© Copyright – 2024 – Athletics Illustrated
The new and potentially brash track series named Grand Slam Track — the brainchild of Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson — will not have an edition in the city of London, UK in 2025.
UK Athletics head, Jack Buckner, is going to wait and watch the first season to decide if London should take the series on. However, there are some big-name British athletes committed to the events.
Meanwhile, UKA has decided to focus its resources and attention on the London Diamond League event, which Londoners feel is the highlight of the British athletics calendar.
Why am I taking the first ever @GrandSlamTrack slam to Kingston? Jamaica deserves to be recognized for its contributions to the sport! https://t.co/OnMUfgo1Nx
— Michael Johnson (@MJGold) November 11, 2024
Grand Slam recently announced its opening meet will take place in Kingston, Jamaica in April 2025. The second meeting will take place in Florida in May.
Buckner was concerned about the commitment to sell 200,000 tickets to a three-day meet. “We can make the Diamond League like our Silverstone,” Buckner told the Telegraph newspaper.
“It’s already the biggest one-day athletics meet in the world — and we think it can be the biggest and the best. Some of the ideas that are being talked about will really raise the bar once again in that event.”
Johnson’s innovative approach to the new series seeks to introduce unique multi-day track meets. While the Diamond League and other sports have scaled back in recent years to make events shorter, Grand Slam Track is attempting to move in the other direction. Part of the allure of short events is about time commitment for getting fans into the stadiums as well as making streaming and broadcasts more commercially digestible.
