Grand Slam Track has signed Jamaica’s Rushell Clayton and Americans Jasmine Jones and Shamier Little as Racers ahead of the professional track league’s inaugural season in 2025.

Here’s what you need to know:

– 400m hurdles Olympic champion and world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone was the first athlete announced as part of the league in April. It is expected that she will primarily contest the “long hurdles” category that races the 400m and 400m hurdles at each respective Slam. Each athlete will receive points for their finishing position in the two races. After the two events, the athlete with the highest point total will win the Slam and the $100,000 prize for first place.

– Clayton, Jones, and Little complete the long hurdles Racers group signed to the league for all four Slams. This gives the league the fastest (McLaughlin-Levrone, 50.37 WR); fourth- (Jones, 52.29 PB); fifth- (Clayton, 52.51 PB) and sixth-fastest (Little, 52.78) women on the year.

– Olympic silver medalist Anna Cockrell and Olympic bronze medalist Femke Bol will not be Racers in the league’s first season but could still compete as Challengers in any of the four Slams.

– Clayton ran personal bests of 51.81 for 400m and 52.51 for the 400m hurdles this season. She won two Diamond League series meets and captured the Jamaican 400m hurdles national title. She was fifth in the 400m hurdles Olympic final in Paris. She is a two-time World Championship bronze medalist in the 400m hurdles from 2019 and 2023.

– Little is a two-time World Championship silver medalist in the 400m hurdles but missed this year’s 400m hurdles squad at the Summer Games due to a fourth place finish in the U.S. Olympic Trials. She was also ninth in the 400m final at the U.S. Olympic Trials, which was enough to impress coaches for a spot in the Team USA relay pool for Paris. At the Olympics, she was part of the world-record setting mixed 4x400m relay and earned a silver medal in the mixed 4x400m final. She also led off the women’s 4x400m relay in the final with a 49.48 split before the team won gold in 3:15.27 – the second-fastest 4x400m relay of all-time.

– Jones wrapped up her senior year at the University of Southern California with the NCAA indoor 60m hurdles title and NCAA outdoor 400m hurdles title. She ran personal bests in the 400m hurdles four times in the year, which culminated with a 52.29 performance for fourth place in the Olympic final – just 0.14 seconds shy of a medal.

Q&A With Shamier Little

The following interview with Shamier Little has been edited lightly for clarity and length.

Anderson Emerole: Shamier Little is coming off a legendary 2024 season: her first Olympic Games where she was able to win a gold medal in the 4x400m, a silver medal in the mixed relay, and a world record in that mixed relay as well. This was already on top of being a two-time world championship medalist and three-time USA champion. How are you feeling, Shamier?

Shamier Little: I'm feeling really good. I've been on the go, just kind of soaking in the moment, allowing myself to travel and be around my people. I see reflections of how well I did in them and I just get excited for that. That's always how I've been. But I just feel good. Even you sitting there naming those things, I'm like, ‘Dang, I really went and did that.’ That's so crazy to me.

Of course it's been a couple months since the Olympics, but your season literally just ended a couple of weeks ago. Have you had a chance to reflect back on how the year has gone?

I'll take little moments here and there. I just have this monologue plan in my head of when I’m going to make my Instagram post, just tell my story, speak my testimony. I have little moments where I reflect, but I really did most of my reflection while I was in the Olympic Village. I had that time to myself to decompress while still being in the moment. That was very important for me. I have my little moments, touch and go, but I think that once my season starts and I sit down with my coach and sit down myself, I’ll get to reflect so that I can put that towards what my goals are for next year.

In those little moments that you've been able to dip back into the experience from the Olympics, is there anything that stands out to you with all the accomplishments that you’ve been able to accumulate?

It was a lot. I feel like I was experiencing so many emotions, but it was definitely community. I'm so big on community. I went to [Texas] A&M and people were like, ‘How did you last at A&M?’ And I'm like, ‘We were like family.’ We left the door unlocked, we’d walk [into each other’s] houses, we’d take a nap, we’d cook, whatever. I love those moments where I get to be around the community, the USATF network, just seeing myself age, seeing people who were my age when I made my first team and then looking at myself like, ‘I'm a veteran, I'm one of the last people…’ Taking in that experience, what really stood out was the opening and closing ceremony, because my ankles had not yet recovered from all that walking. But it was such an experience and I'm so glad I did it.

I've heard that all the walking during the ceremonies was crazy.

It was more standing than anything. I'm just now getting to the point where I can stand for like an hour and be like, ‘This is cool.’ But after that, I was just like, ‘My ankles are not going to make it. I need to sit down.’

And you still had a full set of meets after that, so it's amazing that you still pulled everything off that you did. At the Games, talking about community and all that, how did you navigate the rounds? You ran more than some individual athletes did. How did you navigate your experience?

For me, it was really about taking it round-by-round. I wasn’t thinking, ‘I have to save energy.’ It was like. ‘You’ve got this one race today, you're going to do this.’ It was really just taking it day-by-day, not getting too ahead of myself. Trusting in myself. Definitely recovering, I was on top of my recovery. I was on top of eating and my nutrition, I was making sure that I was getting out and socializing. I also made sure that I ended up speaking with one of the therapists there because I was trying to max out on everything so that I would not get consumed by the moment.

I think what really prepared me was my training. I know that I train like no other in the program with the Johnson brothers. They make sure we get around the track, they're going to make sure we work. After doing three rounds at Trials and walking away unscathed physically but hurt mentally, I was like, ‘Okay, I can definitely do this. I get three days in between. That’s nothing for me. So I carried that confidence with me, just like, ‘Girl, just do it round-by-round. You don't have any time to think about what’s hurting and you being tired or any of that outside chatter.

You had a packed schedule at the Olympic Trials, so to come out and then even go further at the Olympic Games, you should be more than proud of what you were able to do.

I feel like you've reinvented yourself every moment throughout your career. Now going into 2025, signing with Grand Slam Track, this is a new opportunity. What is it that intrigued you about Grand Slam Track that caused you to jump in?

The money, but also that it played into my strengths, which is that I am a two-event athlete and I really respect and am inspired by two-event athletes… Hearing about Grand Slam, I was like, ‘That's perfect for me. I could do the 400m one day, 400m hurdles the next day.’ Just the setup of it with four meets; I’m used to that in training where it’s very high volume and I'm used to situations where I'm in the competition running rounds. So I was like, ‘Why wouldn't you try something new that’s innovative for the sport?’ I’m going to go for it.’

The money is very intriguing. But like you said, you're the definition of a double threat. You've been consistently doing it throughout your career with a lot of success. Is it the training? Is it the mindset? What makes you special at both of these events?

I really couldn’t tell you. I was a 400m runner, then I became a 100m hurdler, and then I became a 400m hurdler. The 400m has always been the foundation, and then you tie in my other skill set, which is hurdling, and that's how it came into the picture… I've always had that depth and I've always been placed on a relay, so I never really saw it as much of a switch-up. It's just one in the same for me. Even sometimes in training sessions when I'm running flat, I put myself in the mindset of 400 hurdles so that I can prepare to make the transition. It's always on my mind.

You'll have tons of high quality competition. Is that exciting as well? Knowing you're going to be competing against some of the other best women in the world in both of the events?

That's definitely fun. They haven't announced all the other athletes, but of course there’s Syd and she’s always great competition. I'm looking forward to that and I'm looking forward to the venues they're going to be at… It's going to be something really fun and I'm excited to take part.

Your 400m personal best is 49.68 from Monaco last year. That combined with 52.3 for the 400m hurdles is a double threat. Do you get excited about running these fast times or is it the competition and going head-to-head with the best ladies?

I get excited about the head-to-heads because I know that it’s always going to bring the best out of us. I really do love competing and I love going against the best. I love training against the best… I'm always getting my fair share and it's fun. It teaches me a lot of lessons about myself.

Now that you're going to be a part of Grand Slam Track, does that give you a boost in your career? Like I was saying before, you're reinventing yourself year-after-year.

It’s like a little renaissance. Like you said, I'm literally always reinventing myself every year: physically, mentally, in any capacity. I just have such a strong growth mindset. With getting older and this opportunity presenting itself, just capitalizing on that.

You’re getting older, yes. but you’re still running some of your best times. You ran 49 seconds in every leg at the Olympics. You just ran 49 last year in the open 400m. You're still in your 20s, so you still have so much more to go.

What makes the 400m hurdles special as an event where we've seen such a resurgence. What's made the event so special right now?

I would just say the aura. The aura of the women competing really makes the event so special. We're not super divas, but we're not super laid back either. We’re all so different. Our personalities are so different. When we line up and how we translate that personality to our performances, I think that's really what makes the sport or what makes the event be what it is. They say we're marketing and we're entertaining, and we're not necessarily going out there with that intention, but it's just the aura of the women.

Do you think there was some sort of mental switch?

It's just that we all pulled each other. We pulled the best out of each other, especially with the 400m hurdles being such a rhythm race and all of the top women having established what their rhythm is. When someone sets the tone, we all go into that. I don't even know how to explain it, but you just know right from when the gun goes off, right from the first hurdle, that the tone is set. We're running our own race, but yet we're all kind of feeding off of each other – and that's the thing about the 400m. It's really a mental race and it's the type of race where you're where you feed off of your competition. And you know they're going to come with some heat… There’s always a new layer, a new discovery to the sport and a new way to push the boundaries of the event.

I feel like you're someone who has a lot of grit. There are some races I've seen where you are going out explosive from the blocks or you're finishing like a train in that second half. Would you say that’s one of your qualities?

Definitely. My mom always used to tell me, ‘Lay it all out on the track and that's what I do.’ I always know that the race is kind of won off of the last hurdle. It's when the competition is neck-and-neck with each other. It’s at that point, that's where my strength lies. I'm a finisher. I've always been a good finisher. It’s just playing into that and trusting that.

How are you looking to balance this season where you're going to have Grand Slam track but you'll still have the opportunity to run at USAs and the World Champs.

I don't know, but I know that it will be balanced. I haven't quite sat down with my coach. He's very good at adaptability, I'm very good at adaptability, so it’s about us putting our heads together like, ‘Okay, what are we going to do?’... You have Grand Slam, but you also have meets that really help your world ranking. So not only are we vying and competing for the money, I'm also competing for the ranking. So it's a lot of layers to this season and I'm really looking forward to finally getting that time to sit down with my coach and map out how we're going to do this so that we capitalize and not leave any money on the table and also not sacrifice my ranking in the process.

Based on how you've been able to navigate the second half of your career, I feel like you're going to be more than prepared to. Again, I feel like you’re about to kill it next year and I’m excited to see how 2025 goes.

Thank you for having me. I always love our conversations, so I appreciate it!