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Allyson Felix goes for American record 11th track medal

Felix already has the overall women's record for track medals after earning bronze in the 400m on Friday. She raced Saturday in the 4x400m relay.

TOKYO, Japan — UPDATE: The U.S. team, with Allyson Felix running the second leg of the race, breezed to the 4x400m relay gold medal.

Felix is now the most decorated American Olympian in track and field, with 11 career medals, capping what NBC's announcer described as a "glittering individual and team career."

Unofficially, the team set a season best of 3:16.85, beating silver-winning Poland by nearly four seconds.

Original story below

Allyson Felix, newly minted as the world's most decorated woman in Olympic track and field and tied for mots medals by an American, will set out Saturday morning to become the most decorated American Olympian on the track, period.

Felix is running with the U.S. team in the women's 4x400 meter relay, and if the team can secure a medal it will give the 35-year-old an 11th in her Olympic career - that would be more than any other American has ever amassed, with Felix currently tied with Carl Lewis on 10.

The 10th, a bronze medal on Friday in the 400 meter individual race, brought Felix even with Lewis and gave her the most Olympic medals of any woman in track and field in history.

You can watch the women's 4x400 meter relay final here, at 8:30 a.m. ET

The American women, including Felix, won gold in this event in 2016 in Rio.

In Tokyo, though, Felix has three new teammates - Sydney McLaughlin, Dalilah Muhammad and Athing Mu.

The team's season best of 3:20.86 is comfortably better than any of the other teams in the final.

RELATED: After Nike split, Allyson Felix goes on to become most decorated woman in track and field wearing her own shoe brand

Felix captured her 10th medal in Friday's final, setting her apart from every other woman in Olympic track history. She had been tied with Jamaica's Merlene Ottey, who won nine medals across two decades.

She also joined Lewis on the American track pedestal with 10 medals, and can go for sole possession of the record if she runs in the 4x400m relay. Lewis congratulated her Friday, writing: "35 never looked so good. What an amazing career and inspiration. Now on to the relay."

But before the race, with history on the line, Felix - who almost died in childbirth in 2018 - articulated the broader perspective she now has on things.

Felix wrote in her Instagram post that she's "never been afraid of my competitors" and "not afraid of losing."

What is difficult, she wrote, is "realizing as I'm sitting here the night before my final individual Olympic final that in a lot of ways I've let my performances define my worth."

"I've been afraid that my worth is tied to whether or not I win or lose," Felix wrote. "But right now I've decided to leave that fear behind. To understand that I am enough."

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