Grand Slam Track canceled the final meet of its first season, in Los Angeles, leaving the host of the 2028 Olympics and the country's second-largest city without a major track meet this summer.
The news Thursday about the abrupt scrubbing of the meet, scheduled for the last weekend in June at Drake Stadium, combines with USA Track and Field's recent decision to take an event set at the same stadium for earlier in June — the LA Grand Prix — off the calendar.
USATF CEO Max Siegel told The Associated Press that the federation pulled its event because it was not viable to hold two major track meets at the same venue in LA in the span of three weeks.
Grand Slam Track founder Michael Johnson said “the decision to conclude the inaugural Grand Slam Track season is not taken lightly, but one rooted in a belief that we have successfully achieved the objectives we set out to in this pilot season.”
He cited a shift in the global economic landscape as the reason for canceling the LA event, which will be part of the league's 2026 calendar.
Siegel said leaders at USATF “understand the significance of the (LA) market,” and that there are plans for leaders to meet later this summer to coordinate the future of track there and throughout the United States, starting in 2026.
“It highlights the complicated way the (sport) works, and how difficult it is to financially sustain track meets,” Siegel said. “The only way to do it in a sustainable way is collaboration and partnerships.”
In the short term, USATF is looking to find meets for a handful of athletes who still need to reach standards or collect points to qualify for world championships later this year and were planning on competing in Los Angeles.
The news was far from what Olympic and track leaders were hoping as they lead in to the first Summer Games in the United States since 1996 in a city that, 12 years before that, put Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Evelyn Ashford and others in the sports spotlight.
Johnson raised around $30 million to launch Grand Slam Track this spring, promising a new way of doing track — involving a group of runners under contract racing twice over a weekend and focusing more on where they finished than actual times.
Among the top athletes he signed were Olympic champions Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas, though two other American track stars, Sha'Carri Richardson and Noah Lyles, did not race in the league.
The league said Kenny Bednarek and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden are the league's “Racers of the Year,” having won three straight slam championships each.
The first three events, in Kingston, Jamaica, Miami and Philadelphia, doled out about $9.45 million, with another $3 million expected to be paid in L.A. Bonuses were expected to go to season-long winners of the categories.
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
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