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Grand Slam Track: where did it all go wrong?

October 4, 2025
in Athletics
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Michael Johnson was as soon as owed cash by British Athletics and he reacted by boycotting its monitor meets.

Michael Johnson has thanked athletes for his or her endurance and understanding whereas they wait to be paid for his or her Grand Slam Observe efforts this yr. But historical past tells us the 58-year-old ex-sprinter wouldn’t be fairly so forgiving if he was of their spikes at the moment.

As Olympic 200m and 400m champion within the late Nineties, Johnson boycotted British athletics conferences for a number of years as a result of a dispute over unpaid race charges.

In 1997, a number of weeks after dropping out of his much-hyped 150m showdown with Donovan Bailey in Toronto, Johnson completed fifth over 200m at Crystal Palace – in a race gained by unheralded Welshman Doug Turner – and the American subsequently started a monetary feud with British Athletics over non-payments.

Throughout that interval the British governing physique was pressured to declare chapter, partly as a result of authorized charges regarding the Diane Modahl anti-doping case, however Johnson and his agent Brad Hunt confirmed little endurance, refusing to return to Britain till he was paid and threatening authorized motion to recoup the cash.

Johnson was owed round £70,000, which coincidentally is the same amount of money that occasion winners at this yr’s Grand Slam Observe ought to have been paid. The irony is so thick you may choke on it.

Michael Johnson (Mark Shearman)

Johnson’s stance hardly endeared himself to followers on the time both. Nor the media.

Doug Gillon, the revered and long-time athletics author on the Herald newspaper in Glasgow, described him in a single article as “the truculent Texan”.

Writing within the Guardian in 2000, Richard Williams stated: “Johnson is a troublesome man to take care of… lengthy famend for his taciturnity. A shy and obsessively neat man, his monosyllabic supply and bass profundo voice give him the air of a lone gunfighter.

“He likes to play as much as the picture, in his downbeat approach. ‘I do not personalise my rivals,’ he stated this summer season. ‘They haven’t any faces or names. They’re simply seven individuals standing in my approach’.”

Greater than 1 / 4 of a century later, Johnson now finds himself in the same place to British Athletics in 1997. After struggling to pay athletes, brokers and suppliers for his or her work at Grand Slam Observe occasions earlier this yr, their self-imposed deadline of September has handed with collectors nonetheless ready to be totally paid, though there are reviews that athletes obtained partial funds on Friday (Oct 3) because of an emergency injection of money from traders.

Georgia Hunter Bell, the world and Olympic medallist, stated final month she was “not holding her breath” that funds could be forthcoming. The British middle-distance runner advised The Sports activities Brokers podcast: “I do not imagine anybody has been paid that I’ve spoken to personally, however we’re simply hoping it really works out.”

GST winners (Grand Slam Observe)

World Athletics can also be identified to be retaining a detailed eye on the scenario, though Johnson will maybe be relieved to listen to the Athletics Integrity Unit, which has developed a fierce fame for pursuing drug cheats, at the moment has little curiosity within the Grand Slam scenario.

Brett Clothier, head of the AIU, advised media on the World Championships in Tokyo: “Below the Integrity Code, if it’s a case of fraud that’s been dedicated in our sport then now we have the ability to behave. However wanting fraud, non-payment of money owed and buying and selling while bancrupt and people kind of issues don’t come beneath the Integrity Code.

“Nevertheless,” he added, “if it’s a fraudulent matter it might, but it surely wants to achieve that threshold to return beneath our consideration.”

Grand Slam Observe was launched amid appreciable hoo-ha in June final yr with the primary assembly in Jamaica on April 4-6. Even through the months main as much as the primary occasion, articles concerning the occasion had been peppering media on a weekly foundation and it was uncommon to see an interview with an athlete with out them being requested what they considered Grand Slam Observe, or if they might be racing in it.

“We’re revolutionising the monitor panorama, permitting our sport to stay on the forefront of the sporting world yr spherical,” stated Johnson, “pushing our famous person racers to interrupt new floor of their private storytelling, aggressive success, and marketability. Grand Slam Observe goes to take our sport to new heights and we wish you to return alongside for the journey.”

Josh Kerr and Cole Hocker (Grand Slam Observe)

The prize cash was unprecedented in athletics with $100,000 (£74,450) for every of the winners at every of the 4 occasions, filtering all the way down to $10,000 (£7450) for eighth place.

Johnson claimed preliminary funding of $30 million and provided greater than $12.5m in prize cash with NBC and TNT Sports activities protecting the occasions. Massive-name athletes resembling Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Melissa Jefferson-Picket, Cole Hocker and Josh Kerr signed as much as compete, though the primary assembly acquired off to an anticlimactic begin with the stands in Kingston, Jamaica, largely empty.

The GST circus moved on to Miami on Could 2-4 with higher crowds and, to be truthful, some entertaining athletics. However by the third occasion, in Philadelphia on Could 31-June 1, the three-day format had been lower to 2 days and the 2 distance occasions diminished to at least one.

Behind the scenes a serious investor had pulled out shortly after the Kingston occasion, resulting in immediate monetary hassle. It led to the fourth and remaining occasion of the 2025 sequence, in Los Angeles on June 28-29, being cancelled on June 12.

Because the athletics caravan rolled into Oslo for the sixth Diamond League of the season, Grand Slam Observe was on everybody’s lips as Johnson advised athletes and brokers through a video name that the LA meet was cancelled. Since then, Grand Slam Observe has remained one of many largest speaking factors within the sport however not for the best causes.

Michael Johnson (Grand Slam Observe)

So why did it fail? It actually wasn’t as a result of lack of publicity.

As a substitute, maybe the sequence targeted too closely on the North American market with not one of the preliminary conferences in Europe. As Seb Coe stated lately when quizzed concerning the reputation of the game in the US: “It’s a paradox. Athletes who’re mobbed in Tokyo (through the World Champs) can stroll down their very own streets within the US in anonymity.”

The concentrate on monitor occasions was additionally a courageous however doubtful resolution. Johnson felt ignoring subject occasions was a essentially brutal methodology to create a profitable monitor meet, however jumps and throws have been a part of the game because the historical video games in Greece.

“Discipline occasions could seem a superfluity,” wrote Jonathan Liew in a Guardian article on the demise of Grand Slam Observe, “however with out them the entire product falls aside. The important attraction of elite athletics lies in its sprawling, village-fete atmosphere. The bits between the bits. The bits brushing up in opposition to different bits. The bits that may usually be safely ignored, proper till the second they will’t. Mondo Duplantis going for an additional world file. Nafi Thiam’s and Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s epic duels within the heptathlon.”

Whereas Grand Slam Observe attracted loads of star athletes, little doubt seduced by the promise of immense prize cash, there have been loads of notables who stored their distance. They included Noah Lyles, Karsten Warholm, Femke Bol, Keely Hodgkinson and Jakob Ingebrigtsen, though the latter two had been injured through the early a part of the yr.

What’s extra, Grand Slam Observe lower its personal path and billed itself considerably arrogantly because the saviour of monitor and subject. Perhaps if it had labored a bit extra carefully with World Athletics, in the identical approach the female-only competitors Athlos has, issues could have been totally different.

Grand Slam Observe’s second assembly in Miami, for instance, coincided with the second of 15 Diamond League conferences this yr in Shanghai, China, on Could 3. “We often set up our dates first and it permits different organisers to search for different non-clashing dates,” Diamond League chief govt Petr Stastny advised AW on the time. “We welcome the brand new initiatives however we don’t welcome date clashes and sadly they appear to be taking place in 2025.”

Anna Corridor (Grand Slam Observe)

The primary Grand Slam Observe meets had been unusually early, too. This meant athletes needed to be match and firing on all cylinders in April after which peak mid-season for his or her nationwide choice trials after which most significantly for the World Champs in mid-September.

Historical past was not on Johnson’s aspect both. Grand Slam Observe was progressive and ‘disruptive’, however new ideas often battle to get a foot-hold in a sport the place athletes and followers are typically reluctant to embrace change. Main championships and grands prix in cities like Zurich, Brussels, London, Stockholm and Oslo, for instance, have tried-and-trusted codecs and have stood the check of time. Compared, ideas resembling CityGames avenue athletics, or concepts like ‘devil-takes-the-hindmost’ races on the European Crew Champs, have been quietly dropped.

Lastly and most significantly, monetary issues had been the ultimate nail in Grand Slam Observe’s coffin. The sum of money the sequence provided its athletes was virtually too good to be true however help from traders was not concrete sufficient. Even Johnson himself is alleged to have misplaced round $2m on the venture.

“It’s extremely troublesome to stay with the truth that you simply’ve constructed one thing greater than your self whereas concurrently feeling such as you’ve let down the very individuals you got down to assist,” Johnson stated. “We promised that athletes could be pretty and shortly compensated. But right here we’re battling our capacity to compensate them.”



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