{"id":7385,"date":"2024-11-27T15:59:46","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T15:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/grand-slam-track-michael-johnson-says-i-think-i-can-save-track-not-track-and-field\/"},"modified":"2024-11-27T15:59:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T15:59:46","slug":"grand-slam-track-michael-johnson-says-i-think-i-can-save-track-not-track-and-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/grand-slam-track-michael-johnson-says-i-think-i-can-save-track-not-track-and-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Slam Track: Michael Johnson says &#8216;I think I can save track, not track and field&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The biggest call Johnson has made is excluding half the sport of athletics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Great Britain&#8217;s Jazmin Sawyers believes Grand Slam Track cannot achieve the change it seeks without including field events.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The European indoor long jump champion told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/olympics\/2024\/08\/10\/jazmin-sawyers-michael-johnson-plan-shake-up-athletics-flaw\/\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">the Telegraph<span class=\"visually-hidden ssrcss-1f39n02-VisuallyHidden e16en2lz0\">, <!-- -->external<\/span><\/a>: &#8220;[Johnson] talks about revolutionising the sport, but in its current iteration that&#8217;s not happening. The sport is athletics, that&#8217;s the sport that&#8217;s given him the life that he has.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Meanwhile, the USA&#8217;s two-time reigning Olympic discus champion Valarie Allman defended field eventers as athletes who &#8220;want to compete the most&#8221; and hopes new competitions &#8220;recognise that track and field is a total package&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In response to the criticism which followed that decision, Johnson said: &#8220;I love this sport. But I have had time to reconcile the fact that if we continue to just do the same thing, tell people that &#8216;you should love this&#8217; or &#8216;you should understand this&#8217; &#8211; that doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Grand Slam Track is track, that is what we&#8217;re doing. I am going to save what I think I can save; I think I can save track, I don&#8217;t think I can save track and field. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Putting the two together works at the Olympics and World Championships, but I&#8217;m not sure it works when you&#8217;re trying to create a professional sport outside of those global competitions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/athletics\/articles\/crln646n5g6o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The biggest call Johnson has made is excluding half the sport of athletics. Great Britain&#8217;s Jazmin Sawyers believes Grand Slam Track cannot achieve the change it seeks without including field events. The European indoor long jump champion told the Telegraph, external: &#8220;[Johnson] talks about revolutionising the sport, but in its current iteration that&#8217;s not happening. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport-africa","category-world-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7387,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385\/revisions\/7387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}