Grand Slam
Track

The Richest Startup the Sport Had Seen

Michael Johnson announced Grand Slam Track on 18 June 2024 with a simple diagnosis: track athletes race each other too rarely, and get paid too little when they do. His answer was a league — four three-day meets a year, called Slams, in which 48 contracted “Racers” on annual salaries would meet 48 invited “Challengers” picked meet by meet. The venture launched with more than US$30 million in commitments, led by Winners Alliance, the commercial arm of the Professional Tennis Players Association chaired by Bill Ackman.

The competitive design was genuinely new. Every athlete belonged to one of six event groups per sex — short sprints, long sprints, short hurdles, long hurdles, short distance, long distance — and had to race twice at every Slam, with combined placings deciding the group title. The 400 m hurdler had to run a flat 400; the 1500 m runner had to come back for an 800. There were no field events at all: Johnson wanted one race at a time inside a three-hour broadcast window, and jumps and throws did not fit. The CW carried the meets on US television, Peacock streamed them, and NBC ran a highlights show.

The money was the headline. Each Slam offered US$100,000 to every group winner on a scale running down to US$10,000 for eighth — US$3.15 million per meet, US$12.6 million for the season, at the time the biggest regular prize pot in the sport's history. It was also, from the start, the pitch's weak point: some of the biggest names did the maths and stayed out.

Three Slams, and the Racing Was Real

The first Slam ran in Kingston's National Stadium from 4 to 6 April 2025, and the pattern of the whole season was visible on night one: superb racing in front of stands that stayed mostly empty in a 35,000-seat ground. Gabby Thomas took the first long sprints title with a 400 m lifetime best of 49.14 alongside her 200 m win, and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone opened her season by winning the long hurdles group, taking the 400 m hurdles by 1.83 seconds from Dalilah Muhammad.

Miami, 2 to 4 May, moved to a far smaller venue and looked better for it. McLaughlin-Levrone scored a perfect 24 points again, running a world-leading 52.07 in the hurdles and 49.69 in the flat 400, both wins by around two seconds. Philadelphia's Franklin Field, 31 May to 1 June, was the format's best weekend — more than 10,000 people a day — and also the first visibly cut-down one: the meet was compressed from three days to two, and the long distance group raced only a 3000 m, its winner's cheque halved to US$50,000.

The sporting ledger of those three meets holds up against any circuit that year. Kenny Bednarek swept all three short sprints titles, closing in Philadelphia with a 9.86 lifetime best over 100 m. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden swept all three on the women's side and signed off with 10.73, then the fastest time in the world in 2025. Alison dos Santos never lost a race in the league. McLaughlin-Levrone, chasing a challenge, jumped into the short hurdles group in Philadelphia against the specialists and finished second overall to Ackera Nugent, with a 100 m flat best of 11.21.

The Money Stops

On 12 June 2025, two weeks out and with more than 10,000 tickets sold, the league cancelled its Los Angeles final, scheduled for UCLA's Drake Stadium on 28 and 29 June. The statement spoke of concluding a “groundbreaking” first season early; reporting around it cited the tense situation in Los Angeles that month and a bad lease with the university. Whatever the framing, the season was over — and almost nobody had been paid.

Only the appearance fees from Kingston had gone out. By late June the reported hole was around US$13 million owed to athletes — more than US$9 million of it prize money — and by September, counting vendors, about US$19 million. In August Johnson apologised publicly, said a funder had failed to deliver promised investment, and conceded there would be no 2026 season until athletes were paid; World Athletics said it would not sanction future Grand Slam Track events until the debts were settled.

A rescue arrived in stages. In early October 2025 the league's existing investors, led again by Winners Alliance, put in emergency financing of roughly US$10 million, and on 3 October the league wired athletes half of what they were owed. A November offer to settle vendor debts at 50 cents on the dollar was turned down. The court filings later put names on the arithmetic: Josh Kerr was owed US$218,000, McLaughlin-Levrone US$350,000.

Case 25-12188

On 11 December 2025 Grand Slam Track filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, case number 25-12188, before Chief Judge Karen B. Owens. The petition listed 340 creditors and US$40,679,508.68 in liabilities — athletes still owed about US$7 million, the television production company more than US$3 million — against roughly US$143,000 of cash on hand, all of it collateral of Winners Alliance as secured creditor. By the January creditors' meeting the stated cash figure had fallen to US$7,300.

The league's February 2026 plan proposed paying athletes about 85 per cent of what they were still owed and other creditors 1.5 per cent. Vendors rejected it, and the creditors' committee filed objections that included sharp allegations about how the company had been run — allegations Johnson disputes. The resolution came by agreement rather than trial: athletes would recover about 70 cents on the dollar, roughly US$4.9 million, accepted by a unanimous vote of the athlete class; vendors about 14, sharing some US$1.8 million; and Johnson agreed to return a US$500,000 payment he had received from the league in June 2025, whose characterisation by the committee he also disputes. Winners Alliance and Johnson fund the plan.

Judge Owens approved the plan on 16 April 2026, and the company left bankruptcy saying the reorganisation gave it “the ability to return for future seasons” and to build participatory events and media around the brand. As of September 2026, no second season has been announced, and World Athletics' condition — debts settled before any future licence — still frames whatever comes next.

What It Leaves the Sport

It is tempting to file the league away as a cautionary tale, and the number does the talking: a venture that raised more than US$30 million reached its first winter with US$143,000 in the till. But the racing itself proved something the sport had long argued about — that stars will double up, race each other in April, and produce world-leading times doing it, if the cheque is big enough. The problem was never the product on the track. It was that the cheque bounced.

The athletes it briefly enriched went on to define the next eighteen months. Jefferson-Wooden left Philadelphia with three Slam titles and a 10.73; in Tokyo that September she won the world 100 m title in a championship-record 10.61, added the 200 and the relay, and became the first American woman to sweep all three. McLaughlin-Levrone moved to the flat 400 and won the world title in 47.78, the second-fastest time ever run. Dos Santos, unbeaten in the league, took the 400 m hurdles world record itself at 45.80 in Zurich in August 2026. Bednarek's 9.86 made him a genuine 100 m force. And the pay conversation the league forced did not leave with it: thirteen months after the Los Angeles cancellation, World Athletics staged the Ultimate Championship in Budapest with a US$10 million pot and US$150,000 per champion — the sport's establishment answering the startup's question with the startup gone.

Sponsor kit · in the archiveNike Pro Elite 2023 Women Storm Fit JacketRace-issued gear from the Nike Pro Elite line — the sponsor-kit universe that league nights like Grand Slam Track are raced in.150,00 €View piece →