Sprint hurdler Grant Holloway ticks all the boxes, so why isn’t he famous?
It’s hard to find an athlete who is currently enjoying as much success as Grant Holloway. In Paris, he added Olympic gold in the 110m hurdles to the three world titles he won in Doha 2019, Eugene 2022 and Budapest 2023. At 26, he holds the 60m hurdles world record and Aries Merritt’s outdoor record is 12.80.
Expressive and attractive, he looks like a complete athlete, a sponsor’s dream, but he doesn’t feel like one. “USATF doesn’t want my talent. I’m like the lost child from Toy Story,” he said in Paris shortly after winning Olympic gold. “I throw myself into a corner and I’m lost for six months.”
Holloway believes she excels in one of the toughest events in track and field (no one has clocked more than 13 seconds in the 110m hurdles) and adds: get less than (that). I’m winning world titles day in and day out, but I don’t have a watch deal. I’m putting the US on the map and I’m doing everything, but I’m not getting the sponsorships that some athletes who haven’t done what I’ve done.”
Holloway was also speaking less than an hour or two after winning Olympic gold. “I think I have the whole package… personality… I know how to talk. But I just think they (USATF) are putting their energy elsewhere and I think that’s unfair. But, he sighed, I play the hand I’m dealt.
One of the biggest injustices in athletics in many sports is that some athletes are able to make more money and gain more fame than others.
Grant Holloway (Getty)
Like Holloway, I think of Miltiadis Tentoglu, the Greek long jumper who has won the last two Olympic titles and is the reigning and multiple world indoor and outdoor champion, as well as European indoor and outdoor champion.
Or how about Nafi Thiam, the Belgian heptathlete who won her third consecutive Olympic title in Paris and yet is rarely mentioned in the same breath as, say, Mondo Duplantis, Noah Lyles, Sha Kari Richardson and Sydney McLaughlin-Levron in the world of sports. the superstars. “Thiam is an absolute phenomenon.” Keeper reported during the Paris Games. “If he was American, he would be one of the most famous athletes on the planet.”
As Holloway would agree, being American doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. If anything, Team USA’s athletes will probably have to fight harder than most to make a name for themselves on a team loaded with Olympic medalists.
Otherwise, I’d argue there’s a lot to be said for representing a much smaller country. The population of Olympic triple jump champion Thea Lafond, Dominica, for example, is about the same size as the crowd at the Stade de France when she won the gold medal on August 3. However, you can guarantee that every single person in Dominica will know. he and he will definitely inherit the keys to his island after becoming the country’s first Olympic champion.
Letsile Tebogo – The best of Letsile Tebogo
Similarly, Letsile Tebogo was mobbed by fans when he landed in Botswana after the Games. Like Lafond, the Olympic 200m champion will be famous in his home country of South Africa. Meanwhile, Holloway has a much bigger challenge when it comes to making a name for himself in the US sports world.
“I think it definitely helps when your country supports you,” Holloway said AW: when this was presented to him at the Zurich Diamond League this month. “The United States has so many great athletes.”
Nationality aside, another important factor is certainly the event in which you specialize. The 100m, the mile and the marathon are known as ‘glamour events’. By comparison, Holloway’s sprint hurdles are not the most popular. But the track and field game of glory is full of unofficial rules like this one to break. McLaughlin-Levron and athletes such as Karsten Warholm and Femke Boll have managed to become quite famous, of course, despite specializing in the 400m hurdles.
Grant Holloway (Getty)
No doubt there are some field events reading this as well who will be thinking “Holloway should try being a shot putter”. Some athletes in those sports, such as world record holder Ryan Krauser, have become quite famous, but in general they struggle compared to the competitive track.
Not all athletes are equal. For example, phenomenally fast distance runners from East Africa often do their work in relative anonymity, while runners from the Western world who are particularly active on social media are able to secure more sponsorship deals despite being much slower than their African counterparts.
“Instead of waiting for opportunities, you have to go and make them for yourself,” says Holloway. “That’s something this sport has taught me over my five or six years.
“If I were to wait for opportunities, I would wait for the end of my career.
“I just have to be who I am, be a scout and create my own opportunities. So instead of playing the waiting game, I want to put myself in the driver’s seat.”
The track and field glory game is a complex jigsaw puzzle of factors. Sometimes, in Holloway’s case, there’s little rhyme or reason to why an athlete hasn’t reached the level of fame we might expect. Maybe his time will come. Although, as he says, he should probably create it himself.
Controversial fortunes for GB age group athletes at world champs
Since the 1984 Los Angeles Games in Paris, British athletics’ top medal tally has seen mixed fortunes for age-group athletes.
At the World Masters Champs in Gothenburg, Great Britain won an incredible 187 medals. Of course, there are many more opportunities for medals due to the many age group categories, but it’s still a huge success and puts Britain third in the medals table behind the United States and Germany.
At the recent U20 World Championships in Lima, however, Britain won just one silver and three bronze medals (24th in the medals table), marking the first time since 2004 that the team went home without a gold medal.
A cause for concern when it comes to LA 2028 and beyond.
England National in September.
Good luck to the athletes and organizers at the England National Cross Country Championships in Weston Park on Saturday (September 14th). The historic event was canceled in February due to flooding in the car parks, and the English Cross Country Association faced the difficult decision of whether to reschedule for the unusual weather of the year or simply abandon the idea of holding the championships in 2024.
I think they made the right decision and I hope the clubs will support it to compete for the honor of what remains one of the greatest races in the world.
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