Three Nights In Miami ⏱️

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, and Audrey Allen

Double Trouble In Miami 🌴

We’re officially on second base now, halfway through the yearlong journey around the diamond that is the Grand Slam Track series (and all the questionable baseball metaphors that come with it).

Despite competing directly with the MLB itself and one of the more popular Kentucky Derbys in recent memory, the Miami edition of GST felt like it earned, and deserved, its spot on the sporting calendar in only its second iteration. On TV, viewers were treated to a tighter, brighter, and more lively presentation than Kingston, with less dead air and fewer broadcasting snafus. The smaller Miramar venue offered a more pleasing visual than the far-from-full National Stadium in Jamaica—it’s likely that fewer tickets overall were sold, the 5,000-seat Ansin Sports Complex suited the crowd better. The unique format still needs explaining for newcomers, but viewers who tuned in for both meets should be able to follow along easily by now, assuming you don’t struggle with very basic arithmetic.

And while times matter less than other track and field competitions, it certainly didn’t hurt to see some seriously fast marks thrown down. Miami’s friendly tailwinds proved far more pleasant for the sprinters than Kingston’s blustery gusts, and a bit more front-running bravery in the distance events led to three world-leading marks.

Overall, GST seems to have avoided a sophomore slump—in fact, athletes and meet organizers alike seemed to have adjusted and improved based on the feedback the first meet generated. And when juxtaposed with the second Diamond League meet in Shanghai (more on that below), it’s hard to argue that the new league hasn’t earned a place alongside its competitors.

Here’s more of what we learned from doubling back on the series that’s built for doubling:

Some athletes are perfect for the format. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone makes sense as the poster child for GST for a lot of reasons. She’s not just one of the biggest names in the sport who brings record-setting attention to every race; she gets the chance to showcase her world-beating abilities in two events at once. The World Championships schedule and three rounds of racing make a 400m/400mH double tough, and the one-day DL format makes it nearly impossible. But GST is custom built for the athletes who can thrive in multiple events without looking out of place, and SML following up a world-leading 52.07 hurdles performance with a conservatively-paced 49.69 flat 400m the next was a sight to see.

Josh Kerr, who loves a championship 1500m but still has the footspeed to contend in the 800m, reminded the world this weekend why his early signing with the league was so exciting. With the early-season hip injuries and illness in his rearview, Kerr kicked his way to a 3:34.71 1500m win via a 53.34 final 400m then doubled back to his first 800m PB in nearly six years, running 1:45.01 to improve on his mark from Kingston by over five seconds.

Non-GST sprinters probably don’t love the fact that the league forces athletes to learn how to double… because that necessity has turned both Kenny Bednarek and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden into world-class threats in their respective weaker events. In fairness to Bednarek, he’s been honing his chops in the 100m for the last several seasons, even making the Olympic final last summer, but now he feels nearly equally lethal in both events.

Jefferson-Wooden, on the other hand, didn’t run a single 200m last season, and now she’s lurking in Gabby Thomas’s shadow with a 22.15 PB, good enough to defeat Thomas, the Kingston long sprints Slam champion (Slampion?) in the short sprints standings.

Others learned lessons from Kingston. After losing her first 400m in over a year in Kingston, Marileidy Paulino wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. A few weeks of training later and she fairly handily dispatched rival Salwa Eid Naser in both the 400m and the 200m, leaving nothing up to chance in the latter event as she clocked a personal best and Dominican national record of 22.30. Paulino is one of the fiercest competitors in the game, and while the winning time was a little slower (48.67 in Kingston vs. 49.21 in Miami), Paulino looked to be in the driver’s seat the entire homestretch.

It’s hard to say if Agnes Ngetich learned a lesson or simply is getting more comfortable racing on the track, but the road specialist still was able to muster the kick that evaded her in Kingston against Ejgayehu Taye. This time, when Medina Eisa gave Ngetich a challenge in the final lap of the 5000m, she was able to respond in kind and pick up a critical 12 points thanks to a 29.15 final 200m. Then, in the 3000m, she closed even faster (29.08), and while that was only good for third place, Ngetich had still mustered up enough points to walk away with the Slam title. It’s also worth noting that, despite the long distance fellas’ proclivity for jogging, both the women’s 3000m and 5000m were won in world-leading times.

And it seems like the meet organizers learned something else about the long distance fields: throwing a bunch of sub-3:50 milers at Grant Fisher will force him to work for his second $100,000 check. The 3000m starting slow as molasses meant that Challenger Andrew Coscoran was able to sneak a win with a 25.78 final 200m, the only sub-26 finish in the field, and while Fisher still finished second, he couldn’t play the 5000m quite as strategically to secure his bad. Instead, he learned a valuable lesson of his own: if you close your final 1600m in 3:57, no one will be able to hang with you. The chess match continues, and Grant’s on his way back to the bank.

Not winning can still be life-changing. For unsponsored or minimally-sponsored Slam competitors, the shiny $100,000 first prize isn’t the only reason to show up. For guys like Chris Robinson (second in the long hurdles), Jamal Britt (third in the short hurdles), or Jacory Patterson (second in the long sprints, winning the 400m in 43.98), the opportunity to pick up tens of thousands of dollars with a high finish could be transformative. Patterson will hopefully be able to clock fewer overnight shifts at UPS, for starters.

Running well as a Challenger can also mean an invite back, which can be lucrative as well. Dylan Beard, Ackeem Blake, Andrenette Knight, and Cooper Teare must’ve impressed Kyle Merber in Kingston, because they all got the invite back for Miami. In Knight’s case, she’s now $80,000 richer thanks to second-place finish last weekend on top of her third-place finish in Jamaica.

The short hurdles is rapidly becoming a fan-favorite. In the Short Hurdles category, the entrants are living up to the “only the fastest” mantra, thanks in large part to Masai Russell’s stunning American record performance on Friday evening. Already the Olympic champ, Russell is now the second fastest woman of all time with her 12.17 performance in the 100m hurdles, inheriting the record-holder title from fellow Kentucky Wildcat Keni Harrison, who finished fourth in a season’s best 12.40.

Right on her heels, Tia Jones became the third woman ever under 12.20, with her 12.19 run, knocking an incredible 0.21 seconds off her lifetime best. And, somehow, none of the three women went home with the top prize, as Ackera Nugent’s 12.34/11.09 double put her one point ahead of Russell in the standings. It’s also worth noting that Nugent’s winning time in the flat event puts her at No. 12 in the world in the flat 100 meters this season.

In the men’s event, Trey Cunningham’s debut as a Challenger went about as well as he could’ve hoped, as he won both the 110m hurdles and the 100m in stunning fashion. Cunningham equalled his lifetime best in the hurdles, clocking a 13.00 mark that would’ve been a world lead had fellow American Cordell Tinch not put down an incredible race on the other side of the world a few hours prior. In the 100m, Cunningham’s 10.17 was a lifetime best, and despite also running PBs in both events, Miami champion Sasha Zhoya was relegated to second place.

The two-event format in the hurdles adds more uncertainty than perhaps any other, and thus, more excitement. Zhoya and Cunningham, in particular, embraced the competition-forward nature of the event with a lot of pre-race trash talk over who had better footspeed. And it’s not crazy to suggest that all this extra speedwork is yielding historically fast times overall—let’s not forget that Tinch was a Challenger in Kingston as well.

With season-long narratives beginning to build and most of the kinks worked out, GST has become less a novelty and more a legitimate measure of the state of the sport. And now that there are five double champions, the gauntlet has been thrown down for a seasoned Racer or hungry Challenger to try and upset the pecking order. And with Philly three full weeks away, there’s plenty of time for anyone leaving Miami unsatisfied to manifest a change.

You can get your tickets for GST: Philadelphia here to catch all the action live from Franklin Field from May 30th through June 1st.

Cordell Tinch’s Shanghai Surprise 😱

If you found yourself sleeping in Saturday (and you’re reading this newsletter in a U.S. time zone), you may have missed the second China-based Diamond League meet of the season. And that’s a shame! While cracking open a cold one with the boys for three afternoons straight is a great way to watch GST, curling up on your couch with a coffee for a quick two-hour showcase of the best of track and field is a great reminder that the DL is still a very entertaining and easily digestible sports product.

There were a fair few world leads posted in Shanghai. Perhaps the most notable came in the women’s 800m where Tsige Duguma ran an impressive 1:56.64 to break the Ethiopian record and reminded the world that her underwhelming World Indoor performance was a bit of a fluke. Duguma may be the reigning Olympic silver medalist but she sure isn’t running like some aiming for second in Tokyo.

Karsten Warholm cruised to a 47.28 over the 400m hurdles, a performance that likely would’ve been closer to the 47-second barrier had he not stutter-stepped a late hurdle. He and Alison dos Santos continue their long-distance tango two continents apart, but they’ll finally meet head to head, alongside Olympic champ Rai Benjamin in Oslo. And while they weren’t world leads, two of the most memorable performances came from a pair of up-and-coming American sprinters: Anavia Battle continued her undefeated season with a second straight win in the 200m and Chris Bailey flipped the script on Bayapo Ndori with a win in the 400m after coming up short in Xiamen.

The Diamond Leaguers also made the most of the offerings conspicuously absent from GST, delivering banger after banger of field event competition. World record holders Mondo Duplantis and Yaroslava Mahuchikh did what they do best in the vertical jumps, making the greatest pole vaulters and high jumpers in the world look like afterthoughts by comparison. The women’s shot put continues to be one of the most exciting and competitive events on the circuit, this time with Chase Jackson triumphing over last week’s winner Jessica Schilder, thanks to an incredible series of throws, the best of which soared 20.54 meters. No matter how common it becomes, we can’t take for granted how exciting it is to have Jackson, Schilder, and Sarah Mitton throwing head to head at the top of their games week after week.

Despite the litany of strong performances, only one athlete walked away from Shanghai with all the headlines and a shiny new target on his back: Cordell Tinch, who clocked an incredible 12.87 victory in the 110m hurdles.

After Grant Holloway’s uncharacteristic performance in Xiamen and subsequent withdrawal from Shanghai, there was a bit of a question mark hanging over the high hurdles heading into the weekend. Heading out of the weekend, there’s still unanswered questions, but one thing appears clear: even if Holloway is injured or otherwise hampered, Team USA will have no problem contending in the event internationally thanks to Cunningham and Tinch.

If you missed the race, it’s worth a rewatch. Tinch not only executed flawlessly, getting out well early and pulling away from the field by halfway; he also looked extremely comfortable and controlled throughout the race, and it’s not crazy to suggest that, even if Holloway were on the starting line in tip-top shape, he’d be hard-pressed to top that performance in the moment.

Tinch knocked nearly a full tenth of a second off his PB in one race and became the seventh hurdler ever under 12.90 seconds—and the first ever to do so in May. He’s now the third fastest currently active, behind fellow Americans Holloway and Devon Allen. It’s hard to say if the men’s or women’s high hurdles team is a harder team to make, but given that Olympic silver medalist Daniel Roberts is only the fifth fastest domestic hurdler at the moment, the U.S. contingent faces something of an embarrassment of riches.

In the past, Tinch has arguably been portrayed as somewhat of an underdog or, less generously, an also-ran in the event. That could be in part because of his rags-to-riches story as a football player-turned-cell phone salesman-turned-DII national champ, and it could also be due to his split focus over multiple events. He also has NCAA DII titles in the long jump and high jump, and at the last two U.S. championships, he’s gone back and forth between the homestretch and the long jump runway at the same meet.

Tinch finished an unenviable fourth at the Olympic Trials. Even if he wound up there again this year he’d still make his second U.S. team as Holloway has a bye into this year’s World Championships. But with the way he looked in Shanghai, it’s hard to see fourth place as anything but a floor, not a ceiling.

What powered the jump forward? One possible answer is that he’s lifting for the first time in his life. Another is that Tinch, a Challenger in Kingston, has been working on his flat speed for GST competitions. And a third is simply that the supremely talented 24-year-old is benefiting from finally narrowing his focus and entering his prime.

Regardless, the next time Cordell Tinch faces Grant Holloway, Trey Cunningham, or anyone else in the world, he won’t be viewed as a novelty or an insurgent: he’s now the man to beat.

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The World Relays Do Matter… Why Does It Feel Like They Don’t? 🤷

This weekend, squads of the fastest sprinters dozens of nations have to offer will descend upon Guangzhou, a sprawling city of about 20 million on southern China’s Pearl River, for the 2025 World Relays. 

These national relay teams will be vying for coveted lanes at this September’s World Championships in Tokyo, and apparently some prize money, too. But for the most part, traditionally important sporting concepts like “glory” and “victory” won't be stressed over too much. That’s because in the world of track and field relays, there’s a mighty wide chasm between the best and the rest.

Squads that know they statistically deserve to line up at Worlds (like the United States, Jamaica, Great Britain, Canada, etc.) often trot out their—still very fast!—B- or even C-teams, with a few notable exceptions. For relay squads in this category, this sojourn to Guangzhou packs all the excitement of a short business trip centered around a compulsory HR training. The stakes are high, but assuming you don’t totally step in it, there will be approximately zero fanfare if you succeed—only dire consequences if you fumble the baton.

Of course there are also national federations for whom qualifying for Worlds will be cause for rapturous celebration… the sorts of teams that will by and large just be happy to be in Tokyo, and if they upset a contender or two, that’s just gravy. These teams will bring a bit more energy to Guangzhou, but fundamentally it’s hard to get too amped up when the athletes most stoked about their performances are the ones finishing in fourth or fifth in their heats of the final in Guangzhou.

As of Tuesday evening, World Athletics hasn’t shared information on how to watch the meet for fans in the United States. But assuming that little issue is ironed out or you’re particularly handy with a VPN, you should tune in! 

For starters, there may not be full star power coming out of Team USA, but this year they’re something of an outlier. Olympic champs Letsile Tebogo and Andre de Grasse are entered on their respective 4x100ms for Botswana and Canada, and Jamaica has entered two of its fastest male sprinters: Kishane Thompson and Ackeem Blake (although TBD on who actually shows up). And even without Noah Lyles, the U.S. men will still be ably represented by Kenny Bednarek and Erriyon Knighton – if they can get the stick all the way around.

On the women’s side, the big headline is the returns of Shericka Jackson and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce after both skipped out on the relays at last summer’s Olympics. Jackson is entered on the single-gender 4x100m and SAFP is lending her name and credibility to the living experiment that is the first mixed-gender 4x100m relay.

The schadenfreude-inclined among us should also appreciate the opportunity to view a whole bunch of chaos. The 4x100m is famously fun to watch not because it offers a second look at the world’s fastest woman or man, but because it gives us a chance for the world’s fastest woman or man to look very, very silly as a botched handoff or dropped baton upsets the form charts.

Last, but not least, consider that World Athletics is trotting out another concept it’s hard to imagine anyone was clamoring for: the mixed gender 4x100m relay. Do you really want to miss what will be the de facto world record in this brand new event? Oh wait… what’s that? Records for this event won’t be recognized until the beginning of 2026, so this will only count as a “world best?” Nevertheless! We scoffed at the mixed 4x400m when it first emerged from the shared consciousness of several consultant-types hired by WA, but we’ve come around to it for the simple reason that relays are fun.

Relays in championships are a prime stage for unlikely individual heroes to emerge. All-but-crowned titans flub off handoffs or blitz through exchange zones. And star athletes generally focused only on their own performance suddenly feel accountable to a collective. Is the global debut of the mixed 4x100m going to propel the World Relays to the front of every sports page around the globe? Definitely not. But does it give existing track fans a few more minutes of potentially interesting racing to consume? Sure. And maybe that’s enough.

Bring Back The Dual Meet ⚔️

Two years ago, Lap Count Founding Father Kyle Merber asked if we should care about dual meets. CITIUS MAG’s Audrey Allen, a distance runner for UCLA, remembers that day well: 

It was the last time the UCLA vs. USC rivalry meet was at Drake Stadium. The men’s 4x400m got DQ’d for “unsportsmanlike conduct,” and you can probably spot me crutching around if you look hard enough at the video. I wish that hobbled Audrey knew that two years later she’d be writing for this newsletter and part of the Bruins squad that just upset the then-No. 1 men’s team and No. 3 women’s team in the country.

As fun as pulling out the brooms and chanting “We Run LA” as we took our victory lap was, I’m clear-eyed enough to point out that we probably won’t score higher than USC at NCAAs. Yesterday’s USTFCCCA rankings didn’t budge much for either Trojan squad, and nor should they have.

So how’d we pull it off?

It all boils down to this: a dual meet is a true test of strength across the breadth of two entire teams, whereas success at nationals can be fueled by excellence in a few concentrated areas. This begs the question: what qualifies as a better track team? The one that’s saturated with world class talent in a handful of event groups, or the one that’s got more range across the board? 

It was the first sweep for UCLA at this meet since 2013, and the first win for the women’s team since then, too. Joanna Hayes has contested the meet 14 times—she was an UCLA athlete, an assistant coach at both UCLA and USC, and now is her first year as director back at her alma mater. To say last Sunday was special is an understatement. The men’s competition came down to one point, decided by an athlete in his second meet back from injury, in the second to last competition of the day, on his final jump. My roommate threw in not one, not two, not three, but four events. Horizontal jumpers scored points in the pole vault. The meet wasn’t about the marks, yet we had our share of school records and personal bests. A close dual meet can bring out the best in an athlete, and highlight the best in our sport.

So why does the dual meet experience seem to disappear when most track and field athletes receive their high school diploma? 

UCLA and USC have the Dual Meet (91 years and counting), Cal and Stanford have the Big Meet (130 years old)… and I’m a sucker for the rule of threes, but I’m not sure if the traditional Harvard-Yale-Princeton tri-meet counts for this example. 

The people love Penn Relays because it spoon-feeds fans an easily digestible product of rallying for or against teams, and it gives athletes who might otherwise not compete in a baton-focused event the opportunity to experience the competitive high of one. As much as I hated the unparalleled lactic sensation, a part of me loved it when my high school coach told me my eight-lap run in the 3200m was actually a warm up for 4x400m. People like Graham Blanks stay for an extra NCAA cross country season because there’s not a comparable team-oriented experience in the professional ranks. Grand Slam Track is exciting because the Racers vs. Challengers format creates tension. Track and field is most popular at the Olympics because people take pride in rooting for their country. 

From an entertainment perspective, the dual meet is a simpler format to digest and that’s a good thing. You’re either wearing blue or red. There’s only one heat or there’s only one flight. Crunching the numbers to see how the team scores are shaping up becomes increasingly straightforward. 

From an athlete perspective, more of them actually have the ability to contribute to this team score. There’s a clearly-defined common enemy. You don’t feel so much like a collection of individuals competing against other collections of individuals. Team scores matter for conference championships, but outside of that track and field sometimes loses sight of the team aspect, especially if you’re not one in the spotlight as a consistent NCAA title contender. But if you’re a team that only has a rental car at nationals and not a bus or two, it’s a different story. 

A common theme of this newsletter and big-picture track and field conversations in general is to do away with the marks-oriented focus the sport has fallen into. Obsessive focus on stats and records takes away from the competitive nature and flare inherent to the stripped down, back-to-the-basics version of beating the person, or the team, next to you. 

Two meets this weekend drove that argument home—you probably watched one over the course of three days on Peacock, and you might just be hearing about the other as you read this. But at their core, only the specifics really differ. Repeat competitors can feel like old rivalries. $100K paydays or victory laps on your home track can both be life-changing. Fast times, big throws and far jumps are collateral. Just ask Masai Russell. Or Naomi Johnson. 

So what’s my call to action here? We should bring the dual meet back to the NCAA. Think: “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” but make it track and field. “The Iron Bowl” but it's actually the Iron Oval. “The Holy War” but it’s a battle between the distance powerhouses at BYU and Utah, at altitude (enough said).

To answer Kyle’s two-year-old question, the dual meet model has many benefits beyond the dramatics of a good rivalry. More teams should take advantage of it. It’s fun. It’s prideful. It’s competitive. It's historic. It’s an apt kickoff to the postseason. It’s track and field at its core. And it’s now the defining moment of my time at this program. 

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– The show must go on! Despite having no Worlds to qualify for, the USATF 5k Championships took place in Indianapolis, where Josette Andrews cruised to an impressive 10-second win in 15:05.55, and Olin Hacker timed his kick right to best the men’s field in 13:31.93.

– At this point, pretty much every NCAA record should be written in pencil. University of Washington sophomore Amanda Moll broke the outdoor pole vault record, clearing 4.76m at the Desert Heat Classic in Tucson. In front of a home crowd in Baton Rouge, Micheala Rose moved to #2 all-time in NCAA history in the 800, going 1:58.12 at the LSU Invitational. The Duke Twilight meet included a collegian-only 1500m where you could run 3:35.17 and finish fifth, which UNC’s Ethan Strand won in 3:33.22—the second fastest mark in NCAA history. And also at the Duke Twilight meet, NC State’s Grace Hartman solo’d her way into the NCAA 5000m outdoor #4 all-time spot, going 14:58.11.

– At the UIL Texas State Championships, Tate Taylor, a 17-year-old junior from San Antonio’s Harlan High School ran a wind-legal 9.92 100m to set a new national high school record. He also won the 200m in the state’s largest classification, going 20.14. Taylor’s weekend in Austin is—without exaggeration—the greatest performance by a San Antonio sportsperson since the Spurs’ 2014 NBA title run, and allows us to finally link to a Boris Diaw passing highlight video.

– The tarmac was spicy in Tokyo at the “Speed : Race” series; Harbert Kibet of Uganda won the men’s 5k in 13:00; Ethiopia’s Jemel Mekonen claimed top honors in the men’s 10k (27:10); Kenyan Caroline Nyaga ran a blistering 14:19 (tied for third-fastest ever on the roads) to win the women’s 5k; and Joy Cheptoyek gave Uganda its second win of the event, breaking the 10k tape in 30:22. 

– Ethiopia’s Lemi Berhanu (2:05:14) and Bertukan Welde (2:20:55) were your winners at the Prague Marathon. American Andrew Colley finished fifth in 2:09:46—first sub-2:10 2:09.

– The Cali (not -fornia) Marathon in Colombia, run at the just-perceptible altitude of about 3,300 feet, was won by Kenya’s Evans Mayaka (2:11:04) and Emmah Cheruto Ndiwa (2:29:26).

– Sha’Carri Richardson, Gabby Thomas, and Noah Lyles all attended Monday’s Met Gala, which is essentially the Olympics for fashionable famous people. All three looked terrific and Noah Lyles seemingly did not brandish a concealed Yu-Gi-Oh card at any point in the evening.

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