Gold Medalist Tianna Madison Reveals She Also Nearly Died During Childbirth, Mourns Teammate Tori Bowie

In the wake of the news that Tori Bowie died while in labor, her former Olympic relay teammate Tianna Madison is speaking out about the complications she suffered during her own pregnancy.

On Tuesday, Madison, 37, posted on Instagram a photo of herself, Bowie, Allyson Felix and English Gardner, shortly after they won the 4x100m gold medal at the Rio de Janeiro games in 2016.

“THREE (3) of the FOUR (4) of us who ran on the SECOND fastest 4x100m relay of all time, the 2016 Olympic Champions have nearly died or died in childbirth,” Madison — who competed with her then-married name Bartoletta — wrote in a lengthy caption.

Madison continued, “WTF. Why? Black women have the HIGHEST maternal mortality rate. 3 times higher than white women. And the more educated the black woman, the higher her mortality rate becomes.”

While Felix has been vocal about her childbirth experience in which she was diagnosed with preeclampsia and had an emergency C-section at 32 weeks, Madison shared on Tuesday that she also went into labor before her due date, in her case at 26 weeks.

“In fact, even though I went into labor at 26 weeks we went to the hospital with my medical advance directive AND my will,” she wrote about her November 2021 delivery.

Madison added, referring to Charles “Chuck” Ryan, her son Kai’s father:  “Additionally I had a VERY tough conversation with @cwryaniii about who to save if it came down to it. I was NOT AT ALL confident that I’d be coming home.”

Yet while Madison was discharged following the birth, and Kai stayed in the NICU until his original due date, the athlete added that there are “two reasons why I did make it.”

The three-time Olympic gold medalist said she was armed with “knowledge,” writing, “I was all too aware of the [racial] disparity and communicated this to my partner so we could go in eyes wide open.”

Also, she wrote, her partner Chuck advocated for her.

“Even though we agreed about who his priority would be in an emergency situation he did not take no for an answer from the doctors and as a result saved me AND the baby,” she wrote.

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Madison concluded her post with a reference to the infamous “father of gynecology” J. Marion Sims, who for years was lauded for his efforts to advance the medical field before a reappraisal of his career showed he carried out surgeries on enslaved women without anesthesia.

Madison wrote that Sims and "racism that became systemic and embedded in the healthcare system” are to blame for the fact that Black women are three times as likely to die while pregnant compared to their White counterparts.

In the comments, Felix showed her support for Madison’s story, which shares some similarities to that of another Black athlete, Serena Williams.

Williams previously disclosed that she “almost died” after giving birth to her first child, Olympia, with the tennis great’s heart rate plummeting to dangerously low levels during contractions, causing doctors to perform an emergency cesarean section.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Felix wrote on Tuesday. “We continue to face a maternity mortality crisis in this country. Black women are at risk. It’s why I won’t stop doing this work. We can’t sit by and continue to watch our loved ones die when many of these complications are preventable. Standing with you T💛”

Bowie, 32, died when she experienced complications including “respiratory distress and eclampsia,” according to her autopsy, which was obtained by PEOPLE on Tuesday.

The track star was about eight months pregnant and was in labor at the time of her death, with a “well-developed fetus.”

According to the autopsy, the 5-foot-9 inch Bowie weighed 96 pounds at the time of her death. Authorities discovered her body after a welfare check at her Florida home on May 2.

Eclampsia is a “rare but serious complication of preeclampsia,” according to the Cleveland Clinic, which notes that preeclampsia can cause high blood pressure and organ damage.

The New York Times reports that studies have shown Black women are at greatest risk for pre-eclampsia in the United States.