Sebastian Coe will do ‘everything’ to make Ultimate Championship a success

Sebastian Coe, President of World Athletics during a press conference.

Sebastian Coe insists World Athletics is doing everything possible to ensure the upcoming Ultimate Championship “moves the sport in the right direction” amid the financial struggles of Grand Slam Track.

The first edition of the international governing body’s new biennial track and field event will be staged next September in Budapest.

A prize pot of 10 million US dollars (€8.5m) will be on offer, with champions each receiving 150,000 dollars (€127,562).

Grand Slam Track, the athletics series founded by four-time Olympic sprint champion Michael Johnson, last week filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States following cash flow problems and poor attendances.

Speaking of his organisation’s new competition, World Athletics president Coe said: “We have to do this well. This isn’t something that can be a happy accident or it’ll be OK on the night.

“We’ve got a team of over 20 people who at this moment are working on that and they’ll work through Christmas on it and they’ll work right up to the last minute.

“There is a responsibility to make sure that you’ve got a business plan that is solid: a plan A and a bulletproof plan B.

“You’ve got to execute really well and if you don’t then the risk is always going to be that the group you most want to take with you, the athletes, are put at risk.

“There’s no guarantee about Ultimate but my goodness we will do everything we possibly can to make sure that we deliver something that moves the sport in the right direction.” 

Grand Slam Track launched this year with meets in Kingston, Jamaica and the US cities of Miami and Philadelphia.

But the fourth and final event of 2025 – scheduled for Los Angeles in June – was cancelled amid financial issues and money owed to athletes.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows a company to restructure its debts in order to stay in business, and Johnson has not yet given up on the venture.

Asked if there was anything World Athletics could do to prevent Grand Slam Track from attempting to continue, Coe replied: “I don’t want to get into the embers of this.

“But we do create the calendar, we have to police the calendar, we have to make sure that when there are fresh events that they come to the table with the kind of credentials, the kind of assets that I’ve talked about.

“There’s a responsibility to do that and I think probably going forward that is something we will look at in greater depth.

“Over the next few years there are going to be lots of different and new things, and I welcome that.

“But it has to be suffused in a realistic proposition that you have stuff that is fireproof. It’s got to be sustainable.”