Clayton joins Michael Johnson’s list of legends

RUSHELL CLAYTON is the latest Jamaican to sign on to compete in the inaugural Grand Slam Track League.

The series of track events, put on by sprinting legend Michael Johnson, pits 96 athletes across 12 distances four times per year.

The league will host four ‘Slams’ from April to September, with eight athletes competing in one of 12 event groups.

At the beginning of the year, four athletes combine to make a group of Grand Slam racers. Those groups, amounting to some 48 athletes, will face challenges from other groups of athletes whose performances throughout the year allow them to unlock a lane and become Grand Slam challengers.

Each athlete is expected to compete twice over the course of a weekend.

Event categories

The events are broken down into short sprints, short hurdles, long sprints, long hurdles, short distance, and long distance.

Short sprints are made up of 100- and 200-metre events, while short hurdles include the 100- and 110-metre hurdles

Long sprints are the 200 metres and 400 metres, while the long hurdles include the 400-metre hurdles.

The short distance is categorised by the 800 metres and the 1,500 metres, while the long distance is split into the 3,000 and 5,000 metres.

Grand Slam Track announced the Olympian and two-time World Championships bronze medallist’s inclusion yesterday on its Instagram page.

Clayton’s team will include Americans Shamier Little, the two-time Olympic Champion and two-time World Championship medallist and Olympian Jasmine Jones, who also claimed the NCAA indoor 60m and 400m hurdles titles.

There are still 18 athletes remaining to be named to Grand Slam groups.

Clayton, the second-fastest Jamaican over the 400m hurdles event, ran a personal best 52.51 seconds just this season.

She has also won the Diamond League series meets in Rabat and Oslo and captured the Jamaican 400m hurdles national title for the first time since 2019.

She was fifth in the 400m hurdles Olympic final in Paris and carried home the World Championship bronze medal in the 400m hurdles for Jamaica in 2019 and 2023.

Fellow Jamaicans Ackera Nugent, Olympian and national 100m hurdles record holder, as well as Olympian Roshawn Clarke, the World Under-20 and national 400m hurdles record holder, are the other two Jamaicans to have signed to Johnson’s venture.