67
he fl y out to Michigan, where she was living at
the time with her husband Kenneth Ferguson.
“Me getting on the plane was not, ‘Oh my gosh,
I want to be there for the birth of my niece,’ ”
says Wes. “It was, ‘No, I think we might be going
for the death of my sister.’ ” Wes and his mom
rushed to LAX. They held hands the entire fl ight.
CAMRYN WAS BORN, seven weeks premature,
on Nov. 28, 2018. She weighed 3 lb. 8 oz., and
spent about a month in the NICU before Felix
and Ferguson took her home.
Within six weeks, Felix got to work training
to qualify for the 2019 world-championship
team. She didn’t bounce back as quickly as she
had hoped. Because of the C-section, even simple
exercises like bringing her knees up to her chest
caused pain. Meanwhile, the negotiations with
Nike were growing more tense. The company
agreed that it would not apply any performance
reductions to her pay for a year after her child-
birth, but declined her request to add contract
language that these protections were tied to ma-
ternity. To Felix, the message was clear: Nike did
not want to set a precedent of supporting future
female athletes who wanted to start families.
“We’re always learning and growing in how to
best support our female athletes,” Nike told TIME
in a statement. “For example, in 2018 we stan-
dardized our approach across all sports to support
our female athletes during pregnancy. While the
specifi cs of each situation are unique, the policy
waived performance reductions for 12 months.”
Felix felt sickened when, not long after, Wes re-
layed a Nike request for her to participate in an ad
campaign celebrating female empowerment. “My
stomach dropped,” says Felix. She couldn’t com-
prehend the inconsistency: the company wanted
to send a public message that women could
achieve their dreams in sports, while privately re-
sisting language that could help future female ath-
letes start families during their careers. “ I was like,
this is just beyond disrespectful and tone-deaf,”
she says. That’s when she decided to speak out.
(“We regularly have conversations with our
athletes regarding the many initiatives we run
around the world,” Nike says now. “Nike has sup-
ported thousands of female athletes for decades.
We have learned and grown in how to best sup-
port our female athletes.”)
For Felix, the thought of leaving the company
that had sponsored her for nearly a decade was
scary. Nike reported revenues of $44.5 billion
in the most recent fi scal year, and the company
looms large over track and fi eld. The past
four U.S. Olympic trials have been held at the
University of Oregon, alma mater of Nike founder
and track benefactor Phil Knight. The company
also sponsors several major global track meets,
so Felix would be risking her income from
appearance fees.
“Nike sometimes, they feel like you don’t have
another option. So they can get away with stuff
like that because, where are you going to go?”
Felix says now. “And I think that’s how I was al-
ways perceived: ‘She’s never going to say any-
thing. She’s never going to speak out.’ ” Nike
had preached that she was part of a family there.
“I was fooled by it,” she says.
Three months after Felix’s op-ed, Nike an-
nounced that the company would guarantee
athlete pay and bonuses for 18 months around
pregnancy. But Felix had found another op-