Michael Johnson Track League unveiled - Grand Slam Track will require athletes to double in siloed event groups

rojo wrote:

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

Yeah the doubling thing is a HUGE deal because clearly that's much easier for a sprinter than a distance runner.

Here is where the "no pacer, no lights" thing concerns me. We all love moaning about pacing and how it dilutes the "spirit of real racing" but the truth is, it is really important and it's even more important in this proposed format. Let's say you are doing a 15/5000 at one meet (has the difficulty of this been taken into account btw?!) - how are these races approached by the field? Do we have a situation where the 1500m goes out in 2.04 and the 5000m in 8.30 because of that? Yeah we will get "real" racing but at what point does that then become just as repetitive as paced races on the circuit but just with much slower performances. And this will matter - we don't mind seeing 13.15 win a world/OG 5000m title with a massive burn up because we understand the gravity of a world/OG title. How cool do we think it will be in this format of racing? Right now the 1500m is just insane at world final level with the new standard being well under 3.30 just to medal - but if this goes back to 3.37/3.38 how long before the novelty of that wears off.

Another thing is with only track events happening and presumably a short meet duration, how much time are we giving people to recover so they aren't obliterating themselves in one meet per season, let alone 4? Think about this - you get Jakob who is the best guy over 1500/3000/5000 on the planet. He needs to run a 1500-3000 or 1500-5000 double within what, 1.5 - 2 hours and has to do this 4 times a season? So yeah it's fine if you are running the 100-200 or even the 200-400h, but the more I think about it, the less I see how this feasibly works for any events over the 800m. Do you say "okay, that is too tough to ask these distance runners to do that" - okay, now how do you figure out the prize money etc without pissing everyone off?

So I'll reiterate - super interested to see how they problem-solve and find solutions to things like this (granted the intel we have been given so far is somewhat accurate in principal).

The poster has no idea what they are talking about.

Under the proposed normat, no one will be doing the 1500 /5000 at a meet. You are either in the 800/1500 group where you run the 800 and 1500 or in the 3000 and 5000 group where you run both of those.

This thing could be much better if the just had each race be a separate race with 50k in first place prize money and you could pick and choose what two races you wanted to do.

rojo wrote:

LRC flat-feet wrote:

I’m all for it and one the best things is that letsrun has nothing to do with it, and that they are clueless and flat-footed. A few years ago rojo started a thread about Citius and asked what’s their endgame. Lol you just got left standing in the blocks!

What you wrote is a lie.

I never started a thread about Citius. Someone else started a thread about Citius and I just asked a very basic question, "How does a website with no ads hope to survive? What is their end game? Or is it simply a hobby?"

We know the answer now six years later - to carry water for shoe companies and things like the MJ track league. If someone wants a positive story/coverage, you know who to call. One week the are promoting New Balance, the next it's Nike, etc.

Chris Chavez is a good dude. If he likes doing that, good for him. I've never wanted to do that or work in PR. That's not my thing. We serve different roles in the running community.

I like to think I'm serving the fan. They are more serving the athletes/shoe companies.

Here is the thread you falsely claimed I started:

Thread:www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?th...

Kaks wrote:

rojo wrote:

What you wrote is a lie.

I never started a thread about Citius. Someone else started a thread about Citius and I just asked a very basic question, "How does a website with no ads hope to survive? What is their end game? Or is it simply a hobby?"

We know the answer now six years later - to carry water for shoe companies and things like the MJ track league. If someone wants a positive story/coverage, you know who to call. One week the are promoting New Balance, the next it's Nike, etc.

Chris Chavez is a good dude. If he likes doing that, good for him. I've never wanted to do that or work in PR. That's not my thing. We serve different roles in the running community.

I like to think I'm serving the fan. They are more serving the athletes/shoe companies.

Here is the thread you falsely claimed I started:

Thread:www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?th...

I like Citius (especially during major champs and subscribe to their work), but have to agree with this.

Chris didn't ask MJ one critical question during the interview. They openly admit they're just in the PR game. The most offputting thing about the proposed MJ track league is the idea of 'sharing Athletes stories', it all comes across so forced. Nobody wants that, the stories come out naturally and have done throughout history. Someone like Sydney doesn't have an interesting off track story, people just want to see her run.

Chris and his idea that we'll get 'great content' from giving all the athletes and their personal videographer and media team access to the media zone couldn't be further from the truth. You just get the most boring, sanitized 'content' with nothing differential. Once you've heard one athlete say "i've been working harder than ever, to prove my doubters wrong" over a video montage, you've heard it all.

Instead, if they want growth and actual compelling stories. You need to implement mandatory media duties for the athletes (it's part of their job if they're earning that money) and allow proper journalists to ask them tough questions. Tough questions don't need to be critical or negative, but just something that forces them to give actual insight.

Peach Pit wrote:

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Is this suggesting they’re going to make distance runners do a 3K/5K weekend double 4x a year? Good luck with that. To be honest, they should probably leave above the 1500 to the Diamond League in my estimation.

I actually hope that instead of distance runners trying a 3k/5k double, they try a 3k/800 double, or 400/5k double or something. There's no chance they'd win over the sprinters, but 8th place pays the same as a DL win, and it would be a lot of fun to see 2 of the best distance runners go head-to-head in an open 400. Plus you get an extra storyline to follow within the race. If Kerr and Wightman raced a 3k and then a 400 the next day, I'd be focused on their race even if they were 7th and 8th. There's also cross-pollination between sprinting audiences and distance audiences, since some people may only watch sprints and don't know who Josh Kerr is.

It'd also be cool to see sprinters step up. You could see 400mh people trying the 100 or 800, 800 runners trying the 100, etc etc etc. It'd be so fun to see how someone like Noah Lyles would fare at 800 against a 10k guy or something. It also opens the door for special events. Something like the main event (100, 200, 400, 800, 1500, etc) Saturday, then have all those athletes come back Sunday for a special event like an elimination mile, or having sprinters and distance runners meet at 600, or 800 runners and milers meet at 1k, steeplers run 400mh, an 800mh or 1500mh race, etc. I kinda doubt they'll go that route, but the door is open for it, and it would be a lot of fun for fans.

rojo wrote:

Tha'ts not how it works. You are signed to an event group. So Jakob will be 800/1500 or 3k/5k. Jakob will never run the 1500 and 5k at the same meet.

The event pairings make no sense and the made up scoring system and the poaching of the top atheltes reminds me of LIV golf.

Now Kyle Merber did text me to say there is some flexibility where a star could "jump" to a different group if there is a compelling matchup. So Sydney could maybe jump from the 400h/400 at one meet to the 200/400 at another meet but again you can't do 3k and 1500 at the same meet which is beyond stupid.

They might as well ax the 3k/5k right now. If I as the founder of Letsrun have zero interest in watching back to back unrabbited 3k/5ks, then who is going to be into that. It's like the same god damn race basically.

runner1991 wrote:

I'm not a fan of sprinting, and this appears it will be a sprint-focused league. Apparently they think people will become casual fans of sprinting, with a little distance tacked on. I think they have it backward. In having exposed the people in my life (friends and family, young and old) to various meets over the past 10 years, they find the distance races most interesting. There is a build, acceleration, tactics, time for commenting, fatigue, emotion, etc.

I agree with most commenters that the 800/1500 group and 3000/5000 group are flawed. I also suspect that as someone else pointed out, the top runners who are not "Racers" will have other obligations (sponsors, qualifying for Worlds, and other opportunities) that make it difficult for them to compete as "Challengers", even if it would be a payday.

I'm curious what people think about:

- What is the effect of this on shoe/other contracts? It seems like if you are a GST Racer, you may not need a shoe contract. Is that going to shake things up in any meaningful way?

- Who will they actually get to be GST Racers? E.g. for Mens 3k/5k, who will they get out of the top 10, which is: Ingebrigtsen, Gebrhiwet, Kejelcha, Barega, Aregawi, Cheptegei, Kiplimo, Grijalva, Fisher, Bekele?

Having watched a lot of recent US-based coverage of events starring amazing Ethiopian women recently, it is DULL. They are either uninterested in marketing on them, or unable to figure out how to market/storytell for them. Yet, without them, it's a watered down field.

- What label will these meets get from WA?

eagleeye wrote:

The "doubles" idea isn't a great one, but I can think of many worse ways of forcing pro athletes to compete twice in a span of 3 days, 4 times per year. They don't have a large enough prize pool to let athletes choose which two events to compete in because that would increase the number of "winners" from 6 to at least 8 or 9, and a key part of this working is the guaranteed floor of $40k for the athletes who finish 8th each time.

My main complaint/suggestion is to drop the 3000 and replace it with another 1500. First, it's a weird distance that nobody cares about and goes against the idea of keeping it simple for viewers. Second, as others have pointed out, it's not different enough from the 5000 from a viewing perspective. But most importantly, I'd much rather see Nuguse, Ingebrigtsen, Hocker, Fisher, Nico, etc duke it out in a 1500/5000 double than watch someone like Nuguse lose a bunch of 800s to Hoppel just so he can compete in his primary event. Let Kerr, Kessler, Wightman, and (yes) Eric Holt take on Hoppel and Jewett .

That means we probably don't get Kerr vs Ingebrigtsen 4 times per year, but I'm fine with saving some of the best rivalries for the events that matter (Olympics, Worlds) if it means we can have a league that actually pays top athletes a decent amount.

If it's an American-centric league that can only pull a couple non-US-based athletes per year, I'd be up for watching something like the following sets of athletes:

800/1500 Men: Kerr, Wightman, Kessler, Holt, Arop, Hoppel, Jewett, Cohen

800/1500 Women: St. Pierre, Hiltz, Mackay, Ramsden, Mu, Akins, Reekie, Muir

1500/5000 Men: Nuguse, Ingebrigtsen, Hocker, Fisher, Nico, Sahlman, Teare, Kejelcha

1500/5000 Women: Cranny, Schweizer, Valby, Hassan, Weini, Jess Hull, Infeld, Rogers

rojo wrote:

eagleeye wrote:

The "doubles" idea isn't a great one, but I can think of many worse ways of forcing pro athletes to compete twice in a span of 3 days, 4 times per year. They don't have a large enough prize pool to let athletes choose which two events to compete in because that would increase the number of "winners" from 6 to at least 8 or 9, and a key part of this working is the guaranteed floor of $40k for the athletes who finish 8th each time.

My main complaint/suggestion is to drop the 3000 and replace it with another 1500. First, it's a weird distance that nobody cares about and goes against the idea of keeping it simple for viewers. Second, as others have pointed out, it's not different enough from the 5000 from a viewing perspective. But most importantly, I'd much rather see Nuguse, Ingebrigtsen, Hocker, Fisher, Nico, etc duke it out in a 1500/5000 double than watch someone like Nuguse lose a bunch of 800s to Hoppel just so he can compete in his primary event. Let Kerr, Kessler, Wightman, and (yes) Eric Holt take on Hoppel and Jewett .

That means we probably don't get Kerr vs Ingebrigtsen 4 times per year, but I'm fine with saving some of the best rivalries for the events that matter (Olympics, Worlds) if it means we can have a league that actually pays top athletes a decent amount.

If it's an American-centric league that can only pull a couple non-US-based athletes per year, I'd be up for watching something like the following sets of athletes:

800/1500 Men: Kerr, Wightman, Kessler, Holt, Arop, Hoppel, Jewett, Cohen

800/1500 Women: St. Pierre, Hiltz, Mackay, Ramsden, Mu, Akins, Reekie, Muir

1500/5000 Men: Nuguse, Ingebrigtsen, Hocker, Fisher, Nico, Sahlman, Teare, Kejelcha

1500/5000 Women: Cranny, Schweizer, Valby, Hassan, Weini, Jess Hull, Infeld, Rogers

Are you joking? Kessler, Holt, Hoppel, Jewett, COhen won't sniff this league. Nor will Hiltz, Ramsden, Akins, Sahlman, Teare, Kincaid, etc.

You get 8 per event and htat's a combined event - so if you aren't in the top 4 in your event , you won't be in it.

So give me the top 8 - 800/1500 runners in the world.

Arop, Wanyoni, Sedjati, Kidali, Kerr, Wightman, Ingebrigtsen, Tim C, Nuguse. Wait that's 9. Are we taking Nuguse or Tim C off?

No Hocker, Nordas, McSweyn, etc.

W1500: Mu, Moraa, Hodgkinson, Kipyegon, 3 Ethiopians, St. Pierre, Muir?

Or are we not going to use the best athletes and openly discrimate against 3rd world runners as they aren't marketable?