I was wrong about Grand Slam. I take it all back.

Lol get real dude. Everyone is loving this except weird MBA poisoned "thinkers" who can't enjoy anything. You guys would rather post negative stuff about "the problem with track" yet you won't even watch a track meet when it's spoonfed to you.

Finally a meet isn't dependent.on Nike money to succeed and you guys are crying. Get. Real.

In 5 years, people who are now saying GST will fail are going to look like the guy from the Liberty Mutual commercial who said LiMu Emu would never make it.

But now some people will be tired on today's 800m.

I dunno. I'm not sold yet.

Criticising GST is not not giving it a chance. I'll watch any athletics provided but if you want progress constructive criticism are a necessity or shall we just brown nose all the people involved hoping they'll send us free tickets?

I found the Mondo pole vault far more exciting and better produced than this. How much did that cost to run? Its poorly thought out and that is obvious. I'll pay and watch it all to the end of my days. If ya got a problem with that do be it.

Don't criticise the rich successful people! They might leave for Canada!

Constructive criticism and suggestions for how GST can be done better are very different than the bashing, hostility, and declarations of failure seen on this board. There’s been some of the former. There’s been A LOT of the latter.

ondo is a great vaulter, but pole vault sucks lo

Here is my evaluation:

1) Men's 110m H - good race with good competition and the top 6 separated by less than a tenth of a second. And a nice story with Dylan Beard winning the race while working at Walmart

2) Men's 200m - A blowout win by one of the top 3 200m runners in the world

3) Women's 1500m - Good race with good competition

4) Women's 100m H - Good race with very good competition

5) Women's 100m - Average race won by an Olympic medalist

6) Men's 1500m - Obviously a special and good race

7) Men's 200m - close finish between guys who don't focus on that event

8) Women's 400m - Excellent performance by Naser, and good race between Thomas and Paulino for second. Unique matchup of Thomas vs. Paulino.

Of the 8 races, I'd say 1 was great (men's 1500m), 4 were good (men's 110m H, women's 1500m, women's 100m H, women's 400m), 2 were average but at least featured an Olympic medalist running very well (men's 200m and women's 100m), and 1 was subpar but at least had a close finish (men's 200m). Overall, I'd say that's a good day of track action.

That's what I was thinking about throughout Day 2. The format is more interesting than most of us expected. But how do they make this work?

Lazy production like Jessica Hull and Gabby Thomas sampling the exact same snack food isn't compelling. Seemingly the only reason for either segment was to have both of them rave about Michael Johnson, accompanied by a brief clip of Michael Johnson. I expected the Michael Johnson focus to be primarily centered on the first day. Hardly. He made sure there wasn't a gap.

IMO, the best chance is some type of amicable collaboration between Diamond League and Grand Slam Track. Borrow from each other. Both find a public relations firm with production and social media competence.

If they would just condense it all to 45 minutes...baseball gets to be three hours long because at least there is a game being played the whole time. Absolutely no one wants to watch so much filler - there aren't enough hours in the day for that. I'll just be watching letsrun replay video links

It's empty in Jamaica similar to Hayward Field in Eugene.

I know this is a distance form, and it was neat to see Wanyoni get the victory, but I would hazard to say that the women's 400 m was also an excellent race.

I agree with this. Grand Slam Track exceeded all my expectations. Bravo, Michael Johnson. Bravo!!

Yeah, I’m pretty happy they did the big things mostly right (getting great athletes signed and invested in racing each other, not just the clock) and that the stuff they need to improve should be easily improveable. I really hope the production and detail issues were simply a side effect of trying to do all the signing, logistics, and everything else necessary to get the first one off the ground and not putting in the work yet on that side of things. Should be easy enough to copy the stuff that works from the Diamond League, Athlos, Olympics, even if it takes hiring a few more people, and then innovate a bit with how scores are presented and athletes are highlighted throughout the season. Even the timing—track just looks less spectacular in the daytime sun, let alone in an empty stadium. A smaller venue in the evening would really help, as everyone else who watched for five seconds has already noted. Good start, room to improve, pretty optimistic.

Good Things:

Centro/Anderson/Sanya panel: Relaxed, knowledgable (with some gaps, but not egregious), giving real analysis

Cram/Tollefson: Good energy, prepared, did best to make somewhat odd races/runaways intriguing

Hit Or Miss:

Sprint analyst: He got more comfortable over 3 days and the chemistry with Cram got better, I think he can get a little more technical a la Ato and avoid the cliches or obvious things more

Segments: Some of these are good (Robert/Freddie), some are less good, this is where you film a lot and leave some on the cutting room floor

Racer Selections: Only pick athletes who are legit top 10 in the world next time, there is no reason Tanaka/Cranny are racers if they get dropped by the real deal athletes when they try. Just make it a challenger-heavy group in that case. In other groups they did a great job, though so it seems more of a miss with some forces in areas and then some unreliable athletes (Kerley, Kerr) as marquee picks in others.

Format: Interesting in some ways, but they should make cumulative half and race place half. Grant should've had more of a cost-benefit analysis than he did.

Miss:

Graphics/Splits: This should be an AWS style presentation with data to highlight intricacies of the race in the 800+ and accentuate little things in the sprints, look at how hard Dos Santos closed etc.

Live Results: The ones given to the media were wrong, and then the fans get almost no info instead of 100m and 200m splits which is the norm now

Stadium Size: Jamaica just doesn't seem to have enough interest in pro track for that stadium, it looks bad on TV, first Slam should probably be at the Armory, and then Miami/LA/Icahn for the other 3. I fear Penn is going to similarly look like a ghost town.

GST had the feel of old school MTV Real World/Road Rules and the races were just challenges the participants had to go through. The content, media and interviews all come off trying to be just relaxed and care free. Everyone just wants to be everyone's best friend.

And the only thing they keep coming back to how much money the athletes are winning. I don't know if the fan they are trying to attract really cares.

Track will never take the next step until they figure out how to get the athletes paid good salaries. The Eagles never mention how much they won for the Super Bowl. They rake it in just for being on the team.

Good on Johnson for trying, but I'm not sure this is the way. My high school team thought the whole thing was corny and boring.

Agreed, it was a different but pleasant viewing experience.

Couple takeaways in no particular order:

1. Kinda odd seeing graphics in a style reminiscent of mainstream Western sports (football), it's not a problem though. If they're trying to capture viewers, it'll be something for the lesser-experienced viewer to latch on to.

2. Long distance races need slightly more people (maybe 4-6?). Johnson said that the long distance races had too much "spread." I mostly disagree with this, the 3,000/5,000 were pretty barren. It would also help solve the problem where Grant only needed 3rd -- if there's more people to bury him out of the minimum place to be the Slam winner, then he would be more incentivized to run up front.

3. I like the drone footage.

4. Crowd.

5. Marketing needs to change a bit. I guess it's early and the marketing will switch up, so TBD. However, MMA offers some guidance. I don't watch too much MMA, but I've noticed it goes to great lengths to manufacture storylines and caricatures so people know exactly what's personally on the line aside from the cash.

This is how all successful large businesses start. You either eventually turn a profit, or you don't last. But you don't get anywhere on a large/relevant scale without heavy upfront investment.

I really want to see SML run the flat 400 against Gabby Thomas...

I enjoyed the event as the days went on. It make take some time to grow. They have some big names there already.

Admittedly, I'm also starved for some pro meets.

Whether it resonates with anyone else? Who knows.