Athletics career: She was the fastest woman in the world.
Bowie’s ascension to the world’s fastest woman began on a basketball court in Sandhill, Mississippi.
Pisgah High School was too small to have separate basketball and track teams, so if Bowie wanted to play basketball, he had to do track and field as well. She then competed in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump, helping her track team win the state title.
When she was scouted by the University of Southern Mississippi, she said she would be on track if she failed the girls’ basketball team. She ended up sticking with the track.
When she turned pro in 2013, her greatest potential seemed to lie in the long jump. However, she soon switched to sprinting and her career blossomed. Bowie was a three-time Olympic medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics and won the 100m at the World Championships a year later, giving her the title of fastest woman in the world.
She is generous with her success and visits nursing homes in Florida and Mississippi three to four times a year to deliver gifts and spend time with her children, according to her friend Antoine Prudhomme. It is said that
Her later years: She turned inward.
Over the past few years, Bowie, who has always been private, has become more introverted and lost contact with many of the coaches who have helped him on his way to the top of the sport.
“She even distanced herself from me,” her longtime agent Kimberly N. Holland said on the day of the funeral. “But thanks to our bond, she was always able to come back to herself.”
Holland said she was excited about the pregnancy. The two spoke on the phone a few weeks before she died.
“This was one of the best conversations we’ve had in a long time,” Holland said by phone on Monday. “We just laughed like high school girls. We laughed until our stomachs hurt.”
Bowie agreed to go to Atlanta so Holland could help raise the baby. “We were both very excited just hearing the joy,” Holland said. That was the last time they spoke.
