Tori Bowie Couldn't Wait to Become a Mom: Agent

Olympic champ's agent, longtime friend says sprinter was 'just so happy'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 15, 2023 1:00 AM CDT
Tori Bowie Couldn't Wait to Become a Mom: Agent
Tori Bowie gestures after receiving the gold medal she won in the women's 100m final during the World Athletics Championships in London, Monday, Aug. 7, 2017.   (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

Tori Bowie was excitedly anticipating becoming a mom when she died in childbirth in May, according to the US Olympic champion's longtime agent. Kimberly Holland tells NBC News she felt protective of the 32-year-old sprinter ever since signing her a decade ago, and says she and Bowie were closer than most athletes and their managers. "She was like, you know, my daughter," Holland says, and Bowie confided in her about the pregnancy and her excitement about welcoming a baby girl. "I think that that would have been one of the most luckiest babies ever, because she had so much love to give," says Holland, noting how gentle Bowie had always been with Holland's now-teenage daughter.

Holland says she worried about Bowie, whose medical history includes a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and who, Holland says, had "never been a really big eater." According to her autopsy, Bowie, who was 5'9" and was eight months pregnant, weighed just 96 pounds when she died. Holland says she reminded Bowie she was eating for two and asked her if she was attending her prenatal appointments. "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,'" she says, adding that Bowie told her she didn't want to give birth in a hospital. But Holland tells CBS News that Bowie was not actively attempting to give birth at home when she died. Two weeks after their last conversation, in which Bowie was "just so happy" about becoming a mom, she was found dead. Her unborn child did not survive. (More childbirth stories.)

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