New Grand Slam circuit offers track nerds plenty to debate early in season
Inaugural event will boast impressive talent pool in Jamaica
Putting Sydney McLaughlin in the final race of the final day of the inaugural Grand Slam Track event was a simple choice for organizers.
She's American and mediagenic and a generational performer. Three trips to the Olympics and counting. Four gold medals, with more coming if she stays healthy and motivated. Every time she steps on the track she threatens the 400-metre hurdle world record.
Except Sunday afternoon she'll be running the flat 400, which, as of right now, is her second-best event.
And instead of lining up against Grand Slam Track's other 400m standouts, like current world leader Salwa Eid Nasser, 2024 Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino and 200m gold medallist Gabby Thomas, the new circuit's format will pit her against other hurdlers in a race without obstacles.
That first matchup — a four-way battle royale among tip-tier elites — is a headliner at any track meet on the planet, and the kind of high-speed, high-profile showdown that intrigues hardcores and drive-by fans alike. It's also the kind of race the new league teased when it promised to gather best-in-class performers in a unique format.
And the main event they're delivering on Sunday?
It's a series of choices.
WATCH | Michael Johnson discusses Grand Slam Track with CBC Sports' Morgan Campbell:
A smart performance decision to put 21 hours between the hurdles and the flat 400, to give fine-tuned athletes maximum time to rest.
A savvy marketing play to set up McLaughlin-Levrone — who has the fastest personal best in the field by two seconds — to conduct a quarter-mile clinic in the meet's final race, and leave a stunning final impression on viewers in the 189 countries where the event is scheduled to air.
The verdict on the decision to keep McLaughlin-Leverone separate from Nasser, Paulino and Thomas this weekend depends on what happens next.
If organizers make sure that the four superstars are on a collision course, it's brilliant. Building tension early in the year makes the late-season payoff that much more satisfying. If you're a Grand Slam Track stakeholder, you'd love to end the year with Sydney versus Gabby versus Marileidy versus Nasser, all of them attacking the 48-second barrier.
But if you're a boxing fan, you know that just because a matchup should happen, doesn't mean it will. That's why we never got Lennox Lewis against Riddick Bowe for a pro world title. And if Grand Slam Track, whose current format has McLaughlin-Levrone in a separate event category from Nasser, Thomas and Paulino, can't find a way to get those four together this season, then it all looks cynical. Best on best with an asterisk.
Am I nit-picking?
Possibly.
No matter what I wind up thinking about the format, the races it facilitates and the ones it prevents, I'm impressed at the depth and breadth of talent lining up on the newly resurfaced track at Kingston's National Stadium this weekend.
All three medallists from the women's 100m hurdles in Paris are scheduled to compete — Masai Russell, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn and Cyréna Samba-Mayela. The men's 100m features Kenny Bednarek, Fred Kerley, Zharnel Hughes and Oblique Seville. It could almost be a world final, in the first week in April.
Early season causes scheduling nightmare
This time of year, which marks the unofficial opening of the outdoor season, is thrilling for avid track fans, but a nightmare for anyone trying to gather a critical mass of talented performers for a top-level event. Nearly everyone is at a different stage in their buildup to the world championships in September. Hardly anyone's schedule lines up with everybody else's.
You want to see Andre De Grasse and the rest of Team Canada this weekend?
They're at the Florida Relays in Gainesville. De Grasse trains in Gainesville now, and is scheduled to run the 200m, with Canadian 400m phenom Christopher Morales Williams competing in the next heat.
Trying to get a look at Olympic 100m champ Julien Alfred and silver-medallist Sha'Carri Richardson? They're slated to run at the Miramar Invitational outside Miami.
Other big-name sprinters and hurdlers?
Noah Lyles? Kishane Thompson? Femke Bol?
They're all someplace, but not the same place.
WATCH | Grand Slam Track, explained:
For track nerds, the scattered action is part of the fun. You watch one meet on TV and stream another on your laptop. If there's no live feed, you find the meet's website and keep refreshing for current results. But you keep in mind that you're collecting info in early spring to help you make sense of the global competitions coming in late summer.
Grand Slam Track promises a change of pace. It has us paying closer attention, earlier in the season than we're used to, and it's refreshing. This weekend represents a rare April track meet that means something big-picture. Serious track fans aren't used to it, but it's a habit worth learning.
Same with the Grand Slam Track format, which groups athletes according to event category, and has them compete in two separate races each weekend. So, 100m specialists also run the 200 because they're in the "short sprinter" cohort. As a "long hurdler" McLaughlin-Levrone also runs a flat 400, while 400m specialists like Paulino add the 200 as part of the "long sprints" category.
At its best, the structure sets up Olympic level action, like Bednarek racing Kerley and Hughes in the 100 and 200.
And it answers hypothetical questions that track nerds love to debate. Does Marco Arop, the world champion 800m runner from Edmonton have a big enough gas tank to hang with Olympic champ Cole Hocker in the 1500? Does Hocker have the footspeed to finish in the same postal code as Arop in the 800?
We're about to see.
Two Thumbs Up for Pre-Meet Day! <a href="https://t.co/cYDicIGoah">pic.twitter.com/cYDicIGoah</a>
—@GrandSlamTrackBut in the women's sprints and hurdles, the groups as currently constituted prevent the best 400m race possible.
McLaughlin Leverone isn't a 400m specialist, but she has 400-metre credentials. Her 400 hurdles world record is 50.37 seconds. Only two Canadian women have run faster than that in the flat 400 – and none since 1988.
Her 48.74 personal best makes her the second-fastest American ever at 400m, and in the 4x400m relay in Paris last summer she ripped off a blistering 47.71-second split, widely credited as the fourth-fastest ever. She's not an interloper stealing a lane from a more deserving runner, and she's not posting second-tier times in her second-best event. She's a medal favourite in two races, and a candidate to make Grand Slam history in the circuit's first year.
If the format lets her.
And if it doesn't somebody needs to make the decision that leads to the best race possible. Four all-time performers, three spots on the podium.
Somebody will have to lose, but the Grand Slam track would win.
And so would the fans.
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