In its aborted season, Grand Slam Track squandered athletes's most precious resource — time

If you spent the early summer struggling to reconcile Grand Slam Track's purported startup with recurring reports of unpaid bills, it's understandable.

Last year the upstart athletics league fronted by legendary sprinter Michael Johnson claimed to have $30 million US in funding, with more than $12 million devoted to prize money for an impressive list of competitors. But this year we saw GST downsize one event and cancel its season finale outright, while learning that they owed money to athletes and vendors, and even to the city of Miramar, Fla., which hosted a Grand Slam event in May.

Nobody with pockets that deep should have a list of creditors that long, and before we even ask whether the circuit can regroup for a year two, another question comes to mind.

What happened to all that money?

Thanks to The Athletic, we now have some answers.

A feature published last week by the New York Times' sports vertical revealed that GST never actually had $30 million in its possession. According to the piece, the $30 million figure included a $19 million pledge from Eldridge, an asset management firm whose investment hinged on their satisfaction with GST's inaugural event, which took place in Kingston, Jamaica the first weekend of April. The piece explains that underwhelming attendance at the Kingston meet prompted Eldridge to move on.

So, much of the money GST officials discussed in public to highlight the league's financial viability never reached its bank account. According to the report, GST didn't have a contract for the money; it had a term sheet. It's a promising start, but legally it might carry less weight than a handshake. You certainly can't use a term sheet to force a reluctant investor to wire you $19 million.

Given this new information, GST's aborted season now makes a lot more sense.

And a lot less.

We now know why athletes and facilities are still awaiting payment. Their money was supposed to come from the $19 million that never materialized.

But why would the league choose to press forward with big events and bigger promises of even bigger money, knowing 63 per cent of their projected budget had just vanished. Could they have downsized sooner? Slashed payouts to something they could afford? Focused on attracting second-tier stars instead of big-money headliners?

We may never know.

It's also possible that the GST braintrust's main mistake was believing so deeply in the product that they never considered that a new investor wouldn't step up. In that case, we can't criticize their intent, or their effort. They thought the money would come, and they worked to make it happen. Credit to them for setting the bar high.

But the upshot is the same: dozens of athletes who run for a living face an indefinite wait for money they earned. None of them signed up as volunteers, and they can't build budgets on GST leadership's good intentions. And if GST or a similar upstart is going to thrive in the future, athletes will need two tools they lacked in this year's iteration — information and advocacy.

Information because GST, like all sports startups, was destined to lose money in year one. But even if nobody expected to finish 2025 in the black, athletes and their agents deserved to know whether the outfit was equipped to follow through on promises of game-changing prize money. It's easy to print a novelty cheque for $100,000. Having that cash on hand is a different challenge.

As reluctant as I am to tell the people running any sport that they should emulate pro boxing, it's a fact that 30 days before any event in Ontario the promoter has to deposit all the fighters' payouts into an escrow account. If ticket sales fizzle and sponsorships dry up, the boxers still get paid. And if, four weeks ahead of the event, it becomes clear that the promoter lacks the cash to pay the talent, the commission scuttles the fight card and the boxers can make new plans.

Given a similar four-week warning, maybe some of the stars who topped GST's podiums would still have decided to run — for exposure and competition, even if it meant giving the league the equivalent of a six-figure credit line. Or maybe they'd have elected to train, or to compete someplace where they knew the cheques would clear. Either way, knowing would have given them some choices.

Now, athletes have no option but to wait, and wait, and wait for payouts.

So I empathize with Johnson. Imagine building a personal brand on winning, then fronting a startup that, for right now, is best known for running out of money. Probably feels about as good as an abscessed tooth.

But as an author and freelance journalist I identify much more deeply with the athletes to whom GST owes cash. We're all independent contractors who depend on customers to pay us on time. All of us are used to waiting, and worse. Few of us would choose uncertainty. Virtually none of us would opt to subsidize a client.

Years ago, I wrote a story for a widely circulated magazine. They mailed me a cheque, and I would have framed it if I didn't need the money. Career-wise, I felt I had finally leveled up, and wanted to commemorate the moment. I deposited the cheque instead. And it bounced. Guess which one of us got stuck with the NSF fee?

A few years later I wrote a series of stories for another prominent publication that had quietly decided to stop paying its freelancers. They ran up a massive debt to dozens of us, and didn't seem inclined to pay it. They didn't budge after a social media-shaming campaign, our main weapon since we couldn't afford a lawyer to force the issue.

But the National Writers Union had the time and money to drag this magazine to court. They interceded on our behalf, making clear that a lawsuit was less a threat than a promise. Cheques hit the mail soon afterward.

Track athletes don't have a union but it would help here, just to make sure GST or whatever new league attempts to replace it, upholds their end of the agreement.

The truth is, we don't know if Grand Slam Track is coming back. Johnson says it will, but any new investor would need to settle old debts. And any superstar signing up would also have to calculate the opportunity cost. Choosing a Grand Slam event could mean passing up a training block that could help later in the year, or skipping a meet whose promoters pay reliably.

Seasons are long and careers are short, and if GST can't make good on the money it owes runners it'll have squandered their most precious resource.

Time.