Athlos, and Track & Field’s Ongoing Search for an Identity
by Steve McGill
With the World Championships coming to a conclusion last month, and with the Athlos meet taking place in New York City last week, now seems like a good time to take a look at the state of the sport, since the off-season has arrived for everybody.
Let’s start by talking about the Athlos meet — a women-only meet that first appeared on the scene in 2024, but made a much bigger splash this year. It seems to me that this year’s version was a huge success for more than one reason. The biggest reason, if we’re being honest and direct, is money. The founder of Athlos, Alexis Ohanian, is more widely known as the husband of women’s tennis legend Serena Williams and the founder of Reddit. A very wealthy man with connections to very wealthy corporate entities, Ohanian was able to partner with Cash App to supply immediate payments to athletes. Let’s pause right there for a second and talk about that, because it’s huge.
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By securing the partnership with Cash App and making sure the athletes were paid in a timely manner, Ohanian made sure not to repeat the mistakes of Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track League. As discussed in previous issues of The Hurdle Magazine, I was all in favor of Grand Slam and the concept of it, although there were plenty of people who didn’t like the fact that it didn’t include any field events. The biggest reason I was in favor of it was the prize money. Winners earning $100,000 paychecks meant that these professional athletes would be treated like professional athletes. American track athletes would no longer have to rely on traveling to meets overseas to earn big money in meets taking place on other continents. With three of the four scheduled meets taking place on American soil, track fans in the US could have easier and more regular access to watching their heroes perform live in meets where significant prize money was at stake. The prize money meant that the league would be able to entice more stars to join in future years, and that perhaps more meets could be added to the schedule. Suddenly, meets taking place in early-season months of April-June gave professionals motivation to compete intensely instead of using early-season meets solely to get sharp for the national championships.
But once word came out that the league had to cancel its last scheduled meet in LA, and then the even worse news came out that athletes from previous meets still hadn’t been paid, it was like, come on….
In interviews after the Athlos meet last week, athletes could be seen holding up their phones to the camera, showing that $60,000 (the prize for first place in an event) had been deposited into their Cash App account. Wow! Visual proof that Athlos isn’t playing any games! Visual proof that true professionalism in this sport can actually be a thing. I hate the fact that athletes who train and sacrifice and who are at the top of their sport have to beg or sue to receive the money that is owed to them. So Grand Slam is probably done, but if more events like the Athlos meet can take place, there is hope for the future. And maybe, like Athlos, others can follow in the tradition of Grand Slam’s well-intended idea while avoiding the mistakes that Grand Slam made.
Another thing that I liked about the Athlos meets, and that I’d like to see more of, is that it promotes stars and markets stars. Grand Slam did too, but requiring athletes to participate in two events might not have been the best idea. It’s a cool idea, but if the aim is to promote the sport to the casual fan, it’s better to have the athletes participate in their specialty events. If pros want to enter in other events in the early part of the outdoor season, they can enter unattached in college meets. I’ve heard college coaches and some track fans say that track & field needs to be marketed as a team sport, because team sports are most popular in America. As logical as that argument sounds, I would contend that the logic is faulty. Track, at its core, is not a team sport. At the highest level of the sport, we watch to see stars, perform, not to see teams perform. When I was a kid and I found out that Edwin Moses was going to be running at a meet being held at Villanova University, which was a 25-minute drive from my house, I told my coach and some of my teammates, “We gotta go to this meet! I gotta see Edwin Moses!” It was an invitational meet, which meant that even the collegiate athletes who were participating wouldn’t be competing in multiple events to score points for the team. Instead, we would see the best doing what they do best. I remember that Rodney Wilson, a star 110 hurdler for Villanova at the time, also competed in the meet, so I had a chance to see him. And Villanova had some stud distance runners back then, so I not only saw them but also gained a new appreciation for events like the 800 and 1500 that I hadn’t had much interest in previously.
That’s what the sport needs. Superstars doing superstar things in front of fans who want to see them at their best. Which leads to my next point in regards to why the Athlos meet works and why Grand Slam worked before the money got funny: shorter meets are better meets. To me, one of the biggest issues with track at the youth level, the high school level, and collegiate level is that the meets are too damn long. Nobody, including the athletes themselves, wants to spend eight hours or even more at a track meet. One of the reasons I got burnt out from coaching for a school team was that after spending five days a week teaching and then coaching in the afternoons, I had to spend all day Saturday at a meet with thirty teams. It got downright demoralizing. A carnival event like the Penn Relays is an exception. It’s magical and wonderful to see so many athletes at so many levels running crazy fast relay splits. And relay races are thrilling because of the team aspect. That’s a much different experience than watching 50 heats of the 400.
One of the coolest things about the Athlos meet was how they had the long jump take place in Times Square, the night before the running events started. The reason that was brilliant was because it allowed fans to focus on the field event without being distracted by running events taking place at the same time. That’s another element about track & field that needs to be addressed. Any time and any way that meet directors can include field events in a way that spotlights them, they should do it. Doing so is a win for everybody. I know that creating a long jump runway on Times Square isn’t the kind of idea that could be reenacted everywhere, but that doesn’t mean that similar things shouldn’t be tried. The sport needs innovation and creativity, because the same old same old is not capturing the imaginations of even diehard fans, much less casual fans.
Ohanian is right — there’s no reason that stars like Sydney McLaughlin and Gabby Thomas shouldn’t be celebrated and financially rewarded like a Serena Williams in her prime. And even athletes who aren’t at that level should still be able to train and compete without needing to hold down second jobs just to pay the bills.
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