2024 has been the year of Gabby Thomas. Her three gold medals at the Paris Olympics made her the most decorated track athlete of the 2024 Games and instantly catapulted her into mega-star status. Since then, she’s modeled at Fashion Week and sat courtside at WNBA games, and she’s set to be one of the featured athletes on the second season of Netflix’s Sprint.
Despite all of her accomplishments, Thomas still had one box to check before her hectic but rewarding year came to close: organize a lucrative women’s track event. So when she received a raucous ovation from an American crowd at Athlos NYC, the event that she helped produce, it came as no surprise—but that didn’t make it any less sweet.
“It’s a really incredible feeling. It has been a long time coming and it’s really incredible to see it come to fruition,” Thomas says. “It’s just a great celebration of all the hard work we’ve put in this season. All the work we’ve put in to support and invest in women’s sports and this really showcased that.”
That was precisely the scene that Thomas and Alexis Ohanian—whose 776 venture capital firm founded Athlos—envisioned when they announced the all-women’s track event in April. The inaugural meet took place Thursday at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island in New York City in front of a passionate, VIP-heavy crowd. It didn’t look like, feel like or feature the fare of a typical track and field competition.
Athlos held just six races—the 100-meter dash, 200, 400, 100-meter hurdles, 800 and 1,500—with six women competing in each event. The star-studded field of athletes, which hold 30 collective Olympic medals between them, competed for a record-setting purse, totaling $110,000 per race with $60,000 awarded to the winner.
Though the seismic prize money sent shockwaves around the sport, it was all part of Ohanian’s plan, who cites Formula One’s Miami Grand Prix as an event he sought to emulate. The Reddit founder already has an established history of investing into women’s sports, beginning with the NWSL’s Angel City, and he followed that blueprint when developing Athlos alongside CMO Kayla Green.
The first order of business? Approaching the athletes to see what they felt was missing from their experience at events.
“I have the eyes of a child when I look at a lot of these other sports, because I just have to ask a lot of dumb questions to learn,” Ohanian says. “The reason why some of the most impressive, generational tech companies have been built is because the founders didn't take the way it’s always been done for an answer. They asked, Well, why? Why is it done that way? What are we actually trying to solve and how do we get there? What's the best way to do it? Turns out that works really well in sports too, and what's so important is that the people we are talking to are the athletes.”
Thomas was among the first of those athletes to answer those questions and Ohanian instantly knew he wanted the five-time Olympic medalist and Harvard grad to be the face of Athlos. The 27-year-old became a pivotal figure in the communication between Ohanian and the women competing, relaying ideas on how to make the event an end-of-the-season celebration.
“Normally, track meets, they're all about track, right? And they're just about sitting in your seats and watching the race,” Thomas says. “And this is about celebrating track, celebrating the runners, celebrating what we're experiencing. It’s an experience for the spectators. And I think track really needs that. Other sports have it, and I love going to other sporting events. I hope people can feel the same way about track.”
Thomas, who finished second in the 200-meter dash Thursday behind Olympic bronze medalist Brittany Brown, is right to describe Athlos as exactly that: an experience. During the event, a stage loomed alongside the main straight of the track; it later hosted each of the six race-winners and a concert by Grammy-winning musical artist Megan Thee Stallion. Multi-colored lights danced around the historic stadium throughout the night, thanks largely to neon-colored CrowdSync wristbands worn by fans, and DJ D-Nice kept the crowd energized. It felt more like a musical festival than a track meet.
every track meet needs to be like @athlos . end of discussion
— Gabby Thomas (@itsgabbyt) September 27, 2024
For the runners, the festivities began earlier in the week. They were given the rockstar treatment, complete with a billboard in Times Square, a trip to the Empire State Building (which lit up purple and pink Thursday to commemorate the inaugural event) and a full glam experience from WYN Beauty for hair and makeup prior to the competition. When the athletes arrived on the scene at Icahn Stadium, they got the chance to flex their personal style with a red carpet entrance. Before the races, runners received individual introductions complete with sparkling lights and walk-out songs.
“We don’t get this at the Diamond League [events] we compete in…” Puerto Rico’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, who won the 100-meter hurdles, says. “...[On Wednesday], we got to just go out and just be girls. Take pictures, take videos and just have fun. It was something new… Look at everybody here just for us only.”
For Brown—who earned $85,000 for her win in the 200 and second-place finish in the 100—the respect and care put into her experience at the event meant just as much as the massive payday.
“I think that’s important just as much as the money. Show me that you care,” she says. “I do a lot for this. I invest a lot in this, a lot of time and money. So I just want that.”
Brittany Brown with the ATHLOS 200m!
— ATHLOS (@athlos) September 27, 2024
Fresh off her Olympic bronze, @brittanyshamere showcased her incredible speed and is officially an ATHLOS CHAMP! ⭐️#AthlosNYC #Athlos2024 pic.twitter.com/iFJzHC1cuW
That care and accessibility extended all the way out to the fans, who stayed at the end of the six races to watch Megan Thee Stallion perform—another way that organizers hoped would entice fans to come and support the action on track.
“People might just come to see Megan Thee Stallion and end up becoming a track fan. It’s so empowering. And at the end of the day, I’m just glad to be a part of that history, just because I feel like people only know about track during the Olympics,” says Paris Olympics gold medalist Masai Russell, who finished third in a stacked 100-meter hurdles field Thursday. “So now that there’s other meets that are incorporating outside things to draw the regular general public…it’s like, all right, this isn’t just an every four years thing. This is a job that people are doing on a consistent basis, that you want to watch, you want to tune into and we could possibly invest into.”
Faith Kipyegon, the world record holder in the 1,500 and an all-time great distance runner, had a packed schedule in recent months, winning two medals in Paris and another Diamond League title just two weeks ago. Still, she felt called to make the trip to New York for the first time.
“It’s something to motivate young girls and motivate the next generation,” Kipyegon said after winning Thursday’s 1500. “It’s something special to see a women’s only event. It’s just so motivating.”
Though she felt the calling like many of the other competitors to represent for all of women’s track, Kipyegon admitted that the $60,000 she earned for the win was more than a welcome bonus. With guaranteed payouts for every participant, in addition to receiving a share of 10% of the event’s revenue, the financial component upped the stakes for those on the track.
“I was thinking about [the prize money] the last 100. I’m not gonna lie,” Alexis Holmes said after a runner-up finish to Marileidy Paulino in the 400. “I’m like alright, if we can’t win first, we’re securing second. I definitely had it in the back of my mind but it’s awesome that [Alexis] is valuing us that much to give us such a large prize pot because you don’t see that in track and field.”
The legendary @Kipyegon_Faith claims her spot as the the ATHLOS 1500m champion! 🏅👑#AthlosNYC #Athlos2024 pic.twitter.com/lZLIEZcR8N
— ATHLOS (@athlos) September 27, 2024
Athlos has already put the rest of the track world on notice. The Diamond League announced just last Wednesday that it was upping its purse to $500,000 for each of its 14 regular season meets in 2025. At the Diamond League final, the prize money will range from $60,000 to $100,000 per event. In 2024, winners earned just $10,000 and Diamond League final winners collected $30,000—a figure Ohanian noted when creating Athlos.
“I didn’t run some algorithm. I just said, O.K., what is the top prize you could win at the end of a long season for being the very best? 30 grand? S***, I’ll just double it,” he says. “It was not sophisticated at all, but the No. 1 thing is the cash, the money. This is one of those things where I’m just looking at it as a businessman. Here’s an opportunity to immediately create something with legitimacy, simply by doubling the top prize.”
The arrival of Athlos coincides with a boom in women’s sports overall, with attendance records and revenue spikes in leagues like the WNBA and the NWSL. Track has long been a sport where women and men have competed alongside one another, at the same time and at the same events.
“I think the definition of crazy is doing the same thing, expecting new results,” former Olympian sprinter and broadcaster Sanya Richards-Ross says. “We see the WNBA, we see women’s soccer doing so well. I think it’s smart. Maybe this will inspire an all-men’s league. I don’t know what the future holds, but what I can say is that I think it’s a very unique and special opportunity.”
As for Ohanian, the father of two daughters and husband of 23-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams, the decision to feature solely women is somewhat personal.
“I’m still riding that wave from 2019. I can’t tell you how many people told me I was going to lose all of my money starting Angel City,” he says. “I love continuing to prove all those people so wrong with this ascent of women’s sports.”
And as Ohanian says, this first event is just the beginning. Though there are no concrete plans as of Thursday, the goal for organizers is to have the meet return to NYC on an annual basis and bring the format to other cities where the appetite for track is ripe.
If the reaction of Thomas and the rest of the athletes that competed Thursday is any indication, this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Athlos.
“It shows what’s possible. It shows what we can do,” Thomas says. “It shows how fun it can be to show up and support. Track meets should be about this. Women showing up to the line and then just competing. This is something that can continue and we can do it next year and the year after that.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Athlos NYC Didn’t Feel Like a Track Meet—and That’s What Made It a Success.
