not make room easily for sentiment, no matter how luminous the resume. Felix has said she understands she is not at her physical peak, which is part of what makes the comeback more than nostalgia. It is a direct challenge to the assumption that elite speed belongs only to the very young.
The story also carries the weight of Felix’s public fight over pregnancy, work and health. In 2019, she wrote a New York Times op-ed saying Nike proposed paying her 70% less after she became pregnant, an episode that helped make her one of the most visible advocates for maternal protections in athlete contracts. She later welcomed her son, Kenneth Maurice Ferguson III, called Trey, on April 10, 2024, after previously describing a traumatic pregnancy and delivery experience with her daughter, Camryn Grace Ferguson. The CDC has featured Felix in its HEAR HER campaign, which warns pregnant and postpartum women about danger signs and complications.
Felix’s influence now extends beyond the track. She was elected by athletes to the IOC Athletes’ Commission at Paris 2024 and became an IOC member in 2024. She and her brother Wes also co-founded Always Alpha, a female-athlete sports-management agency, in late 2024. That makes her possible return bigger than a comeback. It is a test of how far women’s sports has come, and how much further it still has to go before motherhood, age and elite ambition are treated as compatible rather than contradictory.
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