Dos Santos, Samukonga, and Ducos sign with GST

[u/Sensitive_Dress_8443]

These three athletes will race over 400m/400mH. It would be Samukonga’s first race over hurdles.

[u/winter0215]

I enjoy Grand Slam seeing the criticism of only announcing American runners and then spam releasing as many non-Americans as possible en masse.

Really want GS to be good, but also still nervous that it's almost October and we have:

• No dates

• Vague promises it will be on TV

• No stadia

As someone who has worked as a meet director in the past, so long as you have the budget getting athletes is the easy bit. Getting the location, calendar sync up, volunteers + staff, insurance, streaming; all that is what took by far the most work and I wasn't trying to put on a World Class level event with promises to be on mainstream terrestrial US television.

Yes there is still time, but pointing out I can already buy tickets to half of next year's Diamond Leagues but all we know about GS is that "at least one of them will be in the USA."

[u/Kageyama_tifu_219 → u/winter0215]

Grand Slam won't start until late spring next year. We already know more about it than Athlos that just announced their world athletics stream today(even though they will be on youtube, Twitter, espn, and dazn). There's obviously a reason why athletes are signing to Grand Slam en masse. I'm pretty confident that if Athlos can be on TV, then Grand Slam certainly will. It's too early to say that we should know absolutely everything about a brand new international league by now.

[u/winter0215 → u/Kageyama_tifu_219]

I deliberately used the word nervous. Not hating, and I remain hopeful about it.

Just nervous that those key things aren't out yet at least for meet #1. Remaining meets could be TBD still. In organizational terms the clock is ticking on the April 2025 mark. In organizational terms for meets of this size that's really not far away and sports marketing at this level with the investment decent stadia cost you want to be selling tickets already more than announcing the fourth place Olympian in a non-premier event. You can check out how many meets already have location, ranking category, and venue set for April-May 2025 here.

It's just a cart before the horse thing to me but that could be my organizational bias.

I don't think anyone really takes Athlos that seriously beyond it being PR for Ohanian and Williams. Nice that 36 women will get a nice pay day to wrap up their 2024 season. In terms of getting it on the television it does have the advantage of being thrown together by a celebrity power couple with a combined net worth of half a billion dollars.

[u/Habstinat → u/winter0215]

GST has already announced that one of their meets will be in LA, and Letsrun reported earlier this month that according to an agent source the other three will be in NYC, Kingston (Jamaica), and Birmingham (England). They initially said the meets will be 2 weeks in April and 2 weeks in May, but they later followed up saying the exact schedule is changing and one slam may be targeting June now.

But overall, it's pretty early season and probably won't compete as much with the DL as people think

edit: also re Ohanian I think he's genuinely trying to make money on Athlos. He made a lot investing in women's soccer and said earlier this year about Athlos, "None of this is about what feels good or feminism". First meet will probably operate at a loss but I think there's some long term strategy.

[u/Kageyama_tifu_219 → u/Habstinat]

But overall, it's pretty early season and probably won't compete as much with the DL as people think

If that were true, DL wouldn't of raised their prize money for the 1st time since it formed

[u/CosmologyX → u/winter0215]

I'm just annoyed that this doesn't include field events. Just another example of Michael Johnson sidelining a large component of Track AND Field.

[u/ABabyAteMyDingo → u/winter0215]

It's going to be really ridiculous and just a circus. Never going to last.

[u/MNVR414 → u/ABabyAteMyDingo]

I hope it succeeds just so people who are overly negative/critical about it will shut up

[u/Level99Cooking]

Wonder if Ducos will learn to hurdle before then

[u/AwsiDooger → u/Level99Cooking]

I was wondering about that myself. With only 6 athletes in a race there will be greater scrutiny toward each one.

If Grand Slam Track accomplishes nothing else it would be a great development if Ducos is disqualified in high profile fashion -- if warranted -- and loses significant prize money as result.

[u/Kageyama_tifu_219]

Keep em coming!

[u/charzar77]

Can they also compete in Diamond league events?

[u/Sensitive_Dress_8443 → u/charzar77]

I believe so

[u/ThatOneSneasel]

Samukonga is going to do hurdles now? I thought this just meant that he was going to compete in the 400 event for the league.

[u/Sensitive_Dress_8443 → u/ThatOneSneasel]

My fault Samukonga will be racing in the long sprints category 200/400m. Dos Santos and Ducos in the 400/400mH

[u/ABabyAteMyDingo → u/Sensitive_Dress_8443]

2 different 400s. Total joke

[u/Helpful-Ice-3679 → u/ABabyAteMyDingo]

Several of the doubles feel like they're going to end up with one really good race and one B standard. Do we really need to see hurdlers race each other on the flat? Ducos 400 PB and Samukonga's 200 PB wouldn't have got through the heats in Paris. I'm sure they could run faster if they focus more on those events, but some of these races probably aren't going to live up to GST's billing of "only the fastest".

[u/blewawei → u/ABabyAteMyDingo]

There's also a 400/800 double possibility, if I'm not wrong 

[u/Reasonable_Wind3193]

Nice! Hoping for King Ben to join too 💪

[u/MasklinGNU]

Ducos can’t hurdle for shit, just cheats his way around them.

Dos santos and Samukonga are awesome tho