He was supposed to change pro tracks. Now, short of money, he owes millions of athletes.

While summer began in 2024, the former Olympic Sprinter of the gold medal Michael Johnson was held in a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles which had been rented for a big announcement. Johnson said he had funded $ 30 million for a new track league, promising payments never seen before in athletics.

In a sport where even the best stars earn modest lives according to the standards of professional athletes, the piece of the Grand Slam represented a huge windfall. More than a third of this promised funding would be reserved for prices alone, a pool of more than $ 3 million per game. And the greatest winners of each of his four games would pocket $ 100,000 per competition – five times more than the first place won on the other world track circuit.

In addition, 48 competitors who signed contracts with the circuit could earn annual basic remuneration, plus a reduction in income from the granting of group licenses.

However, only 14 months after Johnson’s big announcement, and four months after the group held its first meeting in Jamaica, the Grand Slam has not yet paid many of its athletes and sellers, and Johnson admitted on Friday that the tightening of the cash flow – what a source said was about $ 13 million in the second season.

“The most cruel paradox of all this is that we have promised that the athletes would be paid fairly and quickly. However, we have trouble here with our ability to compensate them,” said a statement signed by Johnson who was Posted on social networks Friday.

Johnson also argued that he was “confident on the future of the Grand Colem track”.

NBC News spoke with four agents who represent several athletes still owed money by Grand Chelem Track, who spoke under the cover of anonymity to keep relations with the organizers. Three expressed serious doubts that the circuit would be able to stimulate enough funding for investors and the confidence of athletes to return for a second season, in 2026. A fourth said that he was ready to give the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

“My message to our athletes is, look, it’s not good,” said this agent. “But on the other hand, their intention is to pay and we will wait for them to pay us. Otherwise, they will not have a future.”

The agents, coaches and dating organizers in athletics said that their concerns concerning the problems of Grand Slam go far beyond the reception of the money of the three meetings that she organized this spring in Jamaica, Florida and Philadelphia. If the Grand Slam track has finally managed to lead to strong notes and crowds, there was hope that such a demand could encourage external investors more with deep pockets to pay money in a sport that often operates on rescue budgets compared to other professional leagues.

“It is like many people that it will be a huge means of deterrent in future efforts,” said Paul Doyle, an eminent agent of the athletes who founded and also exploited a professional circuit, the American Track League, since 2014. “It was not negative. I feel for them in the sense that they are in a difficult situation.”

The day Johnson announced the Grand Slam in 2024, he was optimistic but also admitted that the company would take time to generate money.

“If I had an investor who said:” Well, I need to be profitable in 2nd year “, I would not take their money because it is impossible”, Johnson said in 2024. “It just will not happen. Our investors came and said,” Hey, we believe in the long -term viability of this. “”

This viability has been examined since the piece of the Grand Slam canceled its fourth and last competition, scheduled for June. He sent an e-mail to the representatives of the athletes in July by informing them that the profits of their first meeting, held in Jamaica in April, would be paid by the end of this month. On August 4, a spokesperson for Grand Chelem Track said that he “provided that investors’ funds have succeeded in our account and that athletes are our absolute priority”.

From Friday’s announcement, however, the Grand Slam had paid the athletes only for the appearance costs which were due to them in Jamaica, but no money in money.

Johnson, in his declaration, suggested that the financing deficit was due to a change of circumstances “in a way out of our will”. Johnson has already said Front Office Sports that an investor had fired funds.

“Because of our strong desire to do this as quickly as possible, we offered dated payment deadlines and we could not meet them,” Johnson said in the Friday statement. “Naturally, this has led to frustration, disappointment and drawbacks for our athletes, agents and suppliers. I know that this confidence in damage.

“Although I am not unrelated to the setbacks and to overcome obstacles, as an athlete, professionally and personally, this current situation of not being able to pay our athletes and partners was one of the most difficult challenges I have ever encountered,” added the press release.

The money payments that take weeks to arrive are not unusual in athletics; If anything, they are the rule. In extreme cases, the athletes said that money payments have taken more than a calendar year to hit their accounts. The prices of the world world championships in March in China have not yet been arrived, said an agent. Delays largely stem from drug tests, as meetings are generally waiting to pay until an athlete is clean. The results usually take 10 to 30 days to return. In contracts with its “runners”, the big slam track said that drug tests would be completed within 21 days of each meeting, and that the promotional costs of an athlete and the price won would be paid within 10 days of learning to doping, according to a source.

Delays are common. But what made the big chelem different, said an agent was that there was a conviction that he had already announced funding of $ 30 million pending in receivership, ready to pay as obliged.

Instead, they are now awaiting updates by email from the organizers of the Grand Chelem.

“You don’t receive anything directly,” said an agent. “” Our goal is to pay. “Well, you can pay, but when?