Blame it all on Michael Johnson. Until now every post-Olympic year afforded most athletes with a slow and lazy approach to the new outdoor season, safe in the knowledge nothing big was decided this early on, and certainly none of the big pay-days. Well, things have changed with the start of Grand Slam Track, the potentially seismic shift in the staging of an athletics meeting which it seems most people have never heard of. The radical format and super-elite competition is aimed at capturing a younger fan base and growing the sport in between so-called Olympic cycles. And Johnson has no doubt he’s on to a good thing. The four-time Olympic champion and former 400m world record holder first dreamed up the idea two years ago, along with Steve Gera, a former US marine and later an NFL coach and sports executive. From Johnson’s own experience, including as an athletics analyst for the BBC, even the biggest names in the sport struggled to maintain a profile – and earn some decent money – away from the Olympics and World Championships, and Grand Slam Track would at least help address that. Beginning this weekend in Kingston, Jamaica, the four-meeting series then continues in Miami (May 2nd-4th), Philadelphia (May 30th-June 1st) and Los Angeles (June 27th-29th). It’s had some criticism already, namely in its focus on track only, with the exclusion of any field events. But for now Johnson is focusing on what he knows best. With a total prize purse of $12.6 million (€11.4 million), and $100,000 (€90,500) for each event category champion, it already surpasses the 15 Diamond League meetings in terms of athlete earning potential, with a TV deal sold to around 180 countries, TNT Sports securing the broadcast rights in Ireland. There is no fallout with World Athletics here either, as athletes are free to mix up those meetings as they please. For year one, Grand Slam Track will focus on six performance categories, each combining two events, from short sprints to long distance. That will make for just 96 athletes per meeting, the 48 contracted “racers” and 48 “challengers”, with eight athletes in each race, then one overall winner per category based on cumulative points. Johnson has clearly done some seducing, too, given the glittering array of Olympic and world champions, including the full trio of Olympic podium places from Paris in the men’s 1,500m, men’s 400m and women’s 100m hurdles, plus most of the top women’s 400m runners in the world. Rhasidat Adeleke, however, is not among them, explaining in an interview in December that she was approached with an offer to join the contracted “racers”, but that her coach Edrick Floréal at the University of Texas “just didn’t see a fit for us”. It’s still possible Adeleke could join one of the later meetings as one of the “challengers”, and that may depend on how some of her early season races go. For many of Adeleke’s rivals, Grand Slam Track appears to be the perfect fit, the women’s short-sprint category including three of the Olympic 400m finalists from Paris, including gold medal winner Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic, and runner-up Salwa Eid Naser from Bahrain. Olympic 200m champion Gabby Thomas from the US is also signed up, along with Adeleke’s training partner Dina Asher-Smith from Britain, and Alexis Holmes from the US, who finished sixth in Paris. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the US Olympic champion and world record holder in the 400m hurdles, is in the long hurdles category, and there’s every chance she’ll make some entry in the 400m flat this season too, where her potential is still frightening. Others, like Adeleke, weren’t so convinced, with Jakob Ingebrigtsen surprisingly steering clear despite his ferocious appetite for racing. Fellow Norwegian Karsten Warholm thought likewise about the 400m hurdles, with Dutch superstar Femke Bol and US Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles other high-profile names to pass. [ Kate O’Connor sets high medal bar in Nanjing as rise of Irish athletics continuesOpens in new window ] It does all mean getting properly race fit for the first weekend in April, and given the length of the 2025 outdoor season, the World Championships in Tokyo not starting until September 13th, that’s not without the risk of injury or indeed peaking too soon. Both Paulino and Naser have raced already, and Naser certainly doesn’t appear to be holding back, running 48.94 seconds for the 400m at the Felix Sanchez Classic in the Dominican Republic last Saturday – the fastest women’s time ever run in the month of March, effectively a world record for this early in the season. Naser also followed that with a personal best of 22.45 in the 200m, the 26-year-old fast approaching the form which saw her run her personal best of 48.14 seconds, the third fastest time in history, to win the 2019 World Championships. A brief reminder of what happened next: Naser was banned for two years in June 2021 for an anti-doping violation after missing three tests within a 12-month period. After Naser won the Olympic silver in Paris in 48.53, it then emerged the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) had imposed a 12-month ban on the Bahrain Athletics Association (BAA) for “serious anti-doping rule violations”, just eight months before Games. [ Rhasidat Adeleke takes third in 400m Diamond League final after Salwa Eid Naser disqualifiedOpens in new window ] Naser, along with all Bahrain athletes, was also disqualified from all World Athletics Series events for a year, although these didn’t include the Olympics. Paulino, meanwhile, has not lost a 400m race since July 2023, and it will be fascinating to see how she fares this weekend against Naser, who remains a controversial figure in the event. Adeleke also opened her outdoor season at the Texas Relays last Saturday, running the anchor leg of the 4x400m with her training partners in a perfectly unhurried split of 50.78 seconds. The 22-year-old simply bided her time behind two runners in front of her, before gently kicking past them both around the last bend to win by over a second. After twice finishing fourth in the Paris Olympics, in the 400m, then the 4x400m relay, Adeleke may well be extra conscious of peaking when it matters most this summer. Having some of her big rivals off racing each other in Grand Slam Track this early in the season may ultimately benefit her in a roundabout way.