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World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said he welcomed a number of innovative new track start-ups shaking up the sport’s status quo, as athletics moves to draw in more eyeballs after another successful Olympics.

Former champion sprinter Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track launches next year and investor Alexis Ohanian’s women’s-only Athlos will eye a repeat performance after a successful inaugural meet in September, both offering big pay days to lure top talent.

“We should be comforted that we’ve created a landscape that people think that it’s worth investing in our sport. They weren’t doing that five years ago,” Coe told reporters on Wednesday, following the World Athletics Council Meeting.

“I’m welcoming of all sorts of investment – within reason. And it’s important that we work as collaborators here, not competitors. I just see a rising tide as helping everybody,” the Briton added.

“I want them to be successful – I want them to add lustre to our sport and I think there’s space for everybody here.”

WA this year broke with decades of tradition by paying Olympic gold medallists in Paris, riling other international sports federations and the IOC at a politically delicate time, with Coe a contender to succeed Thomas Bach as IOC president.

“I don’t think this is complicated – it was just a broader recognition that we are only an organisation that survives financially and with a sustainable revenue stream because of the extraordinary nature of our athletes,” Coe said.

The council approved the inclusion of the mixed 4×100 metres relay for the World Athletics Relays next year in Guangzhou, and new distances for race walking, with the 20 and 35 kilometers events replaced by races over the half marathon and marathon distance.

The changes reflect the organisation’s embrace of innovation, Coe said, as World Athletics moves ahead with plans for the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in 2026, with gold medallists receiving $150,000.

The three-day competition is designed to address what Coe reluctantly described as the sport’s “fallow year” without the quadrennial Olympics or biannual World Championships, and is “unashamedly designed for television.”

The absence of a handful of key events from the programme, however, including shot put, discus, women’s hammer, men’s triple jump, 10,000 metres and 3,000 metres steeplechase, has frustrated fans and athletes alike.

“We don’t have that concentration of roughly a billion eyeballs the way that we do with an Olympic Games or two World Championships,” said Coe.

“It’s just not possible nor should we attempt to put every discipline into a three-hour format over three nights. We have consulted probably more extensively on this than we have on almost anything.”

ABOUT GRAND SLAM TRACK

GRAND SLAM TRACK is a professional track and field league that will feature head-to-head races between the world’s top athletes:
★ Founded by: Former Olympic champion sprinter Michael Johnson
★ Season: The first season will run from April to September 2025
★ Events: Four annual Slams will take place between April and September
★ Athletes: 48 Racers will compete in all four Slams, and 48 Challengers will compete in individual Slams
★ Categories: Racers will be assigned to one of six categories: short and long sprints, short and long hurdles, and short and long distance
★ Prize money: The prize pot for each Slam will be split, ranging from $100,000 for first place to $10,000 for eighth place
★ Host cities: The first host cities are Kingston and Miami

The league aims to increase competition and rivalries between athletes, and to ensure that athletes are financially rewarded.

ABOUT WOMEN’S-ONLY ATHLOS

Alexis Ohanian is redoubling his investments in women’s sports.

The Reddit co-founder has set his sights on innovating the world’s oldest sport, track, and instead of just cutting a check, the serial entrepreneur’s early-stage venture capital firm 776 provided the funding and the planning to create a new and original kind of professional meet with Athlos.

The women-only track competition, which Ohanian described in a “lazy VC pitch” as the Penn Relays meets Lollapalooza, included six races:

• 100 meter
• 100 meter hurdles
• 200 meter
• 400 meter
• 800 meter
• 1,500 meter

The maiden edition of the event in New York City attracted a sell-out crowd of more than 5,000 fans and 36 of the fastest women in the world, including U.S. Olympians Gabby Thomas and Masai Russell, who both took home gold in Paris.

Ohanian wants to make meet an annual occasion on the sports calendar, handed out an unprecedented amount of prize money to female athletes, whose sport typically fades from public attention after the summer Olympics.

✓ The three dozen women competed for a record $663,000 pot of prize money.
✓ Each winner earned $60,000, double the amount awarded in track and field’s most prestigious Diamond League meets in Europe.
✓ Second- and third-place finishers took home $25,000 and $10,000 a piece.
✓ Besides this prize money, 10 percent of revenue generated from the meet, including ticket sales, is distributed among the athletes.

Sound like fun? That vibe is the business plan. It’s how Ohanian figures to keep sports fans engaged with women’s track every year. “These athletes are special. They are phenomenal, some of the fastest humans on the planet,” Ohanian told Inc. ahead of the meet. “They shouldn’t disappear outside of the Olympics.”

Athlos is trying to hit the reset button and tap into that $20 billion running market amid a boom in women’s sports.

That the Reddit co-founder is a fan of women’s sports is not surprising. Not only is Ohanian married to Serena Williams, one of the biggest names in tennis and sport, he was the founding owner of the Los Angeles NWSL team Angel City FC.

Ohanian welcomes the competition. Seeing others investing in the space means that Athlos is doing something right, he says. “As an entrepreneur, there’s no better feeling than knowing–even in your earliest days–you’re already starting to move things and move markets,” he explains. “I don’t want to ever be doing something where I don’t feel like there’s a gravitational pull.”