Josh Kerr on Grand Slam Track: I want to enjoy being the best in the world and not worry about going after an Olympic title

Jakob is fun to watch great running form, unique training, fast races, amazing performances, beats the africans. I wish he didnt have those stupid zoomer tats but other than that he is just fun to watch. Kerr is good but his whole personality is “i beat jakob” without jakob he is irrelevant

But that's not realistic. And that's what makes the Olympics so so so great.

And to everyone who says we only have 1 meet that matters. That's hogwash. We already basically have a Grand Slam - World Indoors, USAs, Worlds/Olympics and then the new supercharged Diamond League final.

I agree with Rojo. We have existing meets that have meaning. That is what matters when you are trying to get people (or yourself) to care about something.

We assign meaning to things that have deep roots in our culture. New, fake, or invented "traditions" don't usually stick because people know they are not authentic.

The Olympics are real. The World Championships are real. World XC used to be hotly contested and esteemed. World Indoors. Diamond League Final. Add in some classic Diamond League meets like Bislett Games, Pre, Berlin, Zürich, etc. for non-Olympic Years and you have enough "meaningful meets."

The real problem is that meets I just named watered down financially (pay is too low) and watered down competitively as well (athletes can dodge each other).

We didn't need a new league. We needed everyone to do the meets listed above and for them to get paid real money. As it is, they get less than Darts players or the rando who finished 18th at Billiards Worlds. Or 141st place in the PGA. That dude, Chad Hadley, made over half a million dollars for finishing 141st in the league. Nice work!

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He’s just setting up his excuse if he doesn’t win gold in Paris. The Olympics isn’t really what I’m aiming for, so when I don’t win it is because it wasn’t really my main goal. Yeah, Steve Prefontaine, Lasse Viren, Frank Shorter and a host of others said the same thing. Not. What spin.

DON'T READ IT THEN. You are actively trying to hate on him, you type an essay in the comments talking about how much of a b1tch he is, you have serious problems.

I can't stand this discussion on this website because if you don't like something or someone it's 10x easier to just ignore them than to cry about it. It makes no sense

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"Josh Kerr on Grand Slam Track: I want to enjoy being the best in the world and not worry about going after an Olympic title"

Translation: "I don't think I can win another gold"

DON'T READ IT THEN.

I saved up and spent a ton to go to Worlds in Eugene (worth it, btw). But the only reason I did that was because I knew that every single athlete that was healthy would be there, and I would see the biggest and best.

As a distance fan, Jakub is arguably the single biggest draw. He did not race in the most recent indoor WC, obviously will never race USAs, and I don't agree that the DL final carries anywhere near the weight of WC/Oly.

The above meets matter, but they clearly don't matter enough for 100% of the best to show up to them year after year, like majors in Tennis/Golf. I'm at least optimistic to see Grand Slam give it a go because the 10+ DL meets with mostly unconfirmed fields is too much for me to follow consistently.

I assume they'll tailor their season to peak for WCs/Olys, but athletes already do that and still run great races indoors in March. The League will change how athletes approach the season, but that's just part of how it'll be. NBA players play like 80 games in the regular season, and they have to be good enough over the course of 6 months to make the playoffs, then they still peak for the playoffs. I think some people will try to target the April one because they'll think that other people won't be in peak shape for it and they'll still have 4 months to prepare for the Olympics. I feel like NCAA kids disprove every year the idea that you can't race at a high level consistently throughout the year. They peak 3x a year for indoors/outdoors/XC. I think there's a real chance that the GSL ends up following a pretty similar calendar of March/June/December plus July or August right around championship time.

You'll still see people withdraw due to injury or not in great shape, just like in the DL, but the difference is that Grand Slam athletes are contractually required to communicate injuries/other issues as soon as they pop up.

Ok well the races are going to have 8 people in them and since the start of 2023 the 8th fastest person is Josh Kerr at 3:29. If you just go to this year, the 8th fastest person, Olli Hoare, has run 3:31. There are a bunch of guys who have only run 3:30-1 this year that could go way faster if they were aiming to run fast in April, and it wouldn't really hamper their summer championship preparation.