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The athlete was six-time Olympic gold medalist
Allyson Felix, America's most decorated track athlete.
With tracks closed down due to the pandemic, Felix was among
dozens of Tokyo hopefuls who resorted to unorthodox training
methods as the world went on lockdown and the 2020 Games were
pushed back a year.
"I’ve gone for runs before in my neighborhood but I never have
sprinted through the streets," Felix, 35, told reporters during
the three-day Team USA virtual media summit.
Felix, who also owns 16 world championships medals and plans to
compete in the 200 and 400-metre sprint events at the Olympic
trials in June, said coach Bob Kersee used a measuring wheel to
mark out distances "on literally the street in front of my
door."
"Seeing some of my neighbors come out kind of like wondering
what's going on and hearing him with his very energetic yelling
and all of that – so that’s probably been the most bizarre
thing," said Felix.
As the pandemic upended daily life for millions across the
country, aspiring Olympians came up with ingenious ways to carry
on with some form of training.
Thirty-year-old judoka Angelica Delgado resorted to throwing her
fiance around their one-bedroom apartment.
Shot putter Ryan Crouser, who won gold at Rio, went to a
hardware store and built his own portable shot put ring, setting
up shop at an elementary school and drawing curious stares from
passers-by.
"The theme of 2020 was 'What do we have available?' and not
'What don't we have available'," said Crouser, 28. "Because
there was a pretty short list of what we had."
Flyweight boxer Ginny Fuchs, 33, who won silver in the 2019 Pan
American Games and is gunning for a spot in Tokyo, joined a
month-long Team USA camp set up inside an abandoned department
store.
"They still had shoe racks and everything and the checkout
counter – no machines or anything," she said. "It was a little
cold because it was in Colorado (and we) had that big snow storm
and there were no heaters. We had to bring in little heaters.
"During this pandemic, you have to figure it out, you have to
make things work and we did."
(Reporting by Amy Tennery, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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