The problem with Grand Slam is already showing at Meet 1

They want it to fail and that's weird

Not the case. Just discussing its longevity and the thread garnered interesting discussion. I hope the league succeeds, but I am skeptical.

GST, AThlos, SR arent very professional. They are like USATF, TTUSA, Penn, Mt Sac in they they dont pay media workers, insist on owning all rights, and pay no royalties for footage, articles, flash quotes.

I am curious what the ticket sales look like right now. We are only 72 hours out from Day #1. From what I can see online it looks like a lot of tickets are still available.

it's always been that way for 100s of years. You essentially HAVE TO PAY the meet director $1,000s of you own dollars to cover the meet, not the other way around. You pay your own airline ticket, meals, hotel, Uber, etc.

How much was it to take the Wright Flyer back in the day?

Is it just silly why athletes in our hemisphere wouldn’t want to compete in GST because of doubling. It is easy travel to these locations. There is a lot of money available. Instead they’d rather do 2 hard workouts in a 3 day period. Ridiculous.

I remember when Jim Ryun raced against Marty Liquori. Heavily publicized with massive interest level. Everybody hoped for a fast time but that aspect was beyond secondary.

Who would win? That's all anybody cared about.

Other than Jakob, it's no longer that way. That's my issue with Grand Slam Track and its prospects. When I look at sites that seldom care about track and field, the only time the sport ever shows up and gains attention is when there's a world record, or an extreme oddity like the shot put woman who stepped over the hurdles to earn points during European Team Championships. That's it. The only time the bottom line matters is during the global championship.

How does Grand Slam Track fit in? That's what I don't understand. It's seemingly not formatted for great results as much as Michael Johnson's stubborn self-obsessed believe that these runners should be running twice in short order.

The pole vault guys will travel anywhere. I just attended ACC indoor championships and NCAA indoor championships. Fans who didn't care about any of the other field events were glued to the pole vault and reacting to each attempt, even when it was merely the multi athletes vaulting. You would think Michael Johnson would have been bright enough to creatively exclude the pole vault from his no-field bias. Just make up anything, like a certain politician. Those sites that seldom care about track and field are most likely to explode when Mondo does something. Multiple threads and hundreds of comments.

I have no idea how anybody gives that away, given real time and such a known quantity. Jakob and Mondo have been battling for the season's end individual award for years. Sometimes sharing it. This league whiffed on one of them and brainstormed to exclude the other.

There will be some excellent results. No question about it. I think first week will earn greater positivity than forecast right now. But just like indoors gives way to outdoors this league will give way to the Diamond League, which will have better deeper fields and will come across as regular season compared to preseason.

I very much appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on here. I can tell how much thought and care you've put into this and I genuinely wish you and GST the best.

Here's some feedback for the future. Regarding the double event group format, I thought it would be cool if the double event groups overlapped by one event. Instead of a (200/400) group, then (800/1500) and so on, you have a (200/400) group, then a (400/800) group. That way we get a scenario like Gabby stepping up from the 200 and someone like Athing stepping down from the 800 and clashing in the middle at 400. I think there are a lot of dream matchups buried in there.

At that level of performance doubling increases injury risk especially this early in the season.

Staying in race shape from early April to September carries a lot of injury risk. Athletes either have to accept not being in top form for these early meets or try to hit a fast qualifier early and go back to training until summer unless they plan to compete from april through september - not a good idea if they also competed indoors.

This first meet might just be too early.

How would a league where only a select few people race each other, think Karsten vs Mondo or Jakob vs Hocker vs Yared Vs Kerr. Doesn’t even need to be those’d heavy hitters, maybe Cooper Lutkenhaus vs high school sub 4 runners in a 1000 or something like that.

Similar to how certain big name boxers/ufc fighters have a special event between two big names.

Just pulling this idea outta my ass, but something like this if done correctly could garner more attention. I don’t believe here’s a market for a 3 day event with certain events fielding near-nobodies. Make it a quick 1 hour event every couple weeks with anticipated rivalries with a large prize for the winner.

Sha’Carri will not be racing in Florida

LIES LIES LIES

I think this take has merit. There
might be a number of athletes, not necessarily in the camp of the elite mega-star, that could use this league as extra income and exposure, while racing into shape.

And maybe that tier of athlete, given the opportunity to nip away at the heels of the mega-star, can make a breakthrough to the next level.

When you are talking about the elite of the elite even GST doesn’t really move the needle for their yearly earnings from shoe companies and endorsements. Noah Sha’Carri 100k isn’t that bigger % of their income.

That was the big deal about GST, athletes getting paid better. Try to keep up

Someone remind me how I can watch these meets. Is there a free stream?

GST boasts it will broadcast to 189 countries. But get this...NOT AUSTRALIA!
I guess this means no one in Australia will be tuning in to watch Jess Hull race...

Australia, the country that recently hosted a 10,000+ sold out Continental Tour Gold meet. 1.2M Australian's tuned in to watch this broadcast.

I appreciate all of the positive aspects of GST put foward in this thread, but there are some fundemental things missing from the total package.