The promise of Grand Slam Track was alluring. Track athletes have long struggled to make money; the quadrennial cycle of the Olympics brings attention to the sport in erratic bursts that are difficult to sustain between Summer Games. After the Paris Olympics, several track start-ups sought to allay the unsteadiness, most notably Michael Johnson's Grand Slam Track: The four-time Olympic gold medalist boasted that GST had secured over $30 million in funding before Paris. One year and just three events later, GST has declared bankruptcy.
Johnson's main investor was Winner's Alliance, the Bill Ackman vehicle also associated with Novak Djokovic's nascent, contradiction-riddled tennis players union. The Athletic reported this past August that the Winner's Alliance had not in fact invested the promised $30 million, but rather had handed over $13 million, with an option to give an additional $19 million if things went well. Things did not go well. The first meet was held in April in Kingston, Jamaica, and was attended by officials from Eldridge, Chelsea Football Club owner Todd Boehly's asset management company. The two parties had agreed to a non-binding term sheet, but the Kingston meet turned out so underwhelming that Eldridge declined to invest in the league at all.
GST held its second and third meets in Miami and Philadelphia, and abruptly canceled a planned July meet in Los Angeles. Most of the athletes, including 28 medallists from Paris, were not getting paid. GST had promised $12.6 million in prize money in its first year, scaled down after the L.A. cancelation. Yet Johnson admitted in August that GST didn't have the money to pay athletes, who'd only received appearance fees from Kingston but no prize money. Per the Athletic, "athletes were first told the payment delays were due to drug-testing protocols, before Johnson told agents in the middle of June that unspecified proposed investors had gone cold following President Trump's tariff announcements and instability to the world economy." By July, according to Front Office Sports, GST still owed athletes some $13 million.
In October, Johnson put in some of his own money to keep the league afloat, but it was a clearly doomed attempt. Vendors and athletes whom GST owed money turned down an offer for 50 percent of their outstanding payments, which led to this week's unsurprising and disappointing development. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday, revealing in the filing that it had less than $50,000 in cash and between 200 and 999 creditors, to whom it owed between $10 million and $50 million. Per Front Office Sports, GST also laid off staff, though it already had fewer than 10 employees by October.
"Grand Slam Track was founded to create a professional platform that reflects the talent and dedication of this sport's athletes," Johnson said in a statement. "While GST has faced significant challenges that have caused frustrations for many—myself included—I refuse to give up on the mission of Grand Slam Track and the future we are building together." The league framed the move as a "necessary reset" before some future return to competition, which I would not feel too confident about if I were a competitor.
