You know all those administrative business pigs took their cut (which was overpaid) and left the athletes out to dry. Typical abusive corporate BS. Lawyer up and get the police fraud department involved (they may be too lazy to investigate it and lie to say that's not their job).
This is a funny indicator of how little power athletes have
True. However ...
The powerful agents get a cut, I think usually about 10%, of their athlete's winnings. If the athletes don't get paid, the agents don't get paid. They have the power to force the issue and some are/were lawyers.
Imagine an agent had four athletes at Grand Slam and they won $50K, $25K, $15K, and $10K. That's $100K, and the agent is looking at a $10K payday for doing not much more than just getting his athletes into the meet.
Gault said that it's normal for meets to make payments a couple months later. have to wait on drug tests and other things. so hopefully the money comes through. i guess it's not time to panic yet.
.....
When it comes to $10,000.01 it takes longer for first year organizations to make such payouts. Unlike casinos and lottery which have state police and IRS auditors in place or organization that's been thru such payouts years prior. New organization such as the Grand Slam have to navigate all that before all payouts are cleared.
One thing I’ve never seen is whether Michael Johnson is getting paid for this or does he have his own money at risk. I’m getting more and more the impression none of his own money is in this.
Yes of course. FYI - Michael Johnson has always been the problem. GST never has a chance with him involved
This is not an uncommon thing at all in our sport, unfortunately. I work with athletes across many shoe brands, and some don't deliver bonuses / reimbursements for 6-8 months.
Gault said that it's normal for meets to make payments a couple months later. have to wait on drug tests and other things. so hopefully the money comes through. i guess it's not time to panic yet.
.....
When it comes to $10,000.01 it takes longer for first year organizations to make such payouts. Unlike casinos and lottery which have state police and IRS auditors in place or organization that's been thru such payouts years prior. New organization such as the Grand Slam have to navigate all that before all payouts are cleared.
As someone who’s run casinos and running events that’s a load of crap
The pieces of the puzzle are slowly coming together. Gault is correct regarding payment, being the GST track season WAS supposed to conclude next week, most if not all the sponsor money won't be collected and allocated until after that. That being said, I don't think MJ will stiff anyone out of their money, and I truly believe the reason they cut half the distance events in Philly AND cancelled L.A. was to save money so they can pay the athletes. I also think MJ believes the distance races are expendable and would rather host "Pure" sprint events only if he could, but realizes he needs the distance races to legitimize GST not only to distance running fans but also to potential sponsors.
One thing I’ve never seen is whether Michael Johnson is getting paid for this or does he have his own money at risk. I’m getting more and more the impression none of his own money is in this.
I wonder who are the idiot investors who are shelling out for track meets. How did MJ sucker them into this?
I would assume the athletes will be paid if GST wishes to have a second season. They will have zero participants if they bring a 2026 season around and haven’t paid out athletes from 2025.
There won’t be a second season unless there’s zero cash prizes. It was a massive flop. So much so that they had to cancel the final scheduled event. Athletes just jogged around for paychecks. They need to change the cash payouts to something like run under a world leading or WR time and get a $500k-$1m. Scale the prizes based on how fast they run. You want to jog a 14:00 5k, ok, no cash prizes for you. Giving big prizes to each event winner each time is a total waste of money.
It’s not a baseball reference. It’s taken from tennis in which the term connotes the four major events, like the (planned) four meets in the series
It was a golf term long before copied it. Bobby Jones won the four majors of his era in a calendar year. It was dubbed the grand slam. Jones was so famous they had a ticker tape parade for him in New York City before he even completed the slam.
Decades later when Nicklaus and then Tiger were in their prime there was frequent talk about matching Jones' feat. The term "Calendar Grand Slam" was all over the place. It never happened, although Tiger did hold all four majors simultaneously when he won the 2001 Masters on top of winning the other three during his dominant season of 2000.
Just two months ago Rory McIlroy completed the so-called "Career Grand Slam" when he won the Masters, more than a decade after having won the other three at least once.
Every day that goes by this series looks more and more like the Fyre Festival scam. Promising a really cool and innovative idea for an awesome event, the vision is unrealistic but it goes ahead anyways, then reality hits and they scramble to scale it down in Philly, they eliminate it altogether in LA, now the bill is due and the money is nowhere to be found. It was a cool idea but completely mismanaged and poorly executed.
Any truth to the rumor that the company producing the television feed for Grand Slam Track allegedly gave GST 24 hours to pay up for the first three meets or they would not send a production truck to LA to televise the final meet?
Also, I’m assuming that Grand Slam Track was paying The CW and their other partners to televise the meets, and banking on selling the commercials themselves?