Tori Bowie, a sprinter who won three medals at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and the following year won the world championship in the 100 meters with a stunning comeback, has died. She was 32 years old.
His death was confirmed Wednesday in a statement by USA Track and Field, which provided no further details.
The Orange County, Florida Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that its staff attended a home in Winter Garden, Florida on Tuesday to check on a woman in her 30s who had not been seen. nor heard for several days. They entered the house and found the body of a woman, whom they tentatively identified as Frentorish “Tori” Bowie. The statement said “there were no signs of foul play”.
At the 2016 Olympics, Bowie won a gold medal in the 4×100 relay, anchoring a team with Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix and English Gardner who finished the race with a time of 41.01. She won silver in the 100 meters and bronze in the 200 meters.
The US relay team qualified for the Olympics final only after winning an appeal of a ruling that would have disqualified them for dropping a witness during a qualifying race. The American runners were allowed to run again after Olympic officials ruled a Brazilian runner interfered with Felix as she was about to hand over to Gardner.
To qualify for the finals, the American team had to race alone on the track in a time trial and do it faster than the slowest qualifier for the finals. They did, clocking the fastest time that day, and won the gold medal with Bowie as the anchor.
Bowie’s world championship title came the following year in London, in a spectacular 100 meter race. Marie-Josée Ta Lou from Ivory Coast had taken the lead and seemed well ahead of the rest of the field. But Bowie sped up, caught Ta Lou and leaned across the finish line in front of her before falling to the ground.
“I think it was pretty skimpy, and, you know, I just lost control of it,” Bowie told a BBC interviewer after his win, adding that the crash came from “just wanting to win so badly” .
She won another gold medal at this world championship, in the 4x100m relay.
Her sister, Tamarra Bowie, who also raced on the track, told Vogue magazine in 2018: “Tori has a second gear that no one else has.
Frentorish Bowie was born on August 27, 1990. Her grandmother raised her in Sand Hill, Mississippi, a small town outside of Jackson. She graduated in 2008 from Pisgah High School in Brandon, also in the Jackson area, where she played basketball, ran track and competed in the long jump.
Bowie went to the University of Southern Mississippi, where she became the national long jump champion in 2011. She graduated in 2012 with a degree in interdisciplinary studies.
She placed fourth in the long jump at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar in 2019. She has also worked as a model.
His survivors include his sister.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.