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

I thought there were some pretty good races and seeing athletes run outside their normal events was interesting. And as many have pointed out, shrink the time between races - keep it moving, boys!

One thing that might make it more interesting is have some of the races as non Olympic distances. For example, in some weeks the 800/1500 group could do a 1000m or mile or 2000m or 600m race instead of the 800 or 1500m. The short hurdles group could run a 60m or 60m hurdles or maybe even a 150m in some weeks. The 200/400m group could do a 150, 300, or 600 on some weeks.

I too thought GST was better than expected. But what the people here and the others like ROJO (who is always blasting GST) think is not all that important for them. They are looking to attract people that do not currently watch track, and certainly are not posting on LRC. Did they start to move the ball in that direction? I am not sure. What were the TV ratings? Those matter more than crowd size at the track. Will the US venues attract a larger and larger TV audience? We will see. I will watch, many others on LRC will to. Now we should hope that those without any current interest in track start to tune in. At least if you would like to see the pros earn more, and with that more events in more places for us mortals to watch.

In swimming, a similar format was tested, the ISL. There, swimmers were grouped into teams, 8 in total, who had to compete against each other to qualify for the grand final. The matches consisted of competitions between 4 teams, each team entering 2 swimmers per event, and points were awarded based on placements. There was a rule called "jackpot" in which if the winner finished with a time difference greater than x% compared to the rest of the swimmers, they would steal the points from the others. There were also relay events, and in the second season, "skins" races were introduced, which were a type of event consisting of 3 consecutive 50m sprints with minimal rest, where half of the swimmers were eliminated after each race until a final 1v1 race remained. The ISL was canceled 3 years ago, and some people still haven't been paid. GST is a less flashy product but promises more prize money. You can imagine where this is headed.