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UKA athletics chief held a meeting with Grand Slam organisers but failed to find a common ground, throwing into doubt the Michael Johnson-organised event.
Michael Johnson’s upstart track series will not be visiting London next year after talks between competition organisers and UK Athletics chiefs reached an impasse.
UKA boss Jack Buckner said they are taking a wait-and-see approach over whether Grand Slam Track – which has already announced world 1500m champion Josh Kerr and Olympic 400m silver medalist Matthew Hudson-Smith as participants – will grow into a major success according to The Mirror.
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Grand Slam in early November, announced that its opening three-day meet will be held in Kingston, Jamaica next 2025 followed by a visit to Miami in May. But after being approached by organisers of the new competition, UKA felt it was going to be heavily focused on American audiences and there were doubts that London Stadium could sell almost 200,000 tickets across three days.
Johnson is promising the best prize money in athletics history even as his search for a sponsor enters the homestretch. UKA will instead continue to focus on its annual Diamond League meet and Buckner said:
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“Grand Slam did approach us and we had a really good discussion with them. But I think you've got to get your product right and it has to work, and we think the Diamond League is a product that's 85-90% the way there."
Buckner added that the Diamond League will be one of the best athletics global-renowned series if properly nurtured.
"We think it's well on the way to being something really, really good. We don't want to walk away from that, we want to build off that. If the Michael Johnson event came back, and the format worked, of course we would continue to look at it. But where we are right now we think the Diamond League is the one with the greatest potential for us.”
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