Grand Slam Track ready to take flight
Professional track league to start inaugural season in Kingston, Jamaica, on Friday
Grand Slam Track, the brain-child of Michael Johnson, will officially come to life on Friday evening when the professional track league kicks off its inaugural season with a meet in Kingston, Jamaica.
Peacock’s coverage of the three-day competition will start at 6 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, in the U.S. on Friday and Saturday, and at 3 p.m. on Sunday.
Grand Slam Track also announced last week that it had signed agreements with 21 global broadcasters to show the event in 189 countries and territories around the world.
The 57-year-old Johnson, the GOAT of the men’s 400 meters, as well as one of the greatest track and field athletes ever, has previously said that he has been mulling over the creation of something like Grand Slam Track for many years.
He contends that track and field’s popularity in the U.S. has suffered in recent decades in part because the sport has lacked an organized professional league in which the top performers compete against one another on a regular basis while being promoted by that league.
While there are dozens of meets on the international circuit each year, Johnson has pointed out that except for the Olympic Games and the World Athletics Championships, high-level clashes between the best competitors don’t occur that often in some events.
And when they do occur, the coverage can be lacking.
“The athletes themselves have been criticised a lot over the years for the sport not being more popular,” he said in a Reuters post on Monday. “And my position has always been, the athletes are doing their job. It’s up to someone else to go and create a structure that presents that to the world and commercialises that and markets it.”
Although Grand Slam Track has received some criticism because it does not include any field events, Johnson and Co. have created a format in which many of the sport’s top track competitors will race each other eight times over the course of four three-day meets during the inaugural season.
Each meet will consist of 96 athletes competing in 12 different event categories.
Eight of the event categories are the men’s and women’s short sprints (100/200 meters), long sprints (200/400), short distance (800/1,500), and long distance (3,000/5,000).
In addition, four categories are comprised of the men’s and women’s short hurdles and long hurdles.
Competitors in the men’s short hurdles category will run in the 110-meter high hurdles and the 100, with women performers contesting the 100 hurdles and the 100.
Competitors in the men’s long hurdles category will run in the 400 intermediate hurdles and the 400, with women performers, including megastar Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the U.S., contesting the 400 hurdles and the 400.
Each event category will be comprised of four “Racers” and four “Challengers.”
Racers are athletes who have signed contracts — and receive a based compensation fee — to compete in all four Grand Slam Track meets this year, while challengers are athletes who will compete in specific meets.
For example, Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse of the U.S., Josh Kerr of Great Britain, and Marco Arop of Canada are the four racers in the men’s short distance category. But Emmanuel Wanyonyi of Kenya and Bryce Hoppel of the U.S. will compete against the four of them, as well as two other competitors, as challengers in the meet in Kingston.
Hocker, Kerr, and Nuguse finished 1-2-3 in the 1,500 in the Olympic Games, while Wanyonyi, Arop, and Hoppel finished first, second, and fourth, respectively, in the 800.
The overall talent level of the racers is very high as 22 of them combined to win 23 individual medals in Paris.
In addition to McLaughlin-Levrone and Hocker, the other gold medalists in the group are Americans Gabby Thomas, who won the women’s 200 in Paris, Masai Russell, who placed first in the women’s 100 hurdles, and Quincy Hall, who came from behind to take the men’s 400, as well as the Dominican Republic’s Marileidy Paulino, who won the women’s 400.
Grant Fisher of the U.S. is the one racer who won two individual medals in Paris.
He won bronze medals in the 5,000 and 10,000, and is coming off a sensational indoor season in which he set world short track records of 7:22.91 in the 3,000 and 12:44.09 in the 5,000.
An unprecedented amount of prize money no doubt played a part in so many top-tier athletes signing with Grand Slam Track, as the winner of each event category in each meet will earn a cool 100 grand.
The runner-up will be awarded $50,000, with the breakdown for the third- through eighth-place finishers being $30,000, $25,000, $20,000, $15,000, $12,500, and $10,000.
Competitors will accumulate points based on how they place in each of two races in their respective event category, with a victory worth 12 points, a second-place finish worth 8, and a third-place effort counting for 6. The fourth- through eighth-place finishers will be awarded points on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis.
If there is a tie in the overall point standings for an event category, the competitor with the higher single finish in either of the two events will be awarded the higher place in question.
If a tie remains after that first tiebreaker, the second tiebreaker will favor the performer who has the fastest combined time in the two events.
In addition to this weekend’s inaugural contest, the other Grand Slam Track meets, or slams as they are being called, are scheduled to be held in Miramar, Florida, from May 2-4, in Philadelphia from May 30-June 1, and in Los Angeles from June 27-29.
“I’m going to try to bridge this gap between the sport and its current position and what its potential is, which I think is immense,” Johnson said. “I think this could be the UFC and Formula One of athlete racing.”
You can click here for more information about Grand Slam Track, including event schedules, bios on the competitors, and how to purchase tickets.