Making sense of the track and field fame game: Olympic 2024

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Sprint hurdler Grant Holloway ticks all the boxes so why isn’t he a household name?

It’s hard to find an athlete who is enjoying as much success right now than Grant Holloway. In Paris he added Olympic 110m hurdles gold to the three world titles he won in Doha 2019, Eugene 2022 and Budapest 2023. Aged 26, he holds the world indoor 60m hurdles record and Aries Merritt’s outdoor mark of 12.80 is seemingly within his grasp.

Articulate and engaging, he appears to be the complete athlete – a sponsor’s dream – but he doesn’t feel like one. “The USATF doesn’t want my talent. I’m like the lost kid on Toy Story,” he said in Paris, soon after winning Olympic gold. “I get thrown in a corner and I’m lost for six months.”

Olympic

Holloway believes he excels in one of the hardest events in athletics (no one owns more sub-13-second performances over 110m hurdles) and he adds: “I think I’m one of the top five athletes in this sport and yet I get treated lesser than (that). I’m the one winning world titles day in, day out but I don’t have a watch deal. I put USA on the map and make things happen but I don’t get some of the sponsorships that some athletes do who haven’t done what I’ve done.”

Holloway was speaking a little over an hour or two after winning Olympic gold, too. “I think I have the full package… personality… I know how to talk. But I just think they (USATF) put their energy elsewhere and I think it’s unfair. But,” he sighed, “I play the hand I’m dealt.”

In a sport of many sports, one of athletics’ great injustices is that some athletes are able to earn more money and gain more fame than others.

Similar to Holloway, I think of Miltiadis Tentoglou, the Greek long jumper who has won the last two Olympic titles and is reigning and multiple world indoor and outdoor and European indoor and outdoor champion.

Or how about Nafi Thiam, the Belgian heptathlete who won her third consecutive Olympic title in Paris and yet is rarely mentioned in the same breath as, say, Mondo Duplantis, Noah Lyles, Sha’Carri Richardson and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone as one of the sport’s global superstars. “Thiam is an utter phenomenon,” the Guardian reported during the Paris Games. “Were she American, she would be one of the most famous athletes on the planet.”

As Holloway would agree, being American doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. If anything, athletes in the United States team probably have to fight harder than most to make a name for themselves in a squad packed with Olympic medallists.

On the flipside, I’d argue there is much to be said for representing a much smaller country. The population of Olympic triple jump champion Thea LaFond’s home of Dominica, for example, is roughly the same size as the number of spectators in the Stade de France when she won gold on August 3. Yet you can guarantee every single person from Dominica will know her and she is certain to inherit the keys to her island after becoming the nation’s first Olympic champion.

Similarly, Letsile Tebogo was swamped with fans when he landed home in Botswana after the Games. Like LaFond, the Olympic 200m champion will be a household name in his southern African nation. Holloway, meanwhile, has a much larger challenge when it comes making a name for himself in the US sporting world.

“I think it definitely helps when you’re country is backing you,”

 told AW when this was put to him at the Zurich Diamond League this month. “The United States has so many great athletes.”

Nationality aside, another big factor is surely the event you specialize in. The 100m, mile, and the marathon are known as the ‘glamour events’. In comparison, Grant Holloway’s sprint hurdles isn’t the most popular. But the athletics fame game is riddled with unofficial rules like this being broken. McLaughlin-Levrone and athletes like Karsten Warholm and Femke Bol have managed to become pretty well known, of course, despite specialising in the 400m hurdles.

There are no doubt some field eventers reading this, too, who will think “Holloway should try being a thrower”. Some athletes in those disciplines, such as shot put world record-holder Ryan Crouser, have become pretty well known, but generally they struggle compare to track athletes.

Not all track athletes are equal either. Phenomenally fast distance runners from east Africa, for instance, often go about their business in relative anonymity, whereas runners from the Western world who are particularly active on social media are able to gain more sponsorship deals despite being much slower than their African counterparts.

“Instead of waiting for opportunities, you’ve got to go and make them for yourself,” Holloway says. “That’s one thing this sport has taught me over my five or six years in it.

“If I waited for opportunities to come, I’d be waiting until the end of my career.

“I’ve just got to be who I am, be a trailblazer, and make my opportunities. So instead of playing the waiting game, I want to put myself in the driving seat.”

The athletics fame game is a complicated jigsaw of factors. Sometimes, in the case of Holloway, there is little rhyme or reason why an athlete hasn’t reached the level of fame that we might expect. Maybe his time will come. Although, as he says, he will probably have to create it himself.

Contrasting fortunes for GB age-group athletes at world champs

Following British athletics’ best medal tally in Paris since the Los Angeles Games of 1984, there have been mixed fortunes for age-group athletes.

At the World Masters Champs in Gothenburg, Britain won an incredible 187 medals. Of course there are far more medal opportunities due to multiple age group categories, but nevertheless it’s a huge success and placed the Brits third on the medals table behind United States and Germany.

At the recent World Under-20 Championships in Lima, however, the Brits won just one silver and three bronze medals (placing 24th on the medals table), making it the first time since 2004 where the team went home without a gold.

Cause for concern when it comes to LA 2028 and beyond?

An English National in September!?

Good luck to athletes and organizers at the rescheduled English National Cross Country Championships at Weston Park on Saturday (Sept 14). The historic event was canceled in February due to flooding on the car parks and the English Cross Country Association was faced with the tricky decision of whether to reschedule for an unusual time of year or simply abandon the idea of having a championship in 2024.

I think they made the right decision and hopefully clubs will support it by turning up to battle for honours in what remains one of the greatest cross-country races in the world.

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