Michael Johnson’s ambitious Grand Slam Track project has been thrown a lifeline after existing investors stepped in with emergency funding, but the bailout won’t erase the league’s massive debts or the damage done to its reputation.
The fledgling track league, which promised to revolutionize the sport with record prize purses and athlete-first treatment, has been struggling for months to pay competitors. Now, after weeks of uncertainty, sources confirmed to Front Office Sports that investors have injected up to eight figures in new financing to cover partial payments.
The money began landing in athletes’ accounts Friday morning, offering long-awaited relief to runners still owed prize money and appearance fees from the league’s three 2025 events in Kingston, Miami, and Philadelphia.
One agent, Ray Flynn, who represents stars including Josh Kerr and Cole Hocker, said the payments marked “a huge step forward” and credited organizers for “fulfilling their promise” after months of silence.
Even so, the rescue is only partial. Grand Slam still owes roughly $11 million to athletes and another $8 million to vendors. Friday’s payment covered about half of what athletes are due, with the remaining funds expected to go toward settling debts to production crews, venues, and contractors.
The league described the partial payout as the start of a “reboot.” In an email to athletes obtained by The Times, operations manager Karen Taylor said, “Today is the beginning of Grand Slam Track’s reboot. We apologise for frustrations and hardships caused by the payment delays. Over the next 60 days, we will be working hard to make things right… to best position GST for 2026 and beyond.”
The tone marked a shift from Michael Johnson’s own remarks in August, when he admitted the project had been “one of the most difficult challenges” of his career. The four-time Olympic champion said then that Grand Slam would not stage another season unless it could pay its debts in full.
Launched with fanfare early last year, Grand Slam Track claimed it had $30 million in funding led by Winners Alliance, the athlete investment group backed by billionaire Bill Ackman. Johnson billed the series as a new era for professional track, with $100,000 prizes for winners, base appearance fees, and athlete perks rarely seen in the sport, from paid travel to private hotel rooms.
But after an early buzz in Kingston, cracks quickly showed. The Philadelphia meet was shortened, the Los Angeles finale was canceled, and the company quietly laid off staff and cut salaries. By summer, the league’s financial picture had become dire. The Athletic later reported that one major investor, Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, pulled out after signing an eight-figure commitment, leaving Grand Slam short of the capital Johnson had publicly touted.
In total, the startup racked up around $19 million in debt, leaving dozens of athletes unpaid for months. Some, according to The Times, had to abandon house purchases after promised prize money failed to arrive. Others began exploring legal action as deadlines came and went with little communication.
The latest funding package, coordinated by Winners Alliance, gives Grand Slam a temporary reprieve. It has allowed the company to pay its small remaining staff and avert a full shutdown. Whether it can rebuild trust with athletes and the sport at large is less clear.
Johnson has long argued that track and field needs a new professional model, one that rewards athletes more like stars in tennis or golf. But for now, Grand Slam’s experiment remains a cautionary tale, an ambitious attempt to change the sport that nearly collapsed under its own weight.
