Two weeks before she died, Tori Bowie’s voice fluttered with excitement as she told her longtime agent and confidante Kimberly Holland how thrilled she was to become a mom.
Bowie, a track and field sensation, was about eight months pregnant and had already bought clothes for the baby, Holland said. Over the phone, Bowie giggled and discussed how much she was “looking forward to this new chapter in her life,” Holland said.
“I thought that conversation, overall, was a conversation of new beginnings,” Holland said in an interview.
Instead, Bowie, 32, was found dead on May 2 in her Winter Garden, Florida, home after Orange County sheriff’s deputies went to conduct a well-being check on the athlete, who was once the fastest woman in the world. An autopsy report released earlier this week revealed Bowie died from complications related to childbirth and that she had been in labor at the time of her death.
The report, obtained by NBC News from the Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office, said there were no signs of foul play or drugs. Respiratory distress and eclampsia — a rare, severe pregnancy-related condition that can include seizures or a coma and is more prevalent in Black women — were listed as possible complications contributing to her death.
Bowie had not widely announced her pregnancy but she was excited about it, Holland said. Her autopsy listed bipolar disorder as part of her medical history, but she was “just so happy” in their final conversation, said Holland, who signed Bowie a decade ago and said she instantly felt protective over her. She described their relationship as “more than an athlete-manager relationship.”
“She was like, you know, my daughter,” Holland said.
Their closeness meant Holland felt comfortable prodding Bowie about whether she was taking care of herself during her pregnancy. Bowie had “never been a really big eater,” she said, and in their final conversation, Holland reminded her she was eating for two.
“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.
When she asked Bowie if she was going to her prenatal appointments, Bowie brushed her off, and said she didn’t want to have her baby in a hospital. Holland said she then offered to have Bowie stay with her at her Atlanta home so she could keep a closer eye on her and make sure she was getting care and eating enough — the autopsy report said the 5-foot, 9-inch Bowie weighed just 96 pounds when she died.
“As an adult, you make your own decisions,” Holland said. But she said she wished Bowie would have let her or family members help her more. “We probably would have handled everything differently to make sure everything was done properly.”
Despite her worries about Bowie, Holland said she had no doubt she was going to be a wonderful parent. Holland had watched how gentle Bowie was over the years with Holland’s daughter, who is now 13.
“I think that that would have been one of the most luckiest babies ever because she had so much love to give,” Holland said.
A new spotlight on U.S. maternal mortality
Details surrounding Bowie’s death, including the precise date she died, are unclear.
Eclampsia, which can happen in women who develop the pregnancy condition preeclampsia, may occur without warning, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“Signs and symptoms that may appear before seizures include severe headaches, vision problems, mental confusion or altered behaviors,” the Mayo Clinic says on its website.
Bowie’s death has put a spotlight on maternal deaths in the U.S., a country where maternal mortality rates are higher than anywhere else in the developed world and where Black mothers are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At her peak, Bowie had been a symbol of elite physical fitness. She earned her title of fastest woman in the world when she won the 100-meter dash at the 2017 IAAF World Championships in London. The year prior, she was part of the 4x100-meter team, along with Allyson Felix, English Gardner and Tianna Bartoletta, that won gold at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, where she also won an individual silver medal in the 100-meter race and bronze in the 200 meters.
Craig Poole, Bowie’s former coach at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California, described her as a dedicated athlete whose work ethic complemented her raw talent. She also brought a lot of joy to those around her, he added.
“Talk about a sparkling personality, and the best smile, and the loudest laugh,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Bowie and Poole fell out of touch after the 2019 World Athletic Championships in Doha, Qatar. News that she had died — and that she had been pregnant — stunned him, he said, because the last time they spoke, she had made no mention of wanting to become a mother.
“She was so focused on her running and jumping,” he said.
Bowie’s teammate Felix, who has spoken about her own traumatic experience with childbirth, declined a request for comment from NBC News. In a tweet Tuesday, she called the racial disparity in maternal health “absolutely heartbreaking.”
“We continue to face a black maternal mortality crisis in this country,” Felix tweeted. “My heart aches. We have to do more.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.