Johnson satisfied after opening Grand Slam series event

Michael Johnson is confident his Grand Slam Track series will go from strength-to-strength as the curtain came down on the circuit’s inaugural meeting in Kingston on Sunday after three days of action in a mostly empty stadium.

Conceived by Johnson as a way of reinvigorating interest in athletics outside of Olympic years, his four-event series aims to showcase more races between the world’s best runners, sprinters and hurdlers.

But while the athletes in Kingston served up some high-quality performances, the opening event failed to capture the imagination of spectators, with swathes of empty seats at the National Stadium on all three days of competition.

Johnson though believes that engagement of fans who packed the main tribune on Sunday augurs well for the circuit in future.

“Obviously, look, let’s be honest. We would love to see more spectators here, you know?” Johnson said. 

“We think we’ll get that. We think that’ll happen. But the crowd was engaged, and that’s what’s really important. People were really engaged with what’s happening here.”

Johnson said while the competition was run smoothly, his staff had spotted several unspecified issues which would need to be ironed out in time for next month’s May 2-4 meeting in Miami.

“Everything went smooth from a competition standpoint,” Johnson said. “But we had a few things behind the scenes that we didn’t like.

“Other people probably didn’t notice it, but we did…we will look at everything. We noticed lots of different things. But those aren’t the things we’re going to get into right now.

“Right now we’re just celebrating that we had a great event, athletes and fans enjoyed it. We’ll continue to improve.”

While the series has so far failed to attract several high-profile athletes — Olympic men’s and women’s 100m champions Noah Lyles and Julien Alfred are notable absentees — Johnson said Grand Slam race director Kyle Merber had already been fielding calls from athletes hoping to race on the circuit.

“His phone has been ringing quite a bit, and that’s exactly what we want,” Johnson said, adding that he expects new faces to join the field for events in Miami, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.