Grand Slam Track (GST), the global track and field series founded by four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson, has cancelled its meet in Los Angeles later this month — only two months after its first event.
The June 28-29 event at LA’s Drake Stadium was the fourth and final meet of the inaugural season, with the series previously held in Kingston, Miami and Philadelphia.
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As first reported by The Times, talks are scheduled throughout Thursday with athletes and sponsors who will be impacted by the decision, which has been made to limit against the potential money losses of the meet.
GST sources, who confirmed to The Athletic the LA meet will now not go ahead, insist there will be a second series and that they will be able to secure fresh investment.
The most recent meet, at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field, alongside the scheduled LA event, were reduced from three days to two. GST said the decision to compress the schedule was a response to feedback from athletes, coaches, and fans.
The premise of GST is simple, with Johnson driving a strategy to bring track athletics into the sporting mainstream between the Olympics, which are held just once every four years. The World Championship Athletics is a bi-annual event.
The series was also motivated to not only reward athletes with better exposure and status but to increase their pay, with star names contracted to the league structure to encourage storylines, themes and rivalries.
“I always felt like people knew me as an Olympic champion,” Johnson told The Athletic last month, outlining his motivation for the series. “They knew me as ‘Oh, you’re the fastest in the world’, but they didn’t really know why other than because they saw me three years ago in the Olympics.”
Since 2010, the most notable global track and field series has been the invitational Diamond League, in which athletes try to accumulate the most points over 14 meetings to qualify for the end-of-season final and a chance to be crowned the Diamond League champion.
The Diamond League says this season around $18 million (£13.47 million) will be paid to athletes, which includes promotional fees for the biggest names.
In November, UK Athletics rejected the chance of GST involvement, citing a focus on making the Diamond League in London profitable, as well as efforts to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships.
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“We’re positive about Michael Johnson’s format,” UKA’s chief executive, Jack Buckner said. “But three days of just track athletics is a lot of tickets to sell in the London Stadium and the cost base comes pretty high there.
“They did approach us and we had a really good discussion with them. We would like to have a bigger, more comprehensive events portfolio, but we want that built on strong foundations that are sustainable.”
(Photo: STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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