Track and field Olympian Tori Bowie was only 32 when she died last month, alone in her Orange County, Fla., home, in the middle of giving birth at eight months pregnant.

Her body was not discovered until sheriff’s deputies performed a wellness check after she hadn’t been heard from for days; Bowie’s agent said the last time they spoke was several weeks before her death. Their conversation was filled with laughter, her agent said — Bowie seemed happy and excited about her impending motherhood.

There are still many questions surrounding Bowie’s death, including why she was alone at the time. Her autopsy report mentions that the three-time medalist at the 2016 Rio Games suffered from bipolar disorder, but it’s irresponsible to draw a line from her mental health to her tragic death.

More importantly, the report lists two possible contributing factors: eclampsia and respiratory distress, which strike fear in every woman who gets pregnant.

Those conditions — as well as preeclampsia, their more commonly known precursor — are linked to extremely high blood pressure. Hypertension is a potential complication in all pregnancies but becomes a bigger threat when the patient is over age 35, has a family history of high blood pressure or, as was in Bowie’s case and so many high-profile cases in recent years, is Black.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three times more likely than white women to develop pregnancy complications, including dangerously high blood pressure. There are many likely contributing factors, such as socioeconomic status, underlying medical conditions and lack of consistent access to quality health care, but the risk remains elevated even when the playing field is more level.

Two of Bowie’s 4×100 relay teammates from 2016, Allyson Felix and Tianna Madison, also faced life-threatening complications during their pregnancies that resulted in the early births of their children. Tennis legend Serena Williams suffered from blood clots after she delivered her daughter that put her on bed rest for weeks.

In these cases the athletes were fortunate to have good medical teams to help them through their ordeals. However, as Felix noted in a commentary she wrote for Time magazine after Bowie’s death became public, before her preeclampsia was diagnosed she was not told of the increased risks she faced as a pregnant Black woman. (Unconscious bias in health care is another factor cited by the CDC as a threat to the health of pregnant Black women.)

We don’t know why Bowie’s story ended tragically — her agent said that while Bowie mentioned her desire for a home birth, the fact that she knew she was having a girl suggested she was receiving some kind of prenatal care — but if it was in fact due to inadequate health monitoring it fits a narrative that is much too common and needs to change.

Bowie’s story hit especially close to home once I learned the likely cause of her death.

I was one of those women unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with preeclampsia, when I was 29 weeks pregnant. Given my medical history, my OB-GYN team kept me under extremely close watch for more than a month. There were a few scary nights. My daughter was also delivered six weeks early to ensure our mutual safety. (We are both doing fine now.)

Being under constant supervision was agonizing for me, because being fit and staying active are big parts of my life. In that sense I can understand the apprehension of an elite athlete like Bowie, who might have gotten a similar diagnosis earlier in her pregnancy and was also scared of the consequences of following doctor’s orders.

Maybe she was told to change her lifestyle in a way she just couldn’t go along with. Anxiety over her condition paired with other health factors could also have played roles in her death.

Again, we’ll never know for sure. The bottom line is her death should not have happened, and yet it is a tale heard over and over again despite increased awareness and calls to action.