Well, the wait is over. I now fully understand why Kyle left the newsletter business behind and hasn’t looked back. As I watched today’s press conference and pored over the explainer section of Grand Slam Track’s website, I felt a ghostly apparition of Kyle’s head floating behind me, nodding proudly… knowingly.

Before Kyle left to work for Michael Johnson and GST, I edited 160-something of his newsletters. That’s hundreds of thousands of words Kyle wrote about track & field, and I’d wager that a quarter of those could be boiled down to a few key sticking points around what track was lacking as a consumable, fan-supported enterprise, and what should be done to address it.

Chris wrote a nice summary of what we know about Grand Slam Track. But the gist is:

• The same top athletes will race each other in four condensed meets, or “Slams,” so it’ll be easy to follow
• Notably, the first athlete to sign on was Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone – that’s how you lend early legitimacy to your project (nice job, Kyle)
• The prize money is legit – way more than the Diamond League’s
• The focus will be on racing, rather than time – no pace lights or rabbits
• There’s opportunity for newcomers to make a splash, but the league is ultimately driven by the sport’s biggest names
• On the topic of big names, there seems to be an emphasis on showcasing these big names’ big personalities
• One Slam location has been announced: Los Angeles, a huge city with track history and an international airport – a great start
• Athletes still represent their sponsors, with league revenue coming from broadcasting rights, among other things business-y things I don’t personally understand

It’s essentially the organizational manifestation of the 95 theses Kyle nailed to your inbox every Wednesday morning. I was immediately impressed. But then again, maybe I had internalized too many of Kyle’s thoughts over the years and became incapable of developing any of my own. To see if that was the case, I did something you should generally never do: visited the comments section.

I dusted off my old Twitter log-in and even visited the LetsRun message boards, and lo and behold… track fans are… excited? Do you know what it takes to make track fans excited? People in general are averse to change. Track fans in particular loathe it. But this announcement seems to be the sort of shakeup that even the biggest curmudgeons alive can get behind.

Even those critical of the lack of field events conceded they are still fired up about the overall concept. The most negative responses I’ve seen so far have been about GST’s early big spending. But hey, if you are convinced something is going to go belly up but in spectacular fashion, at least you’re going to tune in to watch – leave the accounting to the bean counters!

It’s extremely early, but it feels like GST has grabbed the unblinking eyeballs and relative support of the sport’s faithful with what it’s revealed about itself thus far. Great. That’s half the battle. You need the people willing to make regular pilgrimages to Eugene in your corner. Now let’s see how the upstart league goes about winning over more casual fans, or new fans entirely. GST clearly aims to tap into the mounting track-based excitement as we reach the peak of the Olympic cycle hype. It’s time to see how achievable that is with the sort of funding we’ve been clamoring over, in the hands of the sorts of people we’ve been hoping would take on the initiative.

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