7 Thoughts on Grand Slam Track’s Debut: The Crowd, An American 5K Sweep, Nikki Hiltz Wins the 800, & More

KINGSTON, Jamaica — At 5:36 p.m. on Friday evening, as Gabby Thomas jogged toward the start line for the first race of the first meet in the history of Grand Slam Track, she felt nerves. Which meant that what she was about to do felt important. Which is a rare feeling for a track athlete to have on April 4.

“I walked into that kind of feeling like I did for the Olympic final,” Thomas said. “…The stakes of this competition are very high. Normally these early-season meets, we’re just kind of practicing and feeling it out. But here at the Grand Slam, the stakes are high. The prize pot is huge and the level of competition is also really high.”

Part of those stakes are the fate of the series itself. As a triple Olympic gold medalist from Paris, Thomas is one of the biggest names signed to the series to compete in all four meets as a Racer. Which means she feels some of the weight of the league’s ultimate success rests on her shoulders.

“I think part of it is being an ambassador for the Grand Slam and speaking so highly of it, I know that I have to come prepared and bring my A-game,” Thomas said.

Thomas did not quite have her A-game tonight, running 22.63 in her specialty 200 meters. But that was still enough for a comfortable victory over Olympic 400m champion Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic (2nd in 22.93) in one of the marquee races of the night.

Thomas may have felt Olympic-level nerves. But the crowd size at Jamaica’s National Stadium on Friday was more reminiscent of Tokyo’s empty COVID Olympics than last summer’s packed Stade de France. This is what the main grandstand looked like immediately after the women’s 200:

The crowd would fill in a little after that, but large swaths of empty seats remained throughout the meet and the thousands of seats on the back straight were almost completely empty. There cannot have been more than 3,000 or 4,000 fans in the stands at any point.

If Grand Slam Track ends up changing the sport the way founder Michael Johnson envisions, he may one day look back at this night and laugh. But right now, it shows the size of the challenge Grand Slam Track faces. Tonight’s meet featured two of the sport’s biggest stars in Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone as well as a men’s 100m that included Olympic medalists Kenny Bednarek and Fred Kerley and some of Jamaica’s top guys in Ackeem Blake and Oblique Seville. Yet the crowd was a small fraction of the one that packed the stands for the Jamaican high school championships a week ago.

Deep down, Johnson cannot be all that surprised by this. He knows the sport. Which means that he should know that in North America – where he has chosen to base his league – professional track is not a popular spectator sport right now.

And that is sort of the point. The whole idea behind Grand Slam Track is that, done correctly, track can become popular. That requires bringing new audiences into the fold, and that does not happen overnight. It’s a process.

This was a starting point. A low one. What’s more important is whether the crowds can grow, not just on Saturday and Sunday, but throughout the coming months and years.

The good news? The fans who did show up created a decent atmosphere in the home straight, particularly when any Jamaicans were introduced. There were drummers and cheerleaders in the bleachers around the final turn, and many fans brought horns – an easy way to multiply the sound. For those who came out, it was a fun night at the track.

Below, seven thoughts on Grand Slam Track’s opening night.

Additionally, we have a second article where we recap all 8 of the races and provide full race replays.

1) The racing was generally good and showed the benefits – and drawbacks – of Grand Slam Track’s format

The on-track product on Friday night was good. World Indoor champ Christopher Bailey impressed by running a quick 44.34 to win the 400, taking down Olympic silver medalist Matthew Hudson-Smith (sorry MJ, but we still care about times at LetsRun.com!). Times weren’t fast in the men’s 100 because the race was run into a 1.3 m/s headwind, but the race itself was entertaining, a good battle to the line with American Kenny Bednarek taking down Jamaica’s Oblique Seville on home soil, 10.07 to 10.08. Any sprint race involving Jamaica vs. the USA is going to be popular down here.

But the distance races are what made this feel different from your typical pro meet. With temps in the high 70s, no pacers, and the knowledge that a hard 3000m awaits them in less than 48 hours, no one wanted to run fast in the men’s 5,000m, which produced a winning time of 14:39.14. You’d never see that in the Diamond League. Heck, you rarely even see it in a women’s Diamond League – only one women’s DL 5k in 2024 had a slower winning time – and just a hair slower, at 14:39.49.

The last lap was sensational, though, with Grant Fisher going from 7th at the bell to 1st by the finish, prevailing over fellow Americans Cooper Teare and Dylan Jacobs in a thrilling home-straight battle. Did it outweigh the 11.5 laps of stylish jogging that preceded it? Depends on who you ask.

The 5,000 also had a surprising outcome – not Fisher’s win, but the accompanying 1-2-3 American sweep. There was a surprise in the women’s 800 too, with the 1500 specialists Nikki Hiltz, Diribe Welteji, and Jessica Hull going 1-2-3, with Hiltz (1:58.23) and Hull (1:58.58) running personal bests as world champ Mary Moraa was awful (last in 2:00.97). 

This is the sort of thing Grand Slam Track was hoping would happen. 

“You’re not going to see the same people winning Grand Slam Track races over and over,” Johnson said on Thursday.

Unpredictability = excitement, and between the unrabbitted format and the timing of the meet, there is plenty of opportunity for surprises.

2) Grant Fisher’s kick was very impressive for the first week of April while Hagos Gebrhiwet must have been getting Olympic flashbacks

Fisher said that one of the things that appealed to him about Grand Slam Track was a chance to work on his tactics, and he was caught napping a bit at the bell as Gebrhiwet got the jump on him and Fisher was not in position to respond. With a little over 300 to go, he was 7th in an 8-man race. To his credit, Fisher did not panic and ran very smartly for the rest of the way, closing in 51.6 for his last lap to get the win. 

That’s an impressive turn of speed considering how early it is in the season, but Fisher, who always offers a measured assessment of his performance, admitted there is some context required. 

“Really happy with that,” Fisher said. “It was a bit of a fresh quarter. Sometimes people take finishing splits and neglect what two laps to go and three laps to go were (the preceding two laps were roughly 69-61 tonight); it can change your perception of what your final lap is. We were jogging for that entire race, so you were pretty fresh at the end. But 51? That’s pretty good for April, so I’ll take it.”

It also showed how Fisher has matured as a racer. His kick has not always been his strength as a pro. But he has worked hard to improve it. Even against a field featuring fellow Olympic medalists Hagos Gebrhiwet and Ronald Kwemoi, he trusted he’d be able to win in a slow race.

“I was confident,” Fisher said. “If I wasn’t confident, I would have gone to the front and changed the race.”

As for Gebrhiwet, he made a bold, aggressive move with 600m to go in last year’s Olympic final but misjudged it and wound up out of the medals in 5th. Gebrhiwet tried the same thing tonight, except he moved at 400m to go. And he still misjudged it – he ran the first 200 of the last lap in a blistering 25.4, but his final 200 was 27.5 and he faded to 4th. You would think that someone who has been around as long as Gebrhiwet – he was the Worlds 5k silver medalist way back in 2013 – would have a better sense of pace.

3) It was a great night to be an American distance fan (apart from the women’s 3,000)

Perhaps not surprisingly in a league founded by an American with largely American venues and North American-based athletes, the American runners did very well on Friday night. That included wins in four of the five sprint races and, more notably, two of the three distance races. In addition to Fisher’s win in the 5,000, Nikki Hiltz won the 800 – not even Hiltz’s best event – as part of the women’s short distance event group. And Americans went 1-2-3 in the 5,000. 

The only event where they struggled was the women’s 3,000. While Americans have enjoyed great success in that event indoors (silver-gold-silver in the last three World Indoors), an American woman has never medalled in its outdoor equivalent, the 5,000. The gap was enormous today as winner Ejgayehu Taye (8:28.42) of Ethiopia finished almost 15 seconds ahead of the top American, Whittni Morgan in 5th (8:43.35; Elise Cranny was 6th in 8:44.03).

We didn’t manage to talk to Hiltz in the mixed zone tonight, but this was a great win for Hiltz. Hiltz is a strong closer and has a great sense of when to go in for the kill, so Hiltz was always going to be dangerous if Mary Moraa was off her game (which she clearly was). Hiltz was in great form indoors, winning US titles in the 1500 and 3000, but to win this race and PR by nearly a second (Hiltz improved from 1:59.03 to 1:58.23 tonight) was just about the best-case scenario.

Hiltz is in a good spot heading into Saturday’s 1500 but still needs a strong run to claim the $100,000 grand prize as runner-up Diribe Welteji and 3rd-placer Jessica Hull are the 1500m silver medalists from the last two global championships.

In the 5,000, Teare was very optimistic despite losing out on the win by .17 to Fisher. Teare did not have the smoothest last lap – he had to throw on the brakes multiple times on the backstretch because he was boxed in – and was still only 5th with 150 to go. But once he did find room to run, he closed really well. To come that close to Fisher in a championship-style race was a good sign for Teare as he tries to make his first US 5,000 team this year.

“I was five meters off of 1st-2nd-3rd with 200 to go, so I’m super happy with how I closed,” Teare said. “I think with a little bit smarter racing, that’s a win.”

As for the overall result, Teare was equal parts stunned and proud to be part of an American sweep.

“Yeah,” Teare said in disbelief. “What? That’s amazing. It’s so cool.”

The third American in the 5k, 24-year-old Dylan Jacobs, continued his fine first season with the On Athletics Club under coach Dathan Ritzenhein. Jacobs has trained mostly with Ky Robinson this year, and the duo have both been finding success in 2025. Both men ran 7:30 at Millrose, Robinson edging Jacobs, and they finished 3rd (Robinson) and 5th (Jacobs) at World Indoors two weeks ago.

“This is my first year really racing at this level, and the biggest thing is just to believe that you belong,” Jacobs said. “And I think out there I definitely showed that I was definitely ready.”

4) The Jamaican crowd loved Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone was the first athlete to sign onto Grand Slam Track, which means that to many, she is the face of the league. And in some ways, she was an odd choice. McLaughlin-Levrone races less frequently than most of her rivals – her typical approach is to go all-in on championships and largely ignore everything else (though she did race more in 2024). She doesn’t do a ton of media, and isn’t known for her fan engagement.

But SML does offer a few major positives. She is one of the greatest athletes of all time, and her championship record – she has broken the 400m hurdles world record in each of her last six championship finals – commands immense respect amongst her peers. On Thursday, Josh Kerr said McLaughlin-Levrone is “the biggest athlete of our generation, if not in World Athletics history.”

She is also very popular with fans. SML has been in the spotlight for almost a decade, ever since making her first Olympic team as a 16-year-old in 2016, and she is a focus of the broadcast every time she competes. 

And her popularity extends beyond the US. Jamaicans love their own, but they also appreciate greatness. If there is no competitive Jamaican in an event – and no one is close to Sydney – the Jamaicans will get behind you. No athlete drew louder cheers on Friday in Kingston. SML did not disappoint, winning the 400 hurdles by nearly two seconds in 52.76. She will return on Sunday afternoon to close out the meet in the 400 meters.

5) Grand Slam Track’s results service needs to improve

One of Michael Johnson’s pitches with Grand Slam Track is that times aren’t important; it’s head-to-head racing that counts. But times are part of the story of a race. If the winning time in the men’s 5,000 was 14:39, people will want to know how fast the runners ran for their last mile or last lap. Unfortunately, the Grand Slam results page lists results only and no splits at all for distance races. That’s not great for a meet of this stature.

***

The final two quick takes are from Robert Johnson, who watched the meet from home.

6) The format may take some time getting used to

Grand Slam Track isn’t shy about promoting the fact that their meet features no prelims. One thing that struck me on day 1 was that every race we watched was in some sense a prelim. Gabby Thomas dominated her 200m race but the odds of her winning the $100k went way down due to something she could not control as Olympic 400 champ Marileidy Paulino exceeded expectations and finished 2nd. So assuming Paulino wins the 400, Thomas will have to finish 2nd in the 200 to claim the top prize — and that’s assuming she wins the tiebreaker.

7) The TV opening should have been better

It’s easy to be a critic, but there is no way to sugarcoat this one. When a $30 million new track league kicks off with a 30-minute pre-meet show, you are expecting something great. We did not get that.

The opening of the TV broadcast was what we see at almost every track meet — a focus on the host city — instead of the focus on the new series and format.

Most importantly, the non-existent crowd and early start time made for horrible visuals. The stadium was EMPTY (probably not a surprise as an NFL stadium is often largely empty 45 minutes before kickoff). And track meets normally look amateurish when broadcast during the day.

The Athlos meet had a crowd of maybe only 4,000 at his debut in New York in September, but it looked impressive under the lights compared to this. Tonight, we saw a smaller crowd in a huge stadium with the broadcast starting in daylight.

We’d love to know why they didn’t start the meet two hours later when it was dark outside. That would have been better for West Coast viewers in the US and the first race at 5:42 local didn’t do much for Europe as it was already 12:42 a.m. there (CET).

But this clip from less than three minutes into the broadcast sums up the TV opening:

Less than full crowds at Jamaican track meets isn’t unusual, but putting this meet in Europe would have been tough as it’s not warm enough in many places.

That said, in five years, no one will care what the opening crowd was or how the first five minutes of the broadcast went. For years, the WNBA wasn’t popular in the US until it suddenly caught on.

But Grand Slam Track made a tactical mistake in putting the debut meet in such a big stadium and  for putting another meet in Philadelphia’s cavernous Franklin Field. If there are empty seats, they need to be covered with a tarp.

I recently went to watch arguably the most popular athlete on planet earth – Lionel Messi – play a soccer game in Atlanta. They entire third deck was tarped that game as shown here. It was so well done I didn’t even realize it until a season ticket holder pointed it out to me. I actually imagine they probably could have sold out but they didn’t want to take that chance. They wanted a buzz and ticket values going for over face, etc.

Want to See Day 1 Race Videos & Recaps? Grand Slam Track Debuts – Americans, Including Grant Fisher & Nikki Hiltz, Shine & Win 6 of 8 Races