RIO DE JANEIRO – Tori Bowie was a relative unknown leading into these Rio Games, dwarfed in experience, professional success and name recognition by a slew of American track athletes both male and female.
She was known, of course, particularly by those who pay attention to track’s coming and goings during non-Olympic years: Bowie didn’t necessarily fly into Brazil under the radar, simply at a lower altitude than her medal-winning peers.
She was known more for her long-jump prowess as an NCAA All-America pick at the University of Southern Mississippi — she’s from Sandhill, an unincorporated community in central part of the state — than as a sprinter; it wasn’t until 2014, when Bowie began to focus primarily on sprints, that her career took flight.