Tori Bowie weighed just 96 pounds and was eight months pregnant when she died, an autopsy has confirmed.
The sporting world was left stunned when the track and field star was found dead in her home last month. The autopsy disclosed no signs of foul play or drugs, and listed respiratory distress and eclampsia (a rare condition that causes seizures during pregnancy) as possible causes of death.
Her agent, Kimberly Holland, had said the former 100m world champion passed away in Florida in early may due to childbirth complications. In an interview with NBC News, Holland disclosed that the American had been struggling with her health before her death.
Furthermore, in their final conversation, she told the Olympic champion to start 'eating for two' as she grew concerned about her client’s weight.
“I started to come off, I think, a little preachy, because she started to shut me down and she was like, ‘Miss Kim, the baby is fine.’ So that was my cue to leave it alone,” she said. Holland added she tried her utmost to help Bowie throughout her pregnancy but was unsuccessful, and nobody else in the sprinter’s inner circle suspected her life was at risk.
“As an adult, you make your own decisions,” Holland added while admitting that Bowie had never been a 'really big eater'. "We probably would have handled everything differently to make sure everything was done properly.”
Following Bowie’s death, her former teammate Allyson Felix called for better maternity care for black women and vowed her fellow Olympic champion's death will not be in vain. The pair were part of the relay team that captured gold in the 4x100m at the Rio 2016 Olympics and three of the athletes have either nearly died or died while giving birth.
In 2018 Felix gave birth at 32 weeks having developed pre-eclampsia, while team-mate Tianna Madison (formerly Bartoletta) revealed she almost died after going into labour at just 26 weeks. While writing for Time Magazine, multi-Olympic champion Felix alluded to CDC Data from 2021, which states the maternity mortality rate for black women in the United States is 2.6 times higher than for white women.
"Three gold medallists from that 4x100m relay team in Rio set out to become mothers. All three of us - all Black women - had serious complications," she wrote. "Tori passed away. We're dealing with a black maternal health crisis. Here you have three Olympic champions and we're still at risk. That needs to change, now, especially in light of Tori's tragic passing.
"I hate that it takes Tori's situation to put this back on the map and to get people to pay attention to it. But oftentimes, we need that wake-up call. I'm hopeful that things can get better," she added. "I'm hopeful that Tori, who stood on the podium at Rio, gold around her neck and sweetness in her soul, won't die in vain."
