SPRING IS HERE, relay season is revving fast and collegians and preps are sure to roll out delights as at the pro level the World Relays, Diamond League and Continental Tour fixtures lay out appetizers for the Olympic Trials and Games that will be here before we know it.
Track & field, the outdoor variety, is about to start sizzling. Like it always does. Reliably for those of us chronically captivated by its charm.
April is here, soon May, then the Olympic summer. The season for gatherings of the faithful — at Drake, Penn, high school state meets, the NCAA, the Trials — is upon us lined up to feed and reinforce our devotion.
“The sport is primal and moving. It speaks to anybody who wants to be better,” the late track writing legend Kenny Moore told T&FN for one of the most incisive offerings in our history, the May 1991 feature “Track At The Crossroads.” Moore continued, “You watch kids on the beach seeing how fast they can run and how far they can jump, testing their bodies. That’s a powerful, innate need.”
But today metaphorically is also Groundhog Day, as an article published this week in Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal reminded us. Track is still stuck at the crossroads. Our ’91 analysis with that name identified among other concerns track’s failure to connect with a wider audience.
The SBJ article, titled “Two new track events seek to build off the momentum of Paris,” reported on Olympic great Michael Johnson’s intent in partnership with Winners Alliance, a for-profit arm of the pro tennis players association, to develop a pro meet series. We reported on the venture in the March issue Last Lap, a planned “TV-friendly product to promote the sport’s biggest stars and draw new audiences through unique storytelling.”
As SBJ’s report revealed, there’s also another new entity “looking forward to reshaping the sport of track & field.” It’s name: Duæl Track. Odd name, explained in SBJ as “a mashup of the words ‘dual’ and ‘duel.’” Duæl is the brainchild of two entrepreneurs, Barry Kahn and Ben Schragger, whose experience in the sport is that Kahn ran for Dartmouth just over 20 years ago.
An April Fool’s gag? The SBJ report was published on 04/01, with former Rice baseball player Schragger identified as a consultant at BS30 Sports.
Has to be a… No. Duæl, as a concept and a website, anyway, is real. Kahn and Schragger are of the same view as Johnson. Aren’t we all?
“The fans are not getting what they want and the athletes are not being compensated,” Johnson told SBJ. “They’re struggling. They’re not being recognized for their greatness at a scale that other professional athletes are. Track has a problem, for sure, but it’s not a demand problem. The demand is there. The supply is the problem.”
Johnson and Winners Alliance say they’re in talks with World Athletics and have the clout to bring big money to the table. They’re still looking for a broadcast partner and sponsors with no meets scheduled but 2025 targeted for the launch.
Duæl Track, also working to piece its puzzle together, promises a million dollars’ prize money for a meet in Jamaica in September, date unspecified, TV/streaming only, no broadcast partner announced, no live fan audience, just one track discipline, the men’s & women’s 100s, 10 competitors per gender.
The format overview per duael.com:
• Head-to-Head — Build the drama of an Olympic Final in every race with one-on-one matchups.
• Tournaments — Replace traditional track meets with March Madness-style brackets.
• Marquee Events — Simplify the sport to its marquee events: 100m and mile [although the mile part is envisioned for future years and the hope is to eventually expand 100m brackets to 40 athletes per event].
SBJ reported that, “While the races will run around 10 seconds each, Duæl Track is planning 10 hours of content across the three days” and that there will be a heavy focus on athlete backstories.
Huh? What? While the aphorism says “there’s no such thing as a bad idea”… that’s just an aphorism. We’re still stuck at Groundhog Day. Anyone remember the Tracktown Summer Series? Or last year’s LA GP in the ’28 Games host city? Of that meet USATF CEO Max Siegel said, ”We’re back in LA to stay in a big way.” But just how big? The meet seemed to have sunk without a trace until two days after this column was written it appeared (date May 18) in a 2024 schedule on the USATF website. Just try to imagine any pro ball sport employing such weak sauce “promotion.”
My plan for now is to immerse myself enthralled in the Olympic year that’s here and sincerely wish all Idea Men & Women well. Many of their type have come before. Like buses and trains, others will be along shortly.
Yet the sport stumbles brightly on, “primal and moving.”
