Michael Johnson is one of the few true legends of track and field. Now, though, he is chasing the holy grail. Every four years, athletics is the biggest sport at the Olympics. In between, for most casual fans, it tumbles off a cliff. But Johnson, a four-time gold medallist across the Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney Games, believes he can change all that with a new big-money professional track league, Grand Slam Track, which launches on Friday in Kingston, Jamaica.
“Grand Slam Track is the equivalent of UFC and Formula One,” he tells the Guardian. “The research tells us that people watched track during the Olympics because of the stakes, the stars and the stories. So that is the recipe. And at the absolute heart of it is the head-to-head competition between the best athletes. Because that’s what people want to see.”
