Robert F. Smith's Grand Slam Track Makes U.S. Debut. Here's How To Watch The Miami Meet
USA's Melissa Jefferson reacts after winning the women's 100m event during the Grand Slam Track ... More competition at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Ricardo Makyn / AFP) (Photo by RICARDO MAKYN/AFP via Getty Images)
With Grand Slam Track officially off and running following its debut in Kingston, Jamaica at the top of April, this weekend will mark the second installment and the U.S. debut of the new league featuring Olympians Sydney McLaughlin, Fred Kerley, Kenny Bednarek, Gabby Thomas, Cole Hocker and Grant Fisher.
Led by four-time Olympic gold medalist and commissioner Michael Johnson—not to mention, overseen by Robert F. Smith, a board member of the league and the billionaire founder and chairman of Vista Equity—Grand Slam Track's first outing in Jamaica featured some top-line moments on the track, including its first array of $100,000 winners like McLaughlin and Bednarek.
That wasn't all, though. Grand Slam Track even netted some major surprises, such as Challengers Ejgayehu Taye, Danielle Williams and Emmanuel Wanyonyi walking away with life-changing paydays. In fact, Wanyonyi's stunning performance in the short distance category may have been the moment of the meet, with the Kenyan taking down a stacked lineup that included Hocker, Josh Kerr and Yared Nuguse.
This week's Slam in South Florida at the Ansin Sports Complex—which, to be fair, is actually in Miramar, Florida, and roughly a 21 mile drive north from Miami—will highlight some different players in the Challenger category, including Great Britain's Amber Anning (women's long sprints); the U.S.'s Trey Cunningham (men's short hurdles), Tamari Davis (women's short sprints) and Anna Hall (women's long hurdles); and Canada's Andre De Grasse (men's short sprints).
The competition will be as fierce as ever. Let's dive into what you should know.
USA's Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone competes to win the women's 400m event during the Grand Slam Track ... More competition at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, on April 6, 2025. (Photo by Ricardo Makyn / AFP) (Photo by RICARDO MAKYN/AFP via Getty Images)
Fortunately for track fans stateside, there are a number of options to view the meet.
The most convenient is the over-the-top (OTT) stream with Peacock, which will air all three days from start to finish on its app. The meet will begin on May 2 at 6:00 p.m. EST and will end at 9:00 p.m. EST. Days two and three will go from 6-9 p.m. EST and 3-6 p.m. EST, respectively.
On the second and third days, The CW will offer a linear option, with the broadcast partner airing the meet from 6-9 p.m. EST and 3-6 p.m. EST. Grand Slam Track's results can be accessed at grandslamtrack.com.
Grand Slam Track's greatest attribute is its roster. The league signed long-term contracts with 48 'racers' to compete in each of its four Slams, including McLaughlin, Bednarek, Thomas, Kerley, Hocker and Fisher. On the other side, 48 'challengers' will make-up the remaining slots across the six events—short sprints, short hurdles, long sprints, long hurdles, short distance and long distance.
While those six U.S. athletes in the racers category may be the quote-unquote 'stars of the show,' none are guaranteed to walk away with the top money. That's the beauty of Grand Slam Track.
In fact, only four of them–McLaughlin, Bednarek, Fisher and Thomas–earned the top prize pool in Kingston.
If we're going by the 'Heroes vs. Villains' storyline, the league's racers represent the top contenders in each of the disciplines. Brazil's Alison dos Santos, Great Britain's Matthew Hudson-Smith and Josh Kerr, and France's Sasha Zhoya are also key performers headed for their second Slams.
From a standpoint of redemption, you have to look at Americans Masai Russell, Hocker, Yared Nuguse and Nikki Hiltz first.
All four have the ability to win their categories, though none was able to achieve that feat the first time around. Hiltz was the closest to the bag, with the middle-distance racer finishing second overall to Diribe Wellteji overall—despite winning the 800 meter distance in 1:58.23, Hiltz's third-place finish in the 1,500 meters pushed her back. They should be right back in the mix this weekend.
Russell, meanwhile, probably has the most to gain. The Olympic gold medalist in the women's 100 meter hurdles was sixth in the first installment. The same can be said of Nuguse and Hocker, who were third and fourth in their first Slams.
From a challenger standpoint, American Chris Bailey was second overall in the long sprints category in Jamaica and remains in incredible form, while Cunningham might be the most in-form hurdler entering the men's lineup after beating Olympic gold medalist Grant Holloway in a world-leading time of 13.09 seconds at the Tom Jones Memorial meet two weeks ago.
Of course, it only lasted a week because Cordell Tinch, who is also a challenger in Miami, ran 13.06 to win in the Diamond League's opening meet in Xiamen, China, this past week.
Hall will be a welcome addition to Grand Slam Track this week. The Olympian and World Championship silver medalist is a superstar heptathlete who's headed for the women's long hurdles. Alaysha Johnson, meanwhile, will enter into the short hurdles category and is a threat to win, too.
The women's winners from the Kingston Slam were Ejgayehu Taye (women's long distance), Sydney McLaughlin (women's long hurdles), Gabby Thomas (women's long sprints), Diribe Welteji (women's short distance), Danielle Williams (women's short hurdles) and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden (women's short sprints).
The men's winners from the Kingston Slam were Grant Fisher (men's long distance), Alison dos Santos (men's long hurdles), Matthew Hudson-Smith (men's long sprints), Emmanuel Wanyonyi (men's short distance), Sasha Zhoya (men's short hurdles) and Kenny Bednarek (men's short sprints).
The Miami Slam is the second of four meets scheduled for the Grand Slam Track League.
The schedule includes Slams in Kingston, Jamaica; Miami, Florida; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Los Angeles, California.
USA's Kenneth Bednarek of team Nike celebrates winning the men's men 100m short sprint during the ... More Grand Slam Track competition at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica on April 4, 2025. (Photo by Ricardo Makyn / AFP) (Photo by RICARDO MAKYN/AFP via Getty Images)
In a slightly complicated way.
Track fans and casual fans who tune in will have to navigate the way the league positions its results and scoring. With more emphasis on points and less of it on times, the format is sometimes bogged down by, well, math.
But, here's how it breaks down: Each Slam holds six events for each gender, while eight athletes will be on the line for each event. Winners of each event earn points, which then combine over two events to give them their overall score. The athlete with the top overall score during an event will win the Slam. The top prize for the winner of a Slam is $100,000, while each descending athlete will also receive a guaranteed payout.
The total prize pool for each Slam is a total of $3.15 million dollars.
The next Slam on the schedule is Grand Slam Track Philadelphia, which will take place from May 30-June 1 at Franklin Field.
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New York Times
18 minutes ago
- New York Times
Cooper Flagg, a competitive apparel battle and the winning pitch: ‘Like a movie'
Four conference rooms. Three pitch meetings. All for one chance to land a future star. Rewind to May 20, 2024, the day three factions of rival apparel company executives descended on the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. The purpose of their one-day visit? Woo Cooper Flagg, the then-17-year-old wunderkind widely considered one of basketball's budding young stars. Advertisement In hindsight — especially after Wednesday night, when the Dallas Mavericks selected Flagg with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft — it feels foolish for anyone to have ever doubted Flagg's trajectory. But at the time, the 6-foot-8 forward had yet to play a minute of college basketball at Duke. His unofficial breakout at Team USA's pre-Olympic training camp — where he more than held his own against the likes of LeBron James and Steph Curry — wouldn't happen for another two months, either. Still, Flagg oozed such potential that high-profile apparel brands were lining up to work with him when he was just a high school junior. In the fall of 2023, when the Newport, Maine, native opted to reclassify and enroll at Duke a year early — effectively skipping his senior season of high school — NIL (name, image and likeness) offers came fast and furious. Chief among them were major shoe companies like Nike, Adidas and New Balance, all wanting to sign Flagg to their star-studded rosters. Flagg, his family and his representation wanted that major decision settled before he arrived on campus in Durham, N.C., so he could focus on hoops. That meant devising a solution: They'd hear pitches from three select companies, all on the same day, and then pick their future partner once the meetings concluded. 'Like a movie,' said Naveen Lokesh, New Balance's global marketing director of basketball and football, who also spearheaded the company's pitch to Flagg. 'Almost like 'Air.'' On pitch day, the groups of executives huddled in their Four Seasons conference rooms for final rehearsals. Quietly, New Balance was confident in its pitch — particularly with one secret component, which it hoped would make all the difference. Lokesh and his team entered a separate conference room where Flagg, his family and his Creative Artists Agency (CAA) team waited to be wowed. Lokesh wasted no time playing the high notes. He reminded the Flaggs how every summer they used to attend a tent sale every summer at New Balance's factory in Skowhegan, Maine — a half-hour drive from Flagg's hometown — and pick out sneakers for the upcoming school year. (Kelly, Flagg's mother, even remembers doing the same when she was a little girl.) Lokesh stressed how important New England was to New Balance, which is based in Boston, as well as the Flagg family. They discussed philanthropy opportunities and product possibilities, and they reiterated that the privately owned brand was not looking to sign Flagg as one of a number of new athletes. Advertisement Rather, New Balance only wanted him. An all-in bet. 'If he goes to another brand,' Lokesh remembered saying, 'they're going to do great storytelling, and they're gonna have great products. Great marketing, big campaigns. All the things we can do.' Pause. Secret weapon time. 'There's one more thing we want to show you,' Lokesh continued, 'that nobody else can show you or give you. It's a small message.' Suddenly, a video started playing of the Skowhegan factory, countless assembly lines within it and the process of a custom pair of basketball shoes being made. At one point, the father of one of Flagg's former grassroots teammates — who still works at the facility — made an appearance. Then another worker shortly thereafter, proudly proclaiming that, 'Cooper Flagg being from Maine and being the basketball prodigy that he is, it just gives you that sense of pride.' Eventually, the 53-second clip ended with a still shot of the gray shoes, with 'FLAGG' stitched directly onto the tongue. As the lights came up inside the Four Seasons conference room, Lokesh pulled out his grand finale: The pair of custom shoes from the video, straight from Maine, still the only pair of Cooper Flagg New Balances in existence. 'It was pretty cool to see that video and the Maine shoes and some familiar faces,' Flagg told The Athletic. 'That meeting, going through their plans and kind of the future they saw for me, it just aligned really well with the future that I saw for myself.' In December 2023, two months after Flagg committed to Duke, Lokesh was sitting in New Balance's Boston headquarters when chief marketing officer Chris Davis swung by his desk and plopped down a magazine. It was a copy of SLAM magazine — the edition with Flagg on the cover celebrating his commitment. 'Go get him,' Davis told Lokesh. 'He's perfect.' Lokesh understood the challenge in doing so. Landing Flagg would represent New Balance's biggest basketball acquisition since 2018, when it signed likely Hall of Famer Kawhi Leonard away from Jordan Brand. That move reignited a basketball line that had been dormant since the 1980s, back when James Worthy was still New Balance's signature basketball athlete. And while New Balance had complemented Leonard with other top NBA players over the last seven years — including Jamal Murray, Dejounte Murray and Tyrese Maxey — it still looked for another top-line star. Advertisement New Balance's basketball division saw that person in Flagg. He was someone, depending on how his career broke, who could carry the larger mantle alongside brand's other worldwide faces: tennis star Coco Gauff, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani and Arsenal midfielder Bukayo Saka. From December until May, Lokesh and his team researched what it would take to make the landscape-altering signing. They dove into Flagg's humble origins and came to appreciate someone who preferred a tight-knit circle over mass exposure. Their priority on keeping jobs in New England aligned with Flagg's overwhelming support for his home region. Perhaps most importantly, New Balance's private 'boutique' approach meant they could sell Flagg on being a centerpiece rather than just another face in the crowd. That last piece appealed to Flagg and his family in a major way. In fact, it was one of the deciding reasons they eventually chose New Balance over other apparel companies — including Nike, which sponsored the EYBL grassroots circuit Flagg played and starred in. 'It was just the way that they were willing to believe in Cooper and invest in him early on and say, 'He's our guy,'' Kelly Flagg said. 'They had a very clear strategic plan of how they were going to implement him into their space, and there was a clear path to him potentially getting his own shoes or his own things — where some of the other companies were playing it maybe a little more safe and saying, 'You know what, we'll see how he does,' and kind of put it on the shelf.' After the Four Seasons meeting, New Balance was firmly in the driver's seat to land Flagg, but it still needed to seal the deal. Lokesh wanted to arrange for the entire family to fly to Boston to meet with Davis, someone they'd be working with directly on many of Flagg's future endeavors. But it was already June 2024, and the Flaggs had scattered: Cooper was on Duke's campus; his twin brother, Ace, was back in Maine training with former Boston Celtics center Brian Scalabrine; and his parents were in the process of moving to Greensboro, N.C., where they stayed all of last season to be close to both boys. In the days leading up to the Boston meeting, Lokesh overheard Kelly lamenting how she hadn't seen Ace in a while because of the chaos. So when Davis eventually booked Cooper's and his parents' flights to Beantown, he also scheduled a car service to drive Ace down for the day. Not for any business reasons. Just to show what New Balance was about. 'We're not signing Ace, but come on. Your mom's here,' Lokesh said. 'This is how a family brand works.' There was only one major hiccup in Flagg signing with New Balance. Duke was a Nike school. Per the university's Nike agreement — which is standard across college athletics — Flagg would only be allowed to play in Nike apparel during his time in Durham. New Balance could still sign him to a personal, long-term brand deal … but for a year, as Flagg was exploding on the college basketball scene, the company would have to watch him in a rival's apparel. It was an unforeseen complication in the NIL era, especially amid one of the most lucrative individual apparel deals a college athlete has signed to date. Advertisement No wonder that back in the Four Seasons conference room, one of Kelly's first questions was, 'How would we handle this?' 'We're in it for the long term,' Lokesh told the Flaggs. 'One year of him wearing a direct competitor's product will not upset us or ruin something we know is great down the road.' Instead, Duke and New Balance were proactive to work around the situation. Between Duke's two summer school sessions, for example, Flagg flew home to Maine and shot the advertising campaign New Balance used to announce his signing in October 2024. The company also outfitted Flagg — and his family, which had accrued a healthy amount of rival apparel during Flagg's grassroots career — in more New Balance gear than they could fit in their closets. Flagg and Duke coach Jon Scheyer even had a 'friendly conversation,' in Scheyer's words, during the preseason about how they'd manage the arrangement. 'If anything, in 2025,' Scheyer said, 'the player has the power to do whatever they want.' But Flagg never forced the issue, understanding the terms of the dual contracts he was bound by — although he did still bust Scheyer's chops a time or two about wanting to wear New Balances in a game. 'I mentioned it a couple of times,' Flagg said, grinning, 'but it was always just jokes.' Lokesh and several other New Balance figureheads were in Durham for Flagg's first regular-season college game, a blowout win over Maine in which he posted 18 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals. But that was one of only two times Lokesh said he saw Flagg between June 2024 and the end of Flagg's freshman season, which culminated with Duke losing to Houston in the NCAA Final Four. Instead of suffocating its new signee throughout the season, New Balance sent a basic message to Flagg. 'Enjoy college. Don't feel like you've got to go do an appearance at the New Balance store because you're in North Carolina,' Lokesh explained. 'We strategically set out the pitch that said if we do this long-term deal … then we don't have to worry about one year at Duke.' Advertisement That didn't prevent New Balance from celebrating Flagg from afar, though. The company posted billboards in various ACC cities celebrating Flagg's standout campaign, and another round after he was named ACC Player of the Year. Once Duke made it to San Antonio for the Final Four, New Balance made sure to pepper the airport with more promotional materials celebrating the teenager, who by that point had been named the consensus national player of the year. And now? With Flagg officially in Dallas as the face of the franchise's future? Now comes the fun stuff. That began with a draft party this week at Flagg's hometown high school in Maine, Nokomis Regional, where he won a state championship his freshman season alongside brothers Ace and Hunter. (New Balance is even making Nokomis new basketball uniforms as part of Flagg's deal.) The brand also worked with Maine's state legislature to officially declare June 25, the first day of the NBA Draft, as 'Flagg Day.' But what's next is what everyone, Flagg included, has been waiting for: shoes. 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Miami Herald
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Four-star WR Zion Robinson commits to Michigan
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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Cooper Flagg-signed Mavs jerseys hit market for $999.99
NBA commissioner Adam Silver congratulates Cooper Flagg on being the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. (Credit: Getty Images) Ever since the Mavericks stunned the world by winning the NBA Draft Lottery in May, it was a near-certainty Duke's Cooper Flagg would be Dallas-bound. When it was made official Wednesday night, retailers were ready. Advertisement Shortly after NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced Flagg's selection, Flagg-autographed Mavericks merchandise was immediately available from Fanatics. His signed No. 32 jersey, in both blue and white options, was priced at $999.99 for an authentic Nike blue icon swingman jersey. Flagg will wear No. 32, the same number he wore at Nokomis Regional High School in Maine. A signed Flagg basketball was priced at $749.99. Also within minutes of the selection, Topps had posted Flagg's first professional basketball card. Priced at $11.99, the Topps NOW card features Flagg in his BOSS draft-night suit. One lucky collector will receive a 1/1 inscribed copy which reads '1st Overall Pick.' Advertisement Even before Flagg appeared on a professional basketball card he had become highly coveted among collectors, notching a high sale of $85,400 in April. According to Market Movers, there have been more than $525,000 in total sales volume for Flagg cards in the past year. Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible content.
