Grand Slam Track canceled the final meet of its first season, in Los Angeles, leaving the host of the 2028 Olympics and the country's second-largest city without a major track meet this summer.
The news Thursday about the abrupt scrubbing of the meet, scheduled for the last weekend in June at Drake Stadium, combines with USA Track and Field's recent decision to take an event set at the same stadium for earlier in June — the LA Grand Prix — off the calendar.
USATF CEO Max Siegel told The Associated Press that the federation pulled its event because it was not viable to hold two major track meets at the same venue in LA in the span of three weeks.
Grand Slam Track founder Michael Johnson said “the decision to conclude the inaugural Grand Slam Track season is not taken lightly, but one rooted in a belief that we have successfully achieved the objectives we set out to in this pilot season.”
He cited a shift in the global economic landscape as the reason for canceling the LA event, which will be part of the league's 2026 calendar.
Siegel said leaders at USATF “understand the significance of the (LA) market,” and that there are plans for leaders to meet later this summer to coordinate the future of track there and throughout the United States, starting in 2026.
“It highlights the complicated way the (sport) works, and how difficult it is to financially sustain track meets,” Siegel said. “The only way to do it in a sustainable way is collaboration and partnerships.”
In the short term, USATF is looking to find meets for a handful of athletes who still need to reach standards or collect points to qualify for world championships later this year and were planning on competing in Los Angeles.
The news was far from what Olympic and track leaders were hoping as they lead in to the first Summer Games in the United States since 1996 in a city that, 12 years before that, put Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Evelyn Ashford and others in the sports spotlight.
Johnson raised around $30 million to launch Grand Slam Track this spring, promising a new way of doing track — involving a group of runners under contract racing twice over a weekend and focusing more on where they finished than actual times.
Among the top athletes he signed were Olympic champions Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas, though two other American track stars, Sha'Carri Richardson and Noah Lyles, did not race in the league.
The league said Kenny Bednarek and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden are the league's “Racers of the Year,” having won three straight slam championships each.
The first three events, in Kingston, Jamaica, Miami and Philadelphia, doled out about $9.45 million, with another $3 million expected to be paid in L.A. Bonuses were expected to go to season-long winners of the categories.
AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
FILE Former U.S. sprinter Michael Johnson arrives at the Laureus Sports Awards ceremony in Madrid, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)
Russia’s nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile system has entered active service, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday, as negotiators continue to search for a breakthrough in peace talks to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Troops held a brief ceremony to mark the occasion in neighboring Belarus where the missiles have been deployed, the ministry said. It did not say how many missiles had been deployed or give any other details.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier in December that the Oreshnik would enter combat duty this month. He made the statement at a meeting with top Russian military officers, where he warned that Moscow will seek to extend its gains in Ukraine if Kyiv and its Western allies reject the Kremlin’s demands in peace talks.
The announcement comes at a critical time for Russia-Ukraine peace talks. U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Zelenskyy at his Florida resort Sunday and insisted that Kyiv and Moscow were “closer than ever before” to a peace settlement.
However, negotiators are still searching for a breakthrough on key issues, including whose forces withdraw from where in Ukraine and the fate of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, one of the 10 biggest in the world. Trump noted that the monthslong U.S.-led negotiations could still collapse.
Putin has sought to portray himself as negotiating from a position of strength as Ukrainian forces strain to keep back the bigger Russian army.
At a meeting with senior military officers Monday, Putin emphasized the need to create military buffer zones along the Russian border. He also claimed that Russian troops were advancing in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine and pressing their offensive in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
Moscow first used the Oreshnik, which is Russian for “hazelnut tree,” against Ukraine in November 2024, when it fired the experimental weapon at a factory in Dnipro that built missiles when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
Putin has praised the Oreshnik’s capabilities, saying that its multiple warheads, which plunge toward a target at speeds up to Mach 10, are immune to being intercepted.
He warned the West that Moscow could use it against Ukraine’s NATO allies who've allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
Russia’s missile forces chief has also declared that the Oreshnik, which can carry conventional or nuclear warheads, has a range allowing it to reach all of Europe.
Intermediate-range missiles can fly between 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,400 miles). Such weapons were banned under a Soviet-era treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, Russian troops line up at a base in Belarus where the Oreshnik missile system was deployed in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, Russian solders camouflage one of the trucks of the Russia's Oreshnik missile system with a net during training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, A Russia's Oreshnik missile system is seen during a training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, A Russia's Oreshnik missile system is seen during a training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, A Russia's Oreshnik missile system is seen during a training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
