Allyson Felix wants to run again, and the target is the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. The 11-time Olympic medalist told TIME she hopes to make her sixth Games at 42, turning a retired sprint career into a comeback built around the city where she grew up and now lives.
Felix said the idea began taking shape about a year ago, when she was working out with her husband, Kenny Ferguson, on a track near their home north of Los Angeles. She has framed the effort as “Project Six” and a homecoming, saying it is the only thing powerful enough to pull her back to racing.
The scale of the ambition is obvious. Felix retired after the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where she won a relay gold medal and added bronze in the 400 meters, finishing her career with 11 Olympic medals, seven of them gold. Now she is talking about another round at an age when most sprinters are long gone, with the 2028 Games still three years away and the qualifying path still ahead.
Felix is not treating the comeback like a full return to the regular global track-and-field circuit. She said she does not plan to compete often before the Olympic trials and will need to enter races simply to qualify for them, a practical hurdle that makes the comeback as much about logistics as speed.
The plan is already moving. Felix and her brother Wes founded the sports-management agency Always Alpha in late 2024, and she said she presented her comeback idea to him last June at the Cannes Lions festival. She and coach Bobby Kersee plan to start a full training schedule in October, with Felix anticipating a return to certified competition sometime in 2027.
That timing leaves her nearly a year to sharpen before the 2028 trials, but it also underscores how unusual the bid is. Felix previously left Nike after a contract dispute following the birth of her daughter, and now she is linking a late-career return to the one stage that still seems to matter most to her: Los Angeles, in front of a home crowd, with one last shot at the Olympics.
Felix has said the idea is meant to push back against the assumptions that come with age and motherhood, saying many people are told not to do the big, bold thing. Her answer was simpler: why not go after it.
