This weekend's two-day meet serves as an important check point for track and field’s hope to break out of the four-year popularity cycle.
Kenny Bednarek breaks the tape to win the men’s 100-meter final at the U.S. championships last year in Eugene, Ore. The city witnessed Carl Lewis win four Olympic gold medals, cheered Valerie Brisco-Hooks’ historic golden double and watched Edwin Moses extend his 400-meter hurdles unbeaten streak.
L.A. has history with track and field. Now when Ato Boldon, a UCLA Hall of Famer and four-time Olympic medalist for Trinidad and Tobago, looks to this weekend’s L.A. Grand Prix and the city’s future with the sport, he wonders what it holds.
“I’ve always felt like L.A. needs a signature event,” Boldon said, “and with the Olympics coming up in two years, you look at the quality of this event this weekend, and you’re like, yeah, this is the kind of meet they should have all the time. ”At the halfway mark of the Olympic quadrennium, the USA Track & Field event serves as an important checkpoint for the sport’s hope to break out of the four-year popularity cycle.
The two-day event, which begins Saturday with the women’s hammer throw at the South Bay Athletic Club, features 18 Olympic or world champions competing primarily at USC’s Allyson Felix Field. Sunday’s marquee competition beginning at 1 p.m. will be televised on NBC. With USA Track & Field building toward a home Olympics, L.A. has been a critical but stubborn market to conquer. Last year’s L.A.
Grand Prix, which would have been the third edition of the meet, was canceled in April. The decision, USA Track & Field Chief Executive Max Siegel said, came down to another meet scheduled in the same venue within the same month. Before the second Olympic ticket drop officially begins Aug. 10, LA28 announced Wednesday there will be a presale for Visa cardholders from July 29-31.
But that competing event, part of Michael Johnson’s upstart Grand Slam Track league, was canceled only weeks before it was set to take place at UCLA’s Drake Stadium, leaving L.A. without a major track competition last summer.
“We knew last year when we canceled the meet that we had every intention leading up to the Olympics to be present in the L.A. market,” Siegel said. The city knows great track. UCLA boasts legends such as Rafer Johnson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Florence Griffith-Joyner.
USC, which boasts more Olympians than any other U.S. university, had athletes win nine Olympic medals in track and field at the 2024 Games in Paris, including double gold medals for Rai Benjamin in the 400-meter hurdles and 4x400-meter relay and a 4x100-meter relay championship for TeeTee Terry. After Terry ran the second leg of the relay, Sha’Carri Richardson’s stare down at the end of her anchor leg became one of the iconic shots of the Paris Games, where 70,000 people packed Stade de France and millions more tuned in for one of the most-watched Olympics.
But the sport is back in the shadows like it always seems to be outside of Olympic years, said Boldon, now NBC Sports’ track and field analyst. There have been several attempts to penetrate the U.S. sports consciousness since the successful Paris Games. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian launched Athlos, a women’s track and field meet that began in New York City in 2024 and added a stop in London to its 2026 schedule.
Grand Slam Track, founded by the Olympic legend Johnson and touting major names including Gabby Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, filed for bankruptcy last year, after completing only three of four planned events in its first season, and is only now emerging from it. This year’s inaugural USATF Tour aims to organize the fragmented sport by streamlining the calendar and working with existing event coordinators to provide resources, including prize money and travel for top athletes, marketing and drug testing.
The tour, which was in College Station, Texas, last week for the Lone Star Grand Prix, has 17 events in 10 states.
“I feel like LA28 gives the country something to organize around,” said Siegel, who hopes track and field can rise to be among the five most popular sports in the United States. “People are paying more attention to athlete stories in anticipation of what’s going to happen on U.S. soil. ” There is no shortage of stories at the L.A. Grand Prix.
Almost everyone who matters in American track and field will be there, Boldon said. Kenny Bednarek, the silver medalist in the 200 meters in Paris, will line up in the 100 meters against Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo, who took gold in the 200 in 2024. Tara Davis-Woodhall, the reigning Olympic long jump champion, will compete in her signature event and race in the 100-meter hurdles for just the second time in the last five years.
Her husband, Hunter Woodhall, will race in the 400 meters on Saturday, when Para athletes will be among those competing in the L.A. Distance Classic at Allyson Felix Field. Richardson will run her first 100-meter race of the season. The 2024 Olympic silver medalist could be in line to end a three-decade gold medal drought in 2028.
No U.S. woman has stood atop an Olympic podium for the 100 since 1996, when Gail Devers won in Atlanta. Such a stacked field outside of an Olympic year on U.S. soil could be a sign of a changing tide for track and field, Boldon said. The L.A. Grand Prix is a gold-level event on the World Athletics Continental Tour, the second-highest tier of single-day international competition.
As athletes vie for world ranking points, the event could be a true Olympic preview two years before the Games begin at the Coliseum. Thuc Nhi Nguyen covers the Lakers and the Olympics for the Los Angeles Times. She previously covered a wide range of sports, including college sports, after joining The Times in 2019 from the Southern California News Group, where she covered UCLA, professional soccer and preps.
Because she doesn’t use her University of Washington mathematics degree for work, it makes great decoration in her parents’ Seattle home.
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