Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) — The failure of Michael Johnson’s attempt to transform track and field with the Grand Slam Track league hovered over big swaths of the sport’s world championships over its nine-day run in Tokyo.
Dozens of athletes who competed but didn’t get paid adjusted their 2025 schedules so they could run in the league’s four events, which turned out to only be three after the final meet in Los Angeles was scrubbed.
Those who struggled at worlds — distance runners who participated in the GST stood out — could look at the need of trying to peak three or more times over the season — for the league, for their national championships, then for world championships — as part of their problem.
But others who ran in the league thrived in Tokyo, and it was an impressive list that included Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Oblique Seville and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
American Jasmine Jones, who won the silver medal in the 400-meter hurdles, ran in Grand Slam Track. Her coach said success there built confidence, but came at a price.
“A lot of people changed their season,” said Jones’ coach, 2004 Olympic gold medalist Joanna Hayes. “Some people it worked out for. Some people it didn’t. I hope they figure out a way to pay the athletes. They really did work hard for that league.”
Some, like American 400 runner Jacory Patterson, saw their lives change after winning meets in Grand Slam Track. Patterson landed a deal with Nike. But after coming into Tokyo as a favorite, he finished a disappointing seventh.
Unlike most pro sports in the U.S., track is a sport filled with athletes who do side gigs to make ends meet — UPS drivers, Walmart, selling cell phones — so missing five-figure or larger payments is bound to have an impact.
McLaughlin-Levrone, one of the few “haves” in the sport, did not buy into the view that the league’s collapse was a sign of bigger trouble.
“I think the unfortunate nature of that situation is exclusive to that situation,” she said. “I don’t think that at all reflects on the athletes and our sport.”
Noah’s next move
Noah Lyles, never a fan of Grand Slam Track, hasn’t soured on the idea of a league that might make track better.
“I want to be able to set track and field, the sport, up in best position to springboard to be independently great, away from the amateruism we are experiencing,” Lyles said.
What that might look like is anybody’s guess, but he hinted in an interview with Bloomberg before the championships that it needed to be better planned and about more than watching people run.
“Let’s put on a production and, as I’ve gone to more and more events, it’s not so much the sport that I was watching, but how I felt when I was there,” Lyles said.
The greatest bronze of all
When defending heptathlon champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson looked at the final standings on the scoreboard and saw hers was the fourth name listed, she said “I wasn’t really celebrating.”
Then, when she saw a “3” pop up by her name and a race official call her over to where the medals were, she felt something different.
Johnson-Thompson and America’s Taliyah Brooks were involved in a rare tie for third in the seven-event endurance test, one in which every mark in each event is assigned a score value that’s added to a cumulative point total.
The bronze medalists in the event won by American Anna Hall finished with 6,581 points each. Had Johnson, who trailed Brooks by 84 points, not beaten her by exactly 1.46 seconds in the event-closing 800-meter race, there would have been a winner and loser in the quest for third.
At some meets, including those in college in the U.S., officials will break a tie by looking at each athlete’s placement in individual events. Not at world championships, though.
“I’ve never seen it,” Johnson-Thompson said of the tie. “And I’m not questioning it.”
A bus to the track
Some athletes complained about a strange situation in Tokyo this week — they warmed up then had to take a 15-minute bus ride to the track.
Normally, a warm-up track is adjacent to the stadium and involves a walk or a quick ride in a cart over to what’s known as the “call room.” (That cart ride is no sure thing, either. Ask Jamaica’s Andrew Hudson.)
“It’s definitely not usual, but we’re all in the same boat,” American 1,500 runner Nikki Hiltz said earlier in the week.
Athletes are called to the bus between 50 and 60 minutes before their race time, then taken to the stadium where they can use an indoor straightaway to loosen up again.
“With the whole warm-up situation, you’re warming up for almost two hours,” Britain’s 800-meter runner Keely Hodgkinson said.
Jamaican coach Stephen Francis called it not “befitting the top meet of the year for World Athletics” in an interview with that country’s TVJ network.
Some love for shot put
Shot put hasn’t been feeling the love of late. Its greatest champion, Ryan Crouser, is trying to change that.
After adding his third straight world title — impressive because he’s been injured all year — to his three Olympic titles, Crouser headed home to restart work on his new league for throwers only, the “World Shot Put Series.”
Crouser was, understandably, not happy when World Athletics kept shot put out of the debut of its Ultimate Championship next year — an event that will bring together top performers from a number of events to compete for $150,000 top prizes.
Crouser was also miffed that this year’s schedule at worlds called on shot put to go through qualifying in the morning, then finals the same night — a grueling schedule for those heaving the 7.26-kilometer (16 pound) sphere.
He said his new league is a chance to give proper treatment to this very technical and misunderstood part of track and field.
“So, World Shot Put Series it is,” Crouser said. “Hopefully we’ll replace that with the World Shotput Series Ultimate Championship.”
Quotable
“I have actually told him that one more world record, World Athletics misses its Christmas party. Two more world records, we miss the summer party.” —World Athletics President Sebastian Coe on a conversation with pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, who earned a $100,000 bonus from the federation when he set the world record last Monday.
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