Michael Johnson was as soon as owed cash by British Athletics and he reacted by boycotting its observe meets.
Michael Johnson has thanked athletes for his or her persistence and understanding whereas they wait to be paid for his or her Grand Slam Observe efforts this 12 months. 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 Nineteen Nineties, Johnson boycotted British athletics conferences for a number of years as a result of a dispute over unpaid race charges.
In 1997, just a few 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 referring to the Diane Modahl anti-doping case, however Johnson and his agent Brad Hunt confirmed little persistence, 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 an analogous amount of money that occasion winners at this 12 months’s Grand Slam Observe ought to have been paid. The irony is so thick you possibly can choke on it.
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 mentioned: “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 means. ‘I do not personalise my rivals,’ he mentioned this summer season. ‘They haven’t any faces or names. They’re simply seven individuals standing in my means’.”
Greater than 1 / 4 of a century later, Johnson now finds himself in an analogous 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 12 months, their self-imposed deadline of September has handed with collectors nonetheless ready to be absolutely paid, though there are experiences that athletes obtained partial funds on Friday (Oct 3) due to an emergency injection of money from traders.
Georgia Hunter Bell, the world and Olympic medallist, mentioned 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.”
World Athletics can be recognized to be protecting a detailed eye on the scenario, though Johnson will maybe be relieved to listen to the Athletics Integrity Unit, which has developed a fierce status for pursuing drug cheats, at present has little curiosity within the Grand Slam scenario.
Brett Clothier, head of the AIU, advised media on the World Championships in Tokyo: “Beneath the Integrity Code, if it’s a case of fraud that’s been dedicated in our sport then we’ve got the facility to behave. However in need of fraud, non-payment of money owed and buying and selling while bancrupt and people form of issues don’t come below the Integrity Code.
“Nonetheless,” he added, “if it’s a fraudulent matter it might, however it wants to achieve that threshold to return below our consideration.”
Grand Slam Observe was launched amid appreciable hoo-ha in June final 12 months 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 have 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 observe panorama, permitting our sport to stay on the forefront of the sporting world 12 months spherical,” mentioned Johnson, “pushing our celebrity 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 trip.”
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 overlaying the occasions. Massive-name athletes similar to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Melissa Jefferson-Wood, Cole Hocker and Josh Kerr signed as much as compete, though the primary assembly received 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 reduce to 2 days and the 2 distance occasions lowered to 1.
Behind the scenes a significant investor had pulled out shortly after the Kingston occasion, resulting in instantaneous monetary bother. It led to the fourth and ultimate 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 greatest speaking factors within the sport however not for the appropriate causes.
So why did it fail? It actually wasn’t as a result of lack of publicity.
As a substitute, maybe the sequence centered too closely on the North American market with not one of the preliminary conferences in Europe. As Seb Coe mentioned just lately when quizzed concerning the reputation of the game in the USA: “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 observe occasions was additionally a courageous however doubtful choice. Johnson felt ignoring subject occasions was a essentially brutal technique to create a profitable observe meet, however jumps and throws have been a part of the game because the historic video games in Greece.
“Subject occasions might 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 enchantment 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’ll’t. Mondo Duplantis going for one more world report. Nafi Thiam’s and Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s epic duels within the heptathlon.”
Whereas Grand Slam Observe attracted loads of star athletes, little question 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 have been injured through the early a part of the 12 months.
What’s extra, Grand Slam Observe reduce its personal path and billed itself considerably arrogantly because the saviour of observe and subject. Perhaps if it had labored a bit extra intently with World Athletics, in the identical means the female-only competitors Athlos has, issues might have been completely different.
Grand Slam Observe’s second assembly in Miami, for instance, coincided with the second of 15 Diamond League conferences this 12 months in Shanghai, China, on Could 3. “We normally set up our dates first and it permits different organisers to search for different non-clashing dates,” Diamond League chief government Petr Stastny advised AW on the time. “We welcome the brand new tasks however we don’t welcome date clashes and sadly they appear to be taking place in 2025.”
The primary Grand Slam Observe meets have 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 facet both. Grand Slam Observe was progressive and ‘disruptive’, however new ideas normally 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 take a look at of time. Compared, ideas similar to CityGames avenue athletics, or concepts like ‘devil-takes-the-hindmost’ races on the European Staff Champs, have been quietly dropped.
Lastly and most significantly, monetary issues have been the ultimate nail in Grand Slam Observe’s coffin. The amount of cash the sequence provided its athletes was nearly too good to be true however assist from traders was not concrete sufficient. Even Johnson himself is claimed to have misplaced round $2m on the mission.
“It’s extremely troublesome to stay with the fact that you simply’ve constructed one thing larger than your self whereas concurrently feeling such as you’ve let down the very individuals you got down to assist,” Johnson mentioned. “We promised that athletes could be pretty and rapidly compensated. But right here we’re combating our skill to compensate them.”
