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Paralympics champion Hunter Woodhall and his wife Tara Davis-Woodhall have given reasons why they feel track and field has been left behind, leading to low earnings for athletes.
Paralympics champion Hunter Woodhall and his wife Tara Davis-Woodhall agree with Noah Lyles that track and field is not being managed well, leading to athletes earning very meagre amounts of cash.
Track and field stars have complained for years over the low amounts of money they receive from events with meets like the World Championships attracting $70,000 for gold medalists but held once in two years while Diamond League wins have been attracting just $10,000 per leg.
In comparison, other sports are raking in millions every season and this has led to an outcry from some of the sport’s biggest stars like Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson.
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08:12 - 02.01.2025
‘I love track AND field’ - Michael Johnson seeks to end feud with Tara Davis-Woodhall over controversial comment
The American sprint legend has sought to end his beef with Olympics long jump champion Tara Davis-Woodhall after addressing concerns over field events missing at Grand Slam Track.
Now, Hunter and Tara have also weighed in, using the example of Formula One whose format is almost similar to track and field but the pay is like day and night between the two sports.
“We have talked about this for years and I was like if we want to change the sport, the sport is like down in the dumps,” Hunter said in snippets of his interview with Lyles and Rai Benjamin on their Beyond The Records podcast.
“We love this sport and we know how big this sport could be. It’s like if I explained to you a track meet and an F1 event without specifics of it, it would sound like the same thing. So, how come we do it so much worse than them?” he posed, with Tara, weighing in: “When we are actually using our bodies.”
Hunter went on: “So it is like they have a practice day, they have preliminaries and they have finals and it is all set up like this big event, a spectacle. You have teams that are only trying to get this person as fast as possible.
“There are teams but there is also individual sport and it is like this is one of the biggest sports in the world, one of the most amount of money in the world is in this sport.”
“I think they win $160 million,” said Benjamin of the pay in Formula one, before Tara gave a picture of the disparities that exist. “We get $160,000 in track and field,” she said.
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07:25 - 02.01.2025
‘These 48 Racers are stars’ - Michael Johnson hits back at Grand Slam Track critics over absence of Noah Lyles & Sha’Carri Richardson
US sprint icon Michael Johnson has moved to address some of the concerns raised by Noah Lyles and Co over his Grand Slam Track while defending the status of those who have signed up.
It is an issue that has seen the emergence of new track events aimed at boosting the earnings of track and field stars with Alexis Ohanian’s Athlos leading the way in 2024, having rewarded each winners with $60,000, while Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track will begin this year where each of the four legs will have winners pocketing $100,000 per meet.
World Athletics has also responded by introducing the Ultimate Championships set to start in 2026 with winners receiving $150,000, which will be the largest prize money in the sport, while Diamond League is also set to increase its cash rewards from this year.
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