With some athletes ‘suffering financially,’ Michael Johnson hopes his new league can bring value to track and field

By George Ramsay and Amanda Davies, CNN

(CNN) — Michael Johnson wants to make one thing clear: track doesn’t need saving. But he does think it needs improving.

For Johnson and many others, we are reminded of the sport’s potential once every four years when, for a brief, two-week window, athletes compete for status and legacy at the Summer Olympic Games.

In that moment, track and field is suddenly the most popular show on the planet, the short-lived center of the sporting universe. It’s what happens over the next four years that the sprinter-turned-commissioner has concerns about.

“That’s the void that has existed in the sport,” Johnson tells CNN Sports’ Amanda Davies, “and we’re filling it with Grand Slam Track.”

Spearheaded by the four-time Olympic champion, Grand Slam Track hosts its inaugural event in Kingston, Jamaica on Friday – the first of four meets taking place across the next three months.

The league has attracted some of the biggest names in the sport, including American Olympic champions Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Gabby Thomas, Cole Hocker and Quincy Hall.

Athletes signing up for Grand Slam Track have been promised regular, meaningful races against their fiercest rivals, as well as more prize money than the sport has ever offered before.

The 48 racers contracted by the league each receive an annual base salary for competing in the four meets over the course of the season, while $12.6 million in prize money is also on offer. That ranges from $100,000 for winning a slam to $10,000 for placing last.

By contrast, in the Diamond League – the sport’s established annual series of track and field meets – athletes receive $10,000 for winning an event and $1,000 for placing eighth.

“Most of the athletes suffer greatly because they aren’t able to realize any value,” says Johnson, best remembered for winning 200-meter and 400-meter gold medals at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

“Those athletes end up in situations where, many years later, and sometimes even in their careers, they’re wondering: ‘Should I have made this choice? I love this sport, but I’m suffering financially, I’m suffering mentally trying to make a living in this sport. I’m having to rely on friends and family to help.’”

The debut Grand Slam Track season will see 48 contracted racers, who are among the world’s top athletes, and 48 challengers, selected on an event-by-event basis, competing in six event groups: short and long sprints, short and long hurdles, and short and long distance.

Each athlete is assigned to an event group and will compete in two disciplines at every meet. Short sprinters, for example, will race in the 100 and 200 meters, and long sprinters in the 200 and 400 meters.

Points are earned based on an athlete’s finishing position in a race, and whoever has the most points across the two races at a meet is crowned the winner of an event group.

“That creates some significant narratives and jeopardy, which is what fans told us they want,” says Johnson. “They want to see the athletes more. They also want to see some jeopardy and some stakes.”

With the contracted racers guaranteed to appear at every event, Grand Slam Track hopes to showcase the sport’s top athletes more regularly, beyond the Olympics and the biennial World Athletics Championships. But there are significant absentees from the roster, including the likes of Sha’Carri Richardson, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Karsten Warholm and Femke Bol.

Notably, the two reigning Olympic 100m champions – Noah Lyles and Julien Alfred – have not signed up, and the league only features track – and not field – disciplines, meaning there is no place for superstar pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis.

However, those who have joined are encouraged by the league’s approach, particularly when it comes to compensating athletes.

“I’ve never had a base salary from a series of races before, that’s entirely novel,” American distance runner Grant Fisher tells CNN Sports. “For distance runners and for sprinters, pretty much anyone in track, your main source of income is from a shoe company – that’d be your main sponsor.

“You might get an appearance fee at a race here and there, but unless you’re a superstar, you’re probably not getting money to show up places. Whereas with Grand Slam, you have an incentive to show up, and then you have a huge incentive to race well. The prize purse is unlike anything this sport has ever seen … It’s a massive shift.”

Fisher, a two-time Olympic bronze medalist who recently broke two indoor world records, will compete in the 3,000 and 5,000 meters – the long distance event group – as a contracted racer at this season’s four meets.

He won’t be up against all his big rivals, such as two-time Olympic champion Ingebrigtsen, but still feels that Grand Slam Track is the platform he needs to elevate his career.

“I want to race the best guys as often as possible, and I want to be the best runner in the world,” says Fisher. “In order to have that title, I need to beat the best guys in the world consistently.

“It’s a cool format, it’s new. It gives fans something to follow with continuity, and I’m excited to be part of it. When they approached me, probably not great negotiation tactics, but I was kind of already sold on joining … They really didn’t have to win me over too much.”

This season’s races will be broadcast in 189 countries and territories, with Peacock and The CW serving as broadcasters in the US, Eurosport in Europe and Asia, and TNT Sports in the UK and Ireland. Both Eurosport and TNT Sports are sister companies of CNN under the Warner Bros. Discovery umbrella.

Inside Kingston’s National Stadium, the track has already been painted in the green, yellow and black of Jamaica’s flag in anticipation of the league’s opening event. The next three meets will be in the US – Miami, Philadelphia and Los Angeles – which Johnson says will serve a huge market for track and field, though one with few elite races to show for it.

The 57-year-old insists that Grand Slam Track is not trying to usurp the likes of World Athletics, the sport’s global governing, and the Diamond League, which holds most of its events in Europe.

“We’re a different product,” he says, adding that he has “a great relationship” with World Athletics and its president, Sebastian Coe. In turn, Coe has welcomed Johnson’s league, taking comfort in the “luster” and “investment” being injected into the sport.

Grand Slam Track only has plans to grow and, according to Johnson, has been contacted by cities interested in hosting future meets. “This is a journey for us, and we’re in it for the long haul,” he says. “We’re not going anywhere.”

For athletes like Fisher, who faces the demanding prospect of racing two distance events in three days this week, Grand Slam Track will ostensibly feel the same as other races he has competed in, and his targets for the season-opener in Kingston are simple.

“The only goal is to win,” he says. “If I can consistently win these Slams, then that’s a really good sign for where I am in my career.”

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