Grand Slam Track
Havana, Oct 11 (EFE).- The Grand Slam Track aims to revolutionize world athletics and with its premiere in 2025 it has put the Diamond League on alert, which has made several strategic moves in terms of prizes and calendar so as not to be overshadowed for the new circuit promoted by former American sprinter Michael Johnson.
This new competition, which will have four stops, the first of them in Los Angeles and the other three in places to be defined, aims to bring together the best elite athletes in the world thanks to a budget that is around 30 million and that has as the main sponsor with Winners Alliance, a multinational company currently dedicated to transforming the rights and marketing of athletes and which was born in 2022 as support for the Association of Professional Tennis Players (ATP).
The prizes are succulent since the winner of each discipline in each event will take home 100,000 dollars, an amount that will decrease depending on their position in the competition until 10,000 for the eighth place finisher.
The emergence of this Grand Slam Track, which will not accept hares in the races and will not have contests, only track tests, will distribute the athletes into several groups in such a way that everyone will have to compete twice, once per test, lasting the competitions three days.
The tests are divided into short sprints (100 and 200 meters), sprints with hurdles (110 and 100 hurdles), long sprints (200 and 400), long sprints with hurdles (400 and 400 meters hurdles), short distance (800 and 1,500 meters) and long distance (3,000 and 5,000 meters).
The elite athletes selected by the organization will sign an annual contract that will commit them to competing in the four Grand Slams of the year in addition to having to promote the League through their different public profiles.
Since its launch worldwide in April 2024, the Grand Slam Track has already announced a good list of athletes who will be part of the competition next year. On that list are the American sprinters Fred Kerley and Kenny Bednarek, the Brazilian hurdler Alison dos Santos, the British middle distance runner Josh Kerr and the Olympic 400 hurdles champion, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, also an American.
Given the emergence of this Grand Slam Track, the Diamond League has not been slow to move, making some moves that are clearly intended to counteract its new competitor.
The first, announced on September 18, was to increase financial prizes by 2025 to the highest levels in history, above nine million dollars, which is almost a third more than the sum paid during the affected period. due to the pandemic from 2021 to 2024. In this way, the General Assembly of the organization estimates the amount for next year at 9,240,000 dollars.
Adding to that figure, including promotional fees for top athletes, a total of around $18 million will be paid to athletes over the course of the 2025 season and many more millions will be invested in athlete services such as travel. and transportation, accommodation, and medical and physiotherapy provision.
Under the new structure, the total prize money awarded per game will be $500,000 in each of the fourteen games of the regular series and $2,240,000 in the Diamond League final. The total prize money per discipline will be between $30,000 and $50,000 in the series meetings and between $60,000 and $100,000 in the final. Prize money is completely equal between men and women with exactly the same rates for male and female athletes. The increase also applies to all 32 Diamond disciplines, which will benefit athletes from across the diversity of athletics.
The second move, two months earlier than usual, was to announce the 2025 calendar, something that always occurred around the end of the year.
Xiamen and the test shared between Shanghai and Suzhou will be the first two stops of a total of fifteen, opening again in China a circuit that will end with a two-day final in Zurich (Switzerland), just before the Tokyo World Championships, which They will begin on September 13.
The Diamond League will also visit Qatar, Morocco, Italy, Norway, Sweden, France, the United States, Monaco, Poland and Belgium, demonstrating a more global character than that of the Grand Slam Track.
With these moves, the Diamond League organization hopes to retain the greatest number of stars and continue leading the largest international athletics competition only behind the World Cups.
Taken from EFE
