HERE’S THIS MONTH’S collection of short takes on generally off-track activities that have gone/will go a long way towards shaping the way the sport is headed.
HERE’S THIS MONTH’S collection of short takes on generally off-track activities that have gone/will go a long way towards shaping the way the sport is headed.
Ready For A Biggie Next September?
With no OG or WC on tap, WA has invented The World Ultimate Championships to cap off the ’26 season.
The elite-of-the-elites meet is set for Budapest on September 11–13. Each session in the Hungarian capital is expected to run 3 hours. There will be two rounds in every running event from 800-down.
The field events will all be straight finals. The horizontal jumps and throws will be 4 rounds each. Fields will start with 8 athletes, be cut to 6 after 2 rounds, and further cut to 4 for the final round.
The finals:
Day 1—m5000, m110H, mPV, mHT; w100H, wHJ, wLJ; mix4x1, mix4x4.
Day 2—m100, m400H, mLJ; w100, w800, w1500, w400H, wPV, wJT.
Day 3—m200, m400, m800, m1500, mHJ, mJT; w200, w400, w5000, wTJ.
Note that some “standard” events are missing. Not included in what is planned as a tight timetable: mSt, m10,000, mTJ, mSP, mDT; wSt, w10,000, wSP, wDT, wHT.
How Will Budapest Fields Be Filled?
With no cap on the number of athletes per country, and a prize money pool of $10 million, the World Ultimate Champs should bring together the best of the best. But who will be chosen for the high-stakes, condensed championship, and how?
WA has confirmed that Paris Olympic champions as well as Tokyo world champions will get invited (as long as their event is on the schedule).
Also being given a bye will be winners from the ’26 DL Final (to be staged in Brussels the weekend before. After that, fields will be filled from the WA world rankings for the previous year.
In the relays, the top 6 finishers from next spring’s WA Relays get automatic entries, with 2 more spots being filled from the rankings.
T&FN’s tours division will be staging a trip that includes both the Brussels and Budapest meets.
GST’s Monetary Troubles Deepen
Grand Slam Track has revealed that it is on the brink of financial failure, reaching out to creditors in November with an offer to pay 50% of what is owed. Reportedly the letter from an insolvency law firm said that if all the vendors did not collectively agree to accept the offer by December 05, GST would file for bankruptcy.
One vendor that does not want to play along is World Athletics, reportedly owed $30K for licensing rights. WA is insisting that athletes be paid completely before vendors are dealt with and has rejected the offer.
GST canceled its final meet of the season in Los Angeles and reportedly faced debts of around $19M. Last month, the organization headed by former sprint great Michael Johnson announced it had found emergency funding to pay athletes 50% of what is owed. Calling that a “reboot,” GST said at the time, “Over the next 60 days, we will be working hard to make things right with everyone who helped make 2025 a success, to best position Grand Slam Track for 2026 and beyond.”
This Is National Champ Infeld’s Reward?
Winning her first USATF 10,000 title at age 35 marked a major return for ’15 WC bronze medalist Emily Infeld. After a long struggle with Achilles problems, she ran a PR 30:59.38 in March before battling her way to the win at nationals. None of that, however, seems to have impressed the folks in Indianapolis.
“I finally felt like I would be rewarded and I would be treated like I belong,” she said on TikTok. “USATF e-mailed me and said we basically don’t believe you have any potential for 2027 and 2028, so we’re not going to give you any funding…
“No funding, no health insurance, no dollars, no support from my federation after winning USA and competing at Worlds.
“An hour later, another e-mail asking me to collaborate with that same federation on social media and post about my experience in Tokyo. No payment, no nothing. Just yeah… because why would I do that? Of course I’m going to do that literally the same day you tell me you’re not supporting me at all and you don’t believe in me.”
Indy Has A Money Drain
USATF brought in a record $44.59 million in ’24, according to its annual statement, released in mid-November. That’s the good news, analyzed Rich Perelman of The Sports Examiner. He explained, the bad news is that the organization still lost $1.19M last year and has slipped even deeper into the red.
While the revenue was a healthy 21.5% increase over ’23’s numbers, USATF saw its net assets drop from -$4.934M to -$6.125M.
The revenue increase came mostly from the “events and athlete program” portion of the books, likely from the Olympic Trials marathon and track events. Member dues and sanction fees also went up, along with merchandise sales.
Expenses rose from $42.167M to $45.857M, with increases coming from elite athlete costs and sports performance, typical for an Olympic year. The revenue boost from merchandise sales also carried with it higher costs, so that whole program only netted $229,668. Support services (salaries, communications and marketing) went up $1.2M.
USATF is anticipating a turnaround in ’25: “With renewed sponsorships, continued USOPC funding, and controlled spending initiatives, USATF anticipates an operational surplus in 2025.”
Battling Over Foreign Runners
Media at the NCAA’s premeet presser got a taste of two very different outlooks on foreign recruiting, an exchange that looked all the more contentious when it blew up on social media.
BYU head Ed Eyestone told a reporter the week before that international recruiting “doesn’t help the U.S. developmental effort. It doesn’t encourage young American talent; it discourages them… Some coaches have decided to take a shortcut by taking foreign talent. Many are older and developed. I always felt I’d be embarrassed to have 7 foreigners on the team.”
Asked to respond to those comments at the presser, Oklahoma State coach Dave Smith said, “I believe if someone doesn’t like a rule or doesn’t like a situation in the NCAA, don’t bitch about it. Go change it. Get involved… Otherwise, shut up and coach your team.”
He added, “It bothers me when we call [Cowboy runners] Brian Musau foreign or Alex Maier American. It’s not; it’s Alex and Brian. They’re guys on the team, they get along, they’re friends, they support each other, they root for each other, they go through hell together, they suffer together.”
AIU Wraps Up Some Russian Testing
One big chapter in the saga of the Russian doping scandal has finally concluded, with the Athletics Integrity Unit announcing its final set of bans and disqualifications after more than a decade of sifting through evidence.
The bans that were announced in previous years focused on active, big-name athletes, so this final batch includes lower-priority athletes, few of them well known outside of Russia. Most are already retired. The biggest name is Yelena Kotulskaya, who won silver in the Euro Indoor 800 in ’13; she got a 4-year ban for concealing 3 positive test results.
Other 4-year bans went to Marina Novikova (walks), Marat Ablyazov (sprints), and Pavel Ivashko (400): 2-year bans went to Inessa Gusarova (800); Svetlana Rogozina (800/1500), Veronika Chervinskaya (100H), Margarita Korneychuk (heptathlon) and Natalya Kholodilina (walks). Valeriya Fyodorova (TJ) and Tatyana Dementyeva (100H) have already completed their penalties.
For Svetlana Karamasheva (1500), a 1.5-year ban is set to start in ’29, after she completes her previous bans of 2.5 and 8 years.
Asinga Runs Out Of Appeals
The final verdict has come in on Issam Asinga, the breakout sprint star of the ’23 prep season who was felled by a positive test for a banned drug called GW1516. His final appeal to CAS was denied. The arbiters upheld his 4-year ban.
Asinga had insisted the drug got into his system via some gummies that were in a gift basket that Gatorade presented to him when he was named their national athlete of the year. He sued Gatorade, and that lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge last April.
The CAS hearing found Asinga “had failed to establish that, on the balance of probabilities, it was more likely than not that the gummies he ingested prior to his anti-doping test were contaminated with GW1516.” He will not be eligible again until May ’28.
Era Ends In The Steeplechase
At age 36, Evan Jager is hanging up his spikes. The Wisconsin alum made two Olympic teams in the steeple and won silver in ’16. He also ran his way onto 4 WC teams, capturing bronze in ’17. Along the way he won 7 USATF titles in the event (2012–18).He World Ranked all of those years, with No. 2s in ’14 and ’16.
Perhaps his most poignant race came at the Paris Diamond League in 2015. On the brink of becoming the first American to break the 8:00 barrier, he fell over the final barrier but made it to the line in a still-standing American Record of 8:00.45.
“It’s been a long, good career,” he said. “I’m proud of everything I did… This past year felt like the right time to move on. I’m totally content with the decision, feel good about it, and I’m excited for the future.” ◻︎
