The Grand Slam Track

I have never liked Michael Johnson. I have always found him haughty and pretentious and so, when I heard about his project of the Grand Slam Track (GST) series I was naturally sceptical. Well, the first event of the series took place in April in Jamaica and must confess that I did not make any particular effort to follow it. I just perused the results but then I decided that I had a duty to write a report for the blog, my personal preferences notwithstanding. 

The event was announced last year by Johnson who explained that a 30 million dollars funding was secured. The remaining GST events of this year are scheduled for May (2 to 4 May in Miami and 30 to June 1 in Philadelphia) and June (27 to 29 in Los Angeles). The timing is decided so as not to interfere seriously with the Diamond League events (although the competition in Suzhou will be held over the same week-end as the one in Miami, and there are 8 Diamond League meetings planned from April till the end of June when the GST will be over). Despite GST being in competition with the Diamond League Sir Sebastian welcomed the upcoming event with the words: “I welcome innovation. I also welcome external resources. If you have a rising tide, everyone benefits”.

So how does GST work? As the name indicates it is a pure track event. There are six categories of events: Short Sprints 100 m and 200 m, Short Hurdles 100 m/110 m hurdles and 100 m, Long Sprints 200 m and 400 m, Long Hurdles 400 m hurdles and 400 m, Short Distance 800 m and 1500 m, and Long Distance 3000 m and 5000 m. Each athlete must participate in the two events of his category. They receive points for their finishing positions following the scale 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 from first to eight position. The winner is the one with the highest combined mark, and a tie is broken by considering the addition of the times over the two events. (You can find all the details on the GST website).

There are 8 athletes participating in each of the six categories. Four of them are "tenured" in the sense that they are contracted for the whole season. The remaining four are the "challengers" who may change at each meeting. For the first edition of GST, Johnson has secured the participation of big names like Sydney McLaughlin, Gaby Thomas, Marileidy Paulino, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn for the women's competition and Alison dos Santos, Marco Arop, Josh Kerr, Fred Kerley for the men. Still some big names like Noah Lyles, Letsile Tebogo, Julian Alfred or Sha'Carri Richardson are absent from the roster. Johnson is waving this away saying that "not all athletes can come in year one". 

One crucial question concerning GST is its financial sustainability. Having secured funds for the first year is OK but if there is no return on investment the enterprise is doomed. Johnson maintains that is not a source of worry since "no business is profitable in its first year". But unfortunately there are precedents where similar attempts have failed. Remember the "Nitro" competition promoted by Usain Bolt and held in Australia in 2017? It was also supported by Sir Sebastian and heralded as an innovation to Athletics. And to tell the truth the program of Nitro was more daring than the one of GST. But Nitro failed spectacularly, the 2018 event being cancelled on some made-up pretext. Will GST follow the same fate? I am tempted to be pessimistic about its future, but then this may just be due to the fact that I cannot stand Johnson. So, let's wait and see.