As the inaugural staging of Grand Slam Track approaches, Michael Johnson talks about why he thinks it can bring about the kind of change that athletics needs to be able to grow
The national stadium in Kingston holds some significant memories for Michael Johnson. It was during his time at Baylor College that the man who would go on to become a multiple Olympic and world champion sprinter got his first taste of Jamaica. Travelling to race at the renowned venue was, in fact, the first time he’d ever left America.
“I ran down there twice in college [in relay events], in 1989 and 1990,” he recalls. “It was eye-opening. I’d never seen that level of young talent.”
It’s the famous ISSA/Grace Kennedy Boys and Girls Championships or “Champs” that packs this particular arena to the rafters on an annual basis but, just five days after this year’s edition takes place, Johnson’s latest vision for the sport will start to become a reality on the very same track that will have played host to the Caribbean’s rising stars.
There will be some rather more established names on show for the first of the four meetings – others will follow in Miami, Philadelphia and then LA – that form the inaugural staging of Grand Slam Track, the project being driven by the former 200m and 400m world record-holder which is promising to bring change to the sport.
Michael Johnson (Grand Slam Track)
In case you haven’t been following the story, Grand Slam Track is planning to do things a bit differently. Here’s the concept. A total of 48 athletes, or “Racers”, have already been signed up and are contracted to compete in one of six event groups in each of the four “Slams”.
At each Slam, every Racer will have to take part in two different disciplines – for example, US star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will race over the 400m hurdles and the 400m flat, while her fellow American Cole Hocker will take on not just his more familiar 1500m distance but also the 800m.
On top of that, those 48 Racers will come up against 48 “Challengers”, whose identities will be different from Slam to Slam, with the first prize for coming out on top being $100,000. It’s all designed to create a professional, and more lucrative, league that sits at the top of the sport, places the focus on rivalries rather than times and draws more attention.
The biggest challenge, according to Johnson: “Was always going to be getting athletes to commit to competing against their primary rivals four times.”
With those 48 Racers secured – including Olympic and world champions (36 of them won medals in Paris last summer) – that box has been very much ticked. After all the planning, now “execution mode” has been engaged as the spring approaches.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing to reach this point, mind you.
“You’re giving the athletes what they’ve always wanted, but you’re also asking them to change and so you expect that that’s going to be a little bit challenging for people,” says Johnson. “You’re going to always have some resistance but, by and large, the athletes are down with it.”
Michael Johnson (Grand Slam Track)
Would he have felt that way during his own competitive days if he had been approached to take part?
“It would not have been difficult at all for me,” he adds. “I wanted this. I always understood how other professional sports work because, when I was competing as a sprinter, my best friends were NFL players and I saw how their sport worked versus my sport. I’ve always been a big Formula One fan and I saw how that sport worked versus our sport. I would have understood the trade-off.
“And then I loved competing in the big championships. If you gave me an opportunity to compete against the best, that’s what I wanted to do. All of my records came when there were high stakes and I ran my best when I was competing against the best, so that’s what I wanted. For most of these athletes, I think that’s what they want as well.
“That’s one of the things they cite – ‘I want the races to mean something. I want to compete against my rivals and that’s what’s going to bring out the best in me’.”
Much has been written and spoken about Grand Slam Track before a single step has even been run and it could be argued that it’s already making an impact. Has it been a coincidence, for example, that the Diamond League prize pot for the year ahead has recently increased?
Josh Kerr (John Nepolitan)
Those sums still pale in comparison to the earning power of some other sports, though, so how does Johnson see athletics being able to keep up when the choices available to the watching – and participating public – continue to grow?
“At the grassroots level, certainly here in the US, there are significant participation numbers,” he says. “It’s the number one participation sport for girls in the US, and I think it’s number two for boys behind American football so that’s definitely a strength. We also have a very good college system.
“Our biggest problem has always been that the sport has never had an actual league that sits at the top. So we would compare track to the NBA or the NFL or European league football – but that’s not the comparison. The comparison should be European league football, NFL, NBA, Formula One. Those are all leagues. We don’t have a league. We just call our sport the sport. We need a league that is exclusive for the best of the best athletes.”
He adds: “Nobody talks about combat sports as the thing. It’s UFC. That’s the leader. We have never had that in athletics. We have the Olympics, which is not ours. It doesn’t belong to us as a sport. We have our World Championships, but it is not an exclusive league that takes place every year that is for the best of the best athletes.
“That was one of the things that, when I first started this, I felt like the sport needed in order for it to continue to thrive. Grand Slam Track is that league.”
Michael Johnson (Mark Shearman)
It was towards the end of last year that Johnson claimed: “I think I can save track”. He has the utmost confidence in the athletes being able to deliver their part of the bargain and excel. His job, he says, is to provide the means for those stories to be told on a grand scale, and to an audience that wants to keep coming back for more.
The Paris Olympics and the performances that took place there were just about the perfect advert for athletics, so how much potential does the 57-year-old think the sport has?
“We talk about that all the time and I think the issue is, because of the lack of anything else, we have been looking for years now for the next generational talent that’s going to help draw more attention back to the sport. I think that’s the wrong way to think about it because, if you think about it, at every Olympics the athletes are amazing. It’s not the lack of talent.
“We keep looking to the athletes to help grow the sport, to get the sport over the top or ‘save’ the sport but there hasn’t been a single Olympic Games or World Championships over the last several years that wasn’t like: ‘Damn, this is amazing’.
Matt Hudson-Smith (Getty)
“So it’s not the athletes. It is the lack of a structure to take those athletes and put them in a product that you can deliver to fans, that gets them excited every year, multiple times a year, with high stakes and a platform that showcases these personalities.
“From my perspective, the talent has always been there, but this is the greatest collection of dynamic personalities I’ve seen in the sport in quite some time, and they’re doing an amazing job themselves of connecting with their fans, putting themselves out there, bringing the fans into their world, training, the struggles and all of the drama that it takes to be a professional track athlete. But what they’re lacking is a platform that boosts that and that’s what we’re trying to be as Grand Slam Track.”
The level of ambition and aspiration is extremely high, but that doesn’t mean that all forms of realism have been parked at the door. Johnson isn’t about to claim all of athletics’ ills will have been cured by the end of June and his idea of what success would like come the end of year one is not only different from what you might expect, but also indicative of the fact that he and the investors who have put up $30 million are in this for the long run.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (Getty)
“The fact that we have signed these 48 Racers, now putting them on the track and letting them race… that’ll be a success,” he says. “What we want is to then put out a good product that is entertaining and presents the sport in a way that draws fans in and engages them in a new way.
“And then, of course, the metric that I’m going to be looking at constantly is growth – in the numbers of fans that are coming into the stadium and watching, growth of our television audience over the season and growth of our engagement, whether it be social media or otherwise.
“This is a start-up. I’ve been involved with many start-ups and you have to be realistic about what you can expect in year one. You have to be focused on growth, and you have to be structured in a way where you can grow. That’s how we’re structured.
“This is where a lot of fans and people in the sport are concerned [about the project]. They are welcoming of Grand Slam Track, but concerned about whether it can last, so they’ll apply methodology that makes sense to them, like: ‘You’ve got to have a full stadium in year one or you’re going to fail’. You don’t have to have a full stadium in year one. You have to keep growing over time.
“Or they’ll say: ‘You’ve got to have all of the athletes and if you don’t have this one athlete who is the most popular, you’re going to fail’. No, you don’t have to have that one athlete. You have to have a lot of the really good athletes.
“We know what’s possible, and we know what’s realistic, so I feel good about our chances to succeed based on our goals for year one. And then we’ll quickly get ready for year two.”
Michael Johnson (Laureus)
Whether that second year brings with it expansion into other parts of the world – there have been discussions with a number of cities – remains to be seen. The same goes for whether or not some of the big-name athletes who have been conspicuous by their absence, such as Noah Lyles and Jakob Ingebrigtsen, can be persuaded to come on board in future.
Johnson’s vision, however, remains clear.
“It has always been, from my perspective, [about] Grand Slam Track being able to immediately make change based on what we’re doing,” he says. “We’re changing the way that athletes compete, the way that fans are able to consume the product and enjoy track at the professional level.
“It has always been my opinion that that is going to spur on other change that the sport has needed for quite some time and that World Athletics has stated multiple times that they want to see.
“Given that I think we’re just getting started, I think we’ll see more change in the sport in a positive direction. Someone had to start that. I think that Grand Slam Track can be that impetus for that change and we’re certainly going to try by leading with our examples and with our league. I’m hopeful it will spur on more change.”
This interview first appeared in the February issue of AW magazine, which you can buy here.
