Comment: Michael Johnson built a multi-million dollar running carnival to put fair and straight competition back into the heart of running

For the past few decades, the international athletics scene has been largely controlled by the former IAAF, now World Athletics. Diamond League, the series of top level meets, has brought together the best athletes in the world for the past 15 years, with virtually no other contenders at the highest level.



Now this will change, at least for a few competitions.

The new competition series “Grand Slam Track”, led by the former WR-holder and olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson will host its inaugural meet this weekend in Kingston, Jamaica. First of four slams this season will only feature running events, and you won’t see any pacemakers at these meets. The rest of the competitions are based in the United States (Miami, Philadelphia and Los Angeles).

Running events are divided into six categories, which all include two separate events. All runners must take part in both distances over the course of the 3-day event. This means that star runners, such as Josh Kerr and Yared Nuguse, will go head-to-head in both 800 metres and 1500 metres.

In Diamond League, the distance races often turn to uneventful events, where the pacemakers will lead the way and the rest of the field follows in line. This of course leads to a bunch of record-breaking races, but the entertainment factor isn’t too high. At the Grand Slam Track meets, the fans will also get to see their favorite runners take on new challenges at different events.

At the very center of this new series is - surprise, surprise - money. According to the Grand Slam Track website, the overall prize purse of this season is 12,6 million dollars. Each Slam–winner (12 runners in total) gets to take 100,000 dollars home after the weekend.

The numbers are big for a sport like track & field, and there is also another new angle on how the athletes will benefit financially from this. Each category will have four “racers”, that are signed for the whole season. They have a contract with the GST, and they are paid for the year - not just for the individual meets. The remaining competitors, also known as the challengers, will vary from slam to slam and will be paid on the basis of one race weekend.



Johnson’s long-time idea has strong financial backing from the Winners Alliance, which has previously worked with the big professional leagues in North America. Longer-term success is being built on a budget of more than 30 million dollars.

Only time will tell if the Grand Slam Track can challenge the dominance of World Athletics, the sport's governing body, in terms of the top competitions.

From a Finnish point of view, the lack of field events in the competition program is a hot topic of discussion. This comes as a bit of a surprise because we have been organizing these types of meets for years now. The carnival competitions, also known as lajikarnevaalit, only feature events from one category, and everybody from the juniors to the national team stars can compete together over the weekend.