KHC 126 - Jessi Gabriel

Join us for a conversation with Jessi Gabriel, director of marketing at Grand Slam Track. Grand Slam is ​​an elite track event series featuring the sport's biggest stars in head-to-head competition. Jessi talks about how Grand Slam is helping transform the track world, her experience in marketing in the track industry and more! Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Follow Jessi: https://www.instagram.com/jgabriel16/ Learn more about Grand Slam Track: https://www.grandslamtrack.com/ Thank you to our sponsors: LMNT: Visit https://drinklmnt.com/cam for a free sample pack with any purchase Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv use code CAM for 10% off Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping Sig Sauer: https://www.sigsauer.com/ use code CAM10 for 10% off optics Grizzly Coolers: https://www.grizzlycoolers.com/ use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off Timestamps: 00:00:00 Grand Slam Track & The Sport of Track 00:06:51 Compensation in the Grand Slam 00:13:20 Jessi’s Knowledge in Marketing 00:20:43 Jessi’s Background, Traveling, & Minnesota 00:26:08 Track Athletes Regimens 00:32:51 Ad Break (LMNT & Ketone-IQ) 00:35:07 Rivalries in Track 00:41:27 The Relationship Between the Olympics & the Athletes 00:54:24 Marketing: Continually Learning About the Industry 00:57:31 Telling Athletes Stories 01:02:31 Finding Media Talent for Grand Slam 01:03:55 Sh*t Talk, Drama, & Tension Between the Athletes 01:09:12 Eugene Track World Championships & the 2020 Olympic Games 01:14:29 Jessi’s Advice to Athletes from a Business Standpoint 01:19:28 Ben Blankenship: The Endless Mileage Project 01:30:35 QA: Will Track Start Hosting Big Guest Appearances? 01:33:58 QA: Will There be Qualifying for the Average Joe Runner? 01:39:12 QA: Resistance from Any Traditional Track Organizations? 01:43:04 QA: Your Opinion on Ultramarathons in the Olympics? 01:49:05 Outro

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Cameron Hanes?

  All right, this is the Keep Hammering Collective. We're with Jess, Jessica, Jessie, J-Dog, Gabrielle.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  You got it. Jessie Gabriel.

• 0:24Cameron Hanes?

  Gabriel. Okay, oh, so I was so focused on your first name.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  I know.

• 0:29Cameron Hanes?

  I screwed with the last name. Gabriel, okay. Um, how are you doing?

• 0:33Speaker 01

  I'm good. Yeah, it's been busy.

• 0:35Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, man. Well, I mean, this is cool because I'm a huge track fan, and which a lot of people from Eugene are, I think. But I remember, you know, my grandma lived on 24th and Emerald, which is just kind of a little tiny hill over from Hayward. And the track meets would be going on, and I didn't have any money, but I'd go up there and just like be hanging on the Cyclone fence, just watching all the athletes. But, uh, so been immersed in track around here forever. And now you work for Grand Slam Track, and tell me about that.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, so I've actually worked in track and field for a while. I used to work at Tractown USA, which is a local nonprofit here in Eugene that puts on large-scale track and field events, including the Olympic trials. I know you've been to a couple of those. And then I was also, I was the communications director at the World Championships when they were held here in Oregon. And so, yeah, been in the sport and been around the sport for a long time. I was a D1 athlete at Minnesota. I coached sprints jumps while I was there when I was in grad school. And had this opportunity to work for Grand Slam Track. It came up pretty organically. I had been freelancing. I did a freelance project for them when they had basically just launched.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  And it went really well. And from there, it's like, come on board. And I was like, yep, I'm coming on board for sure. So, yeah, it's, it's an amazing new startup league that's really designed to elevate the sport of track and to position it to grow audiences and grow fans.

• 2:17Cameron Hanes?

  Is it, um, yeah, so I was gonna see what the objective was, because the way I look at it, and I don't know anything, but... Europe has a Diamond League series, which I guess is popular over there. I don't know. Is it similar to that for the US? Or is it, because I know, I know the athletes can make good money in the Diamond League, which is hard. I mean, I guess the premier athletes can make pretty good money, but everybody past that, it's tough to make money outside of the Olympics, or if you're not sponsored, or if you're not elite. So is it another opportunity for athletes, or what?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  It's a great question. So I'll, I'll, I'll start at the beginning, assuming maybe some of the listeners don't know too much about the sport of professional track.

• 3:03Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Uh, which is that it is a, a sport that it can be hard to make a meaningful living from it. Um, and, and what contracts look like, even for some of the biggest stars, might not be comparable to what they are in other professional sports in the United States. The Diamond League, which, which you were just talking about, is a, a series, a circuit of meets that happen actually all across the globe, not just in Europe, but a lot of the meets are in Europe. There are some in Asia. Um, the, the, um, the pre-classic is actually part of the Diamond League.

• 3:39Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, that's right. Okay.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  So, so it is across the globe, but it really is more a series of meets. It, it really isn't a league in how we think of a league in the US with all of the major sports leagues. Um, and so what's different about Grand Slam track is that we have contracted league racers. So we have, uh, 48 competitors who have signed on with a base contract to be a part of our league. They compete in four slams. We have four competitions that are going to be taking place this year. And yeah, the, the racers are the ones who, you know, take a risk. They sign on to do all four of those slams. And as a result, you know, we lean heavy on their promotion.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  We get super pumped and excited to do their storytelling, to have all the marketing elements associated with it. And in turn, we can create a fandom. Right? Because part of what is sometimes difficult in track is how do I follow these people? How is their consistency and how I can tune in to an athlete and their schedule? Schedules often change a lot in the sport. Injuries come up. People sometimes don't know that they're going to be competing in a meet until the day before the meet even. And so, yeah, Grand Slam track is really an effort to sort of create a package for the sport that can become regular and that people can rely on and offers you consistency.

• 5:06Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, that, yeah, that's good. I mean, I feel like,

• 5:12Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know, maybe how I look at it is different than everywhere else just because being here, it's so, we're so track focused here in Eugene. And I know the rest of the country, there's not many just track stadiums, you know, like Hayward, that where you just, usually it's, you know, around a football field or something, you know?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Pretty much none. I mean, they're really, they're very, very, I mean, certainly to this, obviously to the scale that Hayward Field at the University of Oregon is. But in general, yeah, it's not a sport that really has dedicated resource in the US, which is surprising, right? Because most people have had some type of contact with the sport of track, right? They maybe participated in it in high school. They know someone who runs. They know someone who did run. They probably tune into it at the Olympic Games. It's perhaps the most popular sport, you know, swimming, track and field and gymnastics are considered the big three at the Olympic Games. So, yeah, I mean, most people have tuned in and watched some element of track and field.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  So they feel like they know something about it. But what Grand Slam Track's mission is, is how do we get those people to think about, to care about, to learn, to get excited about the sport, not just once every four years, but four times a year, which is, which is through our four slams. So that's sort of the ethos behind why Michael Johnson, who's the founder, the commissioner of the league, that's why he started it.

• 6:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, and he's a legend. I mean, I remember watching him in the Olympics. He's just a stud. Think, did he run the 200, right?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  200 and 400, yeah.

• 6:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, just beast. But, uh, yeah, respect to him. What I like, what I like about this is, being a track fan, I'm always, I don't know why, but hunting is like this too. I'm always like, Rooting for the little guy, you know what I mean? And sometimes like coming up through hunting, it was hard to earn opportunities. And the big companies, they have the money, the resources, they can just kinda like, ah, we'll give you an opportunity, I guess, you're working hard. And with athletes and track, I feel like they have to work so hard and dedicate so much of their life. And as you, as we talked about, it can be hard to make money. And so what I loved about this was like, man, they're offering, was it 75,000,

• 7:30Cameron Hanes?

  I think, and then a hundred if you win or some, but 75,000 or a hundred thousand dollars, it's good money for a track athlete.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  So the total prize purse, all of the prize money for the year across all four slams is 12.6 million dollars. Yeah. So, so if you win a slam in your event group, there's six men's event groups, six women's event groups, so 12 event groups at each slam. If you win your event group, you get a hundred thousand dollars. So that's first. But we pay all the way down to eighth place and eighth, there are only eight competitors in each race. So even if you get dead last, you still get 10 grand.

• 8:06Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, nice.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Which, at the, at the time of our launch, 10 grand is what you would get if you won a Diamond League.

• 8:11Cameron Hanes?

  Oh.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  And so last place at ours, they've since upped their prize money. But, but for us, it was like, we want depth, we want everyone who participates, who competes, who races for us, to come away with prize money. Because this is, this is what it's about, right? You're here to race. And it's not like there are infinite opportunities to race, right? There's a handful, maybe, to have really high profile, high, high stakes, high intensity matchups.

• 8:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  And Grand Slam Track is trying to fill some of that void, right? And so, yeah, our, our, our company president always says, track and field doesn't have a demand problem, it has a supply problem. And so Grand Slam Track is trying to fill that supply problem.

• 8:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, because people, I mean, like I said, I might not be the perfect person to ask, but I watch like on YouTube, you know, going through clips, just watching old track meets, you know, like you look at old Olympics or, or the old world championships or, and, and so, yeah, you, there is a demand. People love watching people compete, especially stars, like the stars you guys have. You guys have the biggest names in track and field. And so people will tune in and they'll love it. They just love, they, they love the personalities, but then they love seeing them compete. I love seeing them compensated. So that's pretty cool.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 9:31Cameron Hanes?

  Um, because I just know, man, it's, I don't know. When I think of, and then it goes all the way down to ultra too. Like ultra is even worse as far as making money for an athlete. And they have to work, you know, cause you know, your partner's Ben Blankenship, who I guess I should have said that, but he's been a guest on the show, is an Olympian, great, incredible runner. Not just great, just an incredible runner, but now he's transitioned to ultra a little bit. And there's hardly any money in ultra compared to, if we're going to talk about NFL or NBA.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:04Cameron Hanes?

  It's like a whole different galaxy.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:06Cameron Hanes?

  So I like seeing this, this money part come in and the, the compensation part and making it a big deal. And, and you know, for the athletes, it's like that Olympic cycle is, they get so much attention during the Olympics and then it's like gone. And there's nothing for four more years for I think probably the general public. I mean, like I said, Eugene's different, but it's nice. It's a great opportunity now for them to, yes, the Olympics, but now this is, you know, in off years essentially.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, really the vision is to, to shine a spotlight on the competitors that are going to be racing a grand slam track, right? You, you mentioned, you know, we have, we do have quite a few big stars, um, including Sydney McLaughlin, the Revoney, uh, Gabby Thomas, um, people who have won gold medals, uh, Cole Hocker, who is another, another guest of the pod.

• 11:04Cameron Hanes?

  Um, yeah. So I mean, people who have performed at the highest level and come out on top, um,

• 11:09Speaker 01

  who have all signed on to this new startup league, right? And I think that there's an appetite for it. There's an appetite for it, certainly from athletes themselves, um, an opportunity to have one reliable income through this as a base contract if, if you're a racer. But we also have as part of the league in all of our competitions, there's going to be 48. challengers, right? So those are the athletes who come on board on a per slam basis. So they get like a smaller fee as like an appearance fee. And that's standard across the board for all of them. But they have the opportunity to win that that big, huge prize money. And so it's like, even if you're like, I don't know if I want to sign on for all four.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  There's still that opportunity to be able to, yeah, come away with a hundred grand if you win your event group. So.

• 11:58Cameron Hanes?

  So you don't have to win all, all the meets to get the hundred grand. You win for every meet, there's a hundred grand for first?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:04Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  And every meet for every event group.

• 12:07Cameron Hanes?

  Man, that's awesome.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a hundred fifty and thirty for first, second, third, and then it goes down to ten.

• 12:13Cameron Hanes?

  That's legit.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:14Cameron Hanes?

  Is a, you know, competition kind of drives everything, but did Diamond League ramp up what they're paying because of you guys, do you think?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  I don't know the answer to that question because I am not the one who made that decision. But I do know that, you know, we put out our, our compensation package, our prize purse. And then theirs came out after, but I don't know the order in which decisions were made.

• 12:40Cameron Hanes?

  Perfect. Well, however, the athletes win.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, across the board, that's also part of the point, right? Like, we don't, we don't view ourselves in competition with other meets or other entities that are trying to put money in athletes' pockets. All of it serves the greater good, which is let's get athletes paid and let's get people excited about the sport. Right? Like, let's, let's get people like wanting to tune in. And however any entity is doing that, all about it.

• 13:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And if the athletes win because, you know, these, these purses went up, great. That's awesome. I mean, just that is cool.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:17Cameron Hanes?

  So I, I like that. I was curious too, you know, I should have done this to start off, but you've had some incredible roles in marketing. It's like, marketing is such a, you know, it's not like sales where there's a measurable. So how do you get to be like a, a, a marketing, whatever, talent that people like Grand Slam Track want? Why are you good at it?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  You know, it's a funny question because I actually, I went to school for like my undergrad, I did. Political science in English. I did minors in Spanish and journalism. I loved school, like pretty dorky, pretty different from Ben. Ben wasn't a fan of school.

• 14:02Cameron Hanes?

  I remember that, yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  But I loved school. Like, I just wanted to just learn everything that I could. And then I got my masters in public policy. So again, not really connected to marketing. But the through line on everything is that I, like you have said, like, I've always loved track. I've always loved the sport. It's always been like a big part of my family, a part of my personal identity. And so at every point throughout my life, it still was a factor. And so, yeah, when I had the opportunity to move out here and started working at Track Town, I have all this knowledge of the sport, right? I've lived in it for a long time. And

• 14:44Speaker 01

  now, you know, over a decade, 15 years of working in the sport, I think that that element is something that I just have like a long, like, brain knowledge of all of the stuff that I've been able to experience and have had the fortune to be able to experience. And I think that that just sort of deep-seated knowledge of what has come before, what has worked, what has failed in an event space, has really helped me position myself to be a resource. And so the on-road for Grand Slam Track was, I was working at the Olympic Trials as a freelancer, this most recent Olympic Trials, and went to an event that

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Grand Slam Track hosted, and got into a conversation with a couple of the people who were on staff. And they were like, hmm, that's an interesting point. We just got into good conversations. And I was like, oh, have you guys thought about this? And then it turned into, I produced this show, Michael Johnson on Track, that MJ did during the Paris Olympics, which was off-site, not at the stadium, but it was sort of Grand Slam Track's way of, yes, starting to tell the story of MJ as the commissioner of Grand Slam Track. He's a very knowledgeable man. He's been a commentator on the BBC for track for them for many, many years. He's very good at what he does. And so he, he has all this nuance. He has all this information.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And so that show was all about, you know, showcasing his personality. Um, now as the commissioner of this league to a broader audience. And so I produced that show. Um, four grand time track in Paris. And yeah, it just turned into this. They were like, oh, we love you. It's like, I love you.

• 16:27Cameron Hanes?

  So you just have to, you have to love what you're doing and be smart. Is that the two things?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Uh, I think, I guess, like, I get this question a lot. I do a lot of like, you know, I do a lot of classes and like speeches at the University of Oregon to grad classes and stuff. And often people say like, what advice would you give to a student like me in, in this position? And I kind of always say the same thing, which is say yes to stuff. Um, which is maybe a bit of a cheesy answer, but I have found that it has served me really well. Um, which isn't like, uh, you know, get used and abused in every position that you're in. But it is like, be a person who gets things done, be a person who says yes to things. Be a person that people can rely on and can count on.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  And I mean, I don't know if you've ever worked events, events are a sort of a stressful environment, right? It tests people because there's just very high expectations, all in a really tight amount of time. You spend a long time building up to it and then it's there and you have to deliver.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  And so in those moments, like, you just have to be a person who can solve problems. And so I think more than anything, it's that, it's like, be a problem solver. You can't take yourself too seriously. Like, everyone is just trying to get to problem solving mode, resolution. And I think that's even beyond just a marketer. Like, I think in general, that's sort of my advice in, in career. I'm still, you know, perhaps young in my career, but at least that has served me well.

• 17:56Cameron Hanes?

  Be useful.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 17:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, be useful. Be able to solve. I think solve problems is a big one, but. This opportunity that you mentioned, it was, you said, an event or a party, but you were just kind of networking, I guess is what people would call it, but it's a, but yeah, that knowledge of track, probably have some good ideas. So that's, that's where people, that's not always easy to interject yourself into a conversation. And then also in that short little window of a conversation, be able to, to catch their attention to where they're like going, what, man, this person seems pretty dialed in on this stuff. So yeah, I mean, I know there's no perfect recipe for it, but whatever you've done has given

• 18:39Cameron Hanes?

  you, you've earned a lot of incredible opportunities and it's, it's, I mean, it's cool to see, I think. It's like, I'm a little, I told these guys, I've never actually talked to like a real professional, like woman, like, I'm like, I don't even know if I know how to do this. So it's a, you're freaking, you're a, I don't know, you're up, you're a pro. It's, that's, that's how I would say it.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  I feel like, well, if I asked, okay, if we turned it around and I asked you this question, do you think your, your answer would be very different than mine? If I said, you know, what, what advice would you give? Or, you know, how have you become successful in your path?

• 19:17Cameron Hanes?

  My advice, I think Ben has said my advice, or not my advice, but he said he's a big dumb animal. That's what I think too. So I don't really have very much advice, but uh, no, yeah, no, it's, it's like, uh, yeah, I think when I talk about what I love, which is bow hunting, the mountains, adventure, running, it's, that comes out. I mean, people can tell like, oh, this guy cares about this stuff. So you can't fake passion. You can't fake caring about something. You can't fake wanting to make a difference.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:54Cameron Hanes?

  Right? So if you don't, if you're not authentic about that, it's gonna be tough. I think, I think you're very authentic and then also being smart. You said you're a student, but it's like goes beyond, there's a lot of people who take all the classes you've taken who aren't whatever, but you have like this charisma or uh, something that's given you these, these opportunities and it's, it's awesome.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 20:18Cameron Hanes?

  No, no, no, it's awesome.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 20:21Cameron Hanes?

  I love it. I just like, uh, Um, yeah, I don't know. I've, I've been, I don't know. I talk about this a lot on here about how I'm always on the athlete's side for opportunities and for money and for um, just being compensated for all the sacrifice. So that's why this is, you know, having you here and talking about this is pretty cool. Another thing that I wanted to, so you said you're from Minnesota. So, right?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  I mean, I

• 20:50Cameron Hanes?

  Or is that where you went to school?

• 20:51Speaker 01

  That's where I went to school. It's kind of like, I, I always feel bad. Like, I almost feel like I have to apologize when people ask where I'm from. And like, people kind of like, oh, what's this story coming? Um, but no, I'm, I'm actually, I'm half Greek, half American. My dad is born, raised in Greece. Uh, is actually in Cyprus right now, but anyways, um, but I grew up abroad. I didn't grow up in the US. Um, my parents are international school teachers. And so I, I was born in Kuwait, lived there for eight years. I was in the Philippines for six years. And then I graduated high school in the United Arab Emirates. So I was there for three years. So I hadn't, hadn't really lived in the US much before, um, coming to college. Um, but my mom's side of the family is from Minnesota. So that's why there's definitely a hundred percent a Minnesota connection. That's where I went to my undergrad and grad school.

• 21:37Cameron Hanes?

  You've been around, I mean, I went to the Oregon coast once, so that's kind of cool. But man, you, you've been a lot of places. That's that, I mean, that gives you so much perspective too, doesn't it? Just, and that's, uh, very lucky that your parents, you gave you that up, or I don't know, didn't give you the opportunity, but that was their job. So you were able to capitalize on different culture and

• 22:02Speaker 01

  We were really lucky. I mean, I think just my siblings and I always talk about that, just the ability to have grown up and seen so much when we were so young. Just, I mean, obviously wherever you grew up shapes you, right? And, and adds to your defining characteristics, whether, you know, it was an upbringing that was wonderful or not so wonderful and everything in between, that is sort of, that sets the stage for who you become, right? Um, and I definitely feel like that was the case with how, how, um, yeah, my, my parents raised us. Certainly, I mean, even just, I mean, my dad is part of the reason why track is such a big part of my life. He, he himself was a, um, a professional athlete.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Herdler decathlete and yeah, it was it was really important to him. I mean, he was very good. He was a national caliber athlete in Greece and all of that really shaped what he was passionate about. He was a he's a PE teacher, was a PE teacher. He's retired now. But just this sort of focus on how that I mean, he he grew up very, very, very, very poor and his family that that was like his way to like get an education, his way to yeah, make make a living. And so it really was a defining part of his life. And I think he just sort of passed that passion on to me.

• 23:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, that's I mean, all the places that you you lived all those places. Yeah, man, that is and born in Kuwait.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:33Cameron Hanes?

  Right? Wow. It's a pretty I was just talking. Who was I talking to? Is Alexi Papas? Is she? Did she compete for Greece in the Olympics?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep, she did.

• 23:44Cameron Hanes?

  She's gonna come on the podcast.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Same Olympics as Ben.

• 23:46Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, really?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, 2016. Yeah. So I didn't I was just that was another I was watching

• 23:52Cameron Hanes?

  clips last night of of her because she's she's gonna come on here. So she wants to hunt, which is kind of

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 23:58Cameron Hanes?

  cool. But yeah, I liked what she done to has done to you mentioned Greece and it made me think of her. But yeah, so now that's two professional, smart badasses that I'm gonna be nervous around. Great. You and Alexi. Yeah. So I was thinking of Minnesota because I know Ben was was he from there?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:20Cameron Hanes?

  He wasn't born in some crazy place. So he's more standard. But then Courtney's from Courtney DeWalter's from Minnesota.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  I actually didn't know that.

• 24:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I think she went to Hopkins High School.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, I had no idea.

• 24:32Cameron Hanes?

  Which is where I think if I get if I got this right, Paige Bukers or whatever she plays for Connecticut, I think she went to that high school, too. So I was like, oh, there's a bunch of people from Minnesota. But yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  It's a good state.

• 24:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  It's a it's a cool place.

• 24:48Cameron Hanes?

  Produces badasses, apparently.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  I mean, there's something about I mean, I was there. I lived there for a while, right? For four years in undergrad, year in between, and then two years in grad school. And then my mom's extended family all lives there. I mean, it really, it is a very, very special place. Everyone always talks about the winter and that the winter is, you know, so cold. And it is, I mean, I grew up in the desert in the tropics when I was young. So it was a hundred percent an overwhelming experience to feel a Minnesota winter as your first winter. But, but also, it also doesn't really matter that much. People are still really outdoorsy, people are still really active.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  People, like, it does shape your sort of day to day life, but also it's another place. And it's a beautiful place with a lot going on. It's a, I, I know, I really love Minnesota.

• 25:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I, I'm trying to think, I think I've been there. But there's another guy I follow, his name is Mark Dowdell or something like that. But he is from there and he did the Arrowhead 135. Have you ever heard of that?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I have.

• 25:52Cameron Hanes?

  That's a pretty intense, like 135 miles, like towing a sled, right? Foot race?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  No, thanks.

• 25:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, and I don't know how cold it was, but it looked pretty brutal. So there's another person from Minnesota I know. Well, we're knocking them off the list.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I was a short sprinter and a high jumper. I was not a distance runner, though it's like somehow that's very surprising just because of Ben, I think. But yeah, I'm, I'm definitely not someone who is super excited about running long distances, though I can appreciate, certainly with my partner. I mean, I crewed his hundred when he did Rabid Raccoon. And that was sort of my first foray into ultra. And I was like, oh, my gosh.

• 26:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  This is a very different universe than the one that I know.

• 26:36Cameron Hanes?

  It is.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a cool universe, though. It's a very, very, it's just really different.

• 26:42Cameron Hanes?

  I love it all. It's like, uh, yeah, it's so different. But like the, the track people, like, cause I, you know, I've run with some track people. They're so like, I don't, I don't want, I'm making it sound like they're some weird version of humans. But this track, they're so regimented and so like, cause track is so scheduled. I mean, you said you got your event coming up in two weeks. So it's like these deadlines and these times. And it's like, you know, the 1500 is at whatever, 3:26 PM, right? You got to be in the car, all this stuff, so regimented. We're ultra. I mean, it does start at a certain time, but that's about it. I mean, it's like, it's so opposite, even though it is running and endurance racing,

• 27:28Cameron Hanes?

  but it's, it might as well be a different sport.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  I think what's so, what was very unique, like as I was experiencing it, right? And certainly I was experiencing it as crew. I can't imagine what it would be like to experience it as the athlete who's doing it, right? Is it, it is such, it's so different, right? Race to race to race. It's not like you can really compare one ultra to another. And so like that experience of, of seeing Ben compete at Rabid Raccoon was like my singular experience with ultra, but you can't really compare how someone does in that event to how someone might do in another event. All of the courses are so different. And so, I mean, track is very, you know, you say regimented by, I think it's also, there's just like a consistency across it, right?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Like it's 400 meter track, right? There's eight lanes, maybe sometimes nine lanes, and they're all the same distance, really a little bit of variation. All the times are pretty comparable. You, you have like a baseline understanding and certainly if you're a big fan of track, probably not a more general, general fan who tunes into just the Olympics, but you know what a good time is, you know what a good, I mean, what you just know, you understand it. And I think that that sort of continuity isn't there and that's kind of nice. Like that's kind of cool. That's kind of refreshing. I feel like it enables somebody to go into an environment and just really see what can I do without really having expectations. I think if you were to do obviously the same ultra time and time again, and the course

• 28:58Speaker 01

  stays the same, then you start to have that, oh, I know that section or that lap, I know how I do on that and here's where I can improve or that crossing or whatever. But I think that that's a pretty fundamental difference between the two.

• 29:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, there's a, there's no real point or reference. Like if you say, you run a 10 second 100 meter, people know that, oh, that's pretty good. It wasn't a nines, but pretty good, but there's no real point or reference for a fan. So I was wondering if maybe that causes. People to do a little more research on it. And maybe that's like, could be a positive because they're like, well, man, why, why were they so slow on this one? And then they look and it's like, oh, this hundred mile race had thirty thousand feet of gain.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:38Cameron Hanes?

  And this one, you know, they have some desert solstice type stuff that's flat and fast. So you could have a hundred miler that, that people win at Western states, they win in fourteen hours. And then there's other ones, a hundred miles that it's double that almost.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 29:53Cameron Hanes?

  So it's, uh, yeah, I, I don't know. I think there could be positives and negatives to both because the point of reference is good. Cause you don't have to be that invested in track to be like, oh, man, they crushed, you know, nine eight, that's a great hundred. But if you want to know more about it, there's not a lot more. It's about it.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  It's really funny you say this because one of my coworkers, Kyle Murber, he's like our, our director of racing. So he's the one who's putting all the fields together. He's the one who's contracting. He was a, uh, he's a former professional athlete also. He was a fifteen hundred meter runner. And he, he has this experiment that he talks about where actually if you were to ask an average person, like if you were to go up into the street and ask someone what a fast or what even the world record was in the hundred or in the two hundred, they would have no idea. And often not even close. He had told us the story of, I think it was even his dad. And he was like, do you know what the world record is in the two hundred meter? And it was like many, many, many seconds off, like dramatically off. And he's like, this is my dad who knows track.

• 30:59Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And, and he was talking about how in fact, times aren't really what matters in track. Which is sort of one of the, like the baseline premise that we have at Grand Time Track, which is actually what matters is the racing. It's the ability to watch athletes compete against each other. And so we have these competitors who are taking the track. And instead of every single time you're, you know, you're hoping for a world record or you're hoping for this fast time and setting people up for maybe disappointment if they don't hit those times. Instead, the focus has to be around competitors going against each other, rivalries, trash talk, just like.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Two entities clashing together, that's what can get people excited because that's always gonna happen.

• 31:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Right? If you can bring, if you can bring them to the table and create the forum for these, these races to happen, that inevitably is going to happen. Someone is gonna win and someone's gonna lose. You know that. And so you don't have to build a framework that's just dedicated to breaking records.

• 32:00Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  You're still talking about people running fast.

• 32:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  And they are gonna run fast. Um, but yeah, it's just a little bit of a different mentality.

• 32:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was thinking about that, too. If you ask somebody like, what a good hundred mile race time, they'd be like, their answer would be, I don't even like to drive a hundred miles.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. How many times has, has someone said that to you? About a million. Ben gets it all the time.

• 32:21Cameron Hanes?

  But it, but it's true. So it's like, that, so they might be way off on the hundred or 200, but they have no idea on the hundred mile.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  They're like, well, four minute mile is a fast mile. So if I times that by a hundred.

• 32:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And then you're like, well, no, it's a 24 hours is 15 minute miles. And if you break 24 hours, that's pretty good.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:41Cameron Hanes?

  And they're just like, what? I could walk 15 minute miles. You could, but for 24 hours?

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're like, but will you?

• 32:48Cameron Hanes?

  In the mountains? Yeah. It's a, yeah, it's a whole different world. I was thinking about that, too. You mentioned the rivalries in the, um, in the Olympics, the medal matters. But the rival, rivalries, even there, that's where you're gonna get all the best athletes going for that medal. And it's like, I know I hear some, or I, I've heard, um, some, um, I don't know, commentary on like Inka Britson racing Kerr, racing Hawker, racing, is it Nagoos, right?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:23Cameron Hanes?

  It's like, just getting all those guys on the same track is hard.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27Cameron Hanes?

  You know what I mean? Cause I think I saw Inka, Inka Britson, or maybe Kerr saying somebody's ducking somebody. So that's what people want to see. To your point, they want to see these guys race.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you don't know, and if your audience doesn't know, we have Josh Kerr, Cole Hawker, and Yar Nagoos all signed on as contracted racers.

• 33:46Cameron Hanes?

  Nice.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  So they're gonna be going head to head at every single slam.

• 33:49Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, man.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  But not only that, we also have in our first slam, which is in, um, Kingston, Jamaica, coming up here, April 4th through 6th. Um, we also have the, the Olympic podium from the 800 meters. Because the way that the events work are event groups. Everyone over the course of a weekend races twice. And so that group, as an example, Cole, Josh, Yaret are part of um, the uh, men's short distance group. And so over the course of the weekend, they're going to run an 800 and they're going to run a 1500. Yeah. And so, yeah, so it'll be like this. I mean, that's also part of the intrigue and the drama, right? It's maybe you're really great at one event, but are you really great at two?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  And so the people who are able to be um, dynamic enough to come back and to compete across both races are the ones who are going to be successful, right? If you can get first in one, but you're last in the other, well, you're not going to win. Because you need to perform well across both to be able to, to win the group.

• 34:48Cameron Hanes?

  Is it, so that's, those aren't two separate races? I mean, they're two separate races, but could you win a hundred thousand in each event? Or is it, it's grouped?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yep, yep. And so, you know, you'll have a, you'll run the first race. You'll have a leader um, in the points. You, you get points allocated um, depending on your placing in the first race. And then um, the next day or, you know, if you're running on Friday, you might be competing again on um, on Sunday. But over that course of the weekend, then you'll run a second race. And then you add the point totals across those and the winner uh, is the one of both of those races is the one who uh, walks away with a hundred grand.

• 35:25Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, okay. That, I mean, that's, that's cool. Cause I, I was just sitting there as you were talking, thinking about, well, Cole's got a good kick. I think his 800 should probably be, you know, some guys, some guys don't have that kick. They just have, they gotta push that pace.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Strength base.

• 35:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, to kind of take away the kick from the fast finishers. But, but Cole's been known for his kick. So I don't even know what eight, does he run 800 very?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's, he's quick. He's, he's run a quick 800.

• 35:52Cameron Hanes?

  Has he? Okay.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  But yeah, the other component to it is, so the fourth racer in that group. So we have in every race across the board, four racers, which are those contracted athletes that run in all of the slams for the season. Um, and then four challengers who are just coming in. For one slam, like on a per slam basis. So of the those three racers that I just mentioned, so Cole, Josh and Yared. Then the fourth racer is Marco Aropp, who was a silver medalist in the 800 in Paris, right? And so he's probably going to be pretty good in the 800, right?

• 36:25Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's his jam.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  And then we have, you know, the other two podium finishers from the Olympic Games that are going to be competing also as challengers. And so you just have this dynamic of just mega talent, all of these people who are really, really, really good at what they do. And now they have to all race together. Like have you, Emmanuel Wanyoni is going to be a challenger for us in Jamaica, Olympic champion from Paris in the 800, going against Cole, the Olympic champion in the 1500, in both races. And like, have, has anyone seen those? Yeah, you know, so you're going to see these matchups that are kind of fantasy matchups, right? Where, you know, you're sitting on a couch with your friends and like, what do you think would happen if so and so race so and so, right?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  It's like, what makes you excited about any sport when you just sort of like are able to think through, what's my dream team? What's my fantasy league, right? And, and part of that vision is for Grand Slam track that you get to see some of those things. You get to see people line up that you might not have ever had the opportunity to see them line up together. So yeah, it should be pretty fun.

• 37:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that, that will be good because then also that creates this dialogue for not only your future meets, but also when you're thinking about, you know, oh, I remember Cole ran a smoking fast 800. And then you're like, in this situation, could he finish in whatever and set the world record in the 15 based on this? Because you have, now you have this frame of reference. You saw how he performed in two laps against the fastest guys. And it just changes whatever, just discussion. It's like, what I like about it is people are thinking about it, talking about it, track is on people's minds. And that's what we need, you know, as a sport, just to more awareness means more money and the, and the athletes win, basically.

• 38:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's exciting.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  It's like our, it's like our tagline. Are you sure you're not a marketer?

• 38:19Cameron Hanes?

  What is a tagline?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  I mean, our tagline is only the fastest, but, but I feel like you just like distilled it very well. I mean, that's exactly what we're trying to do.

• 38:26Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, that, that, yeah, no, I, I, no, I'm not a marketer, but I do love track. And on that note, so it's like, uh, when, when you think of, I was, I was curious about this. When you think of the Olympics, so have you worked with the, for the Olympic Committee before?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  So, uh,

• 38:45Cameron Hanes?

  You said you freelanced.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so, um, no, I haven't worked for the International Olympic Committee. But when I worked at Tracktown, I did help put on the Olympic trials. So that, that's a US Olympic Committee, US Olympic and Paralympic Committee now event. So through them, we were the local organizing committee that put on the Olympic trials. So not for the International Olympic Committee, but the US governing body for that.

• 39:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm curious, uh, I don't know, I see different things, of course, I don't know anything. But what I do know is this Steve Prefontaine was from here. He was like this big amateur athlete. This was like a huge thing back in the day where the US used amateur athletes. So it means they couldn't be pros, they couldn't be paid, like, uh, like even the, you know, our NBA players couldn't play in the Olympics because they were pros.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:39Cameron Hanes?

  Well, Prefontaine was always fighting for the athlete, right? And then it's changed a little. I mean, obviously athletes are being compensated, but not by the Olympic Committee that I know of. As far as, like, you look at some countries, I don't know if it's China or some Asian country, but I saw their, their gold medal winner gets, I don't know, a bunch of money, a car, like money for the whole rest of their life and from their country.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:07Cameron Hanes?

  US, about as opposite of that as you could, from my perspective, I don't know. What do you, what do you think of when you look at like the athletes and the Olympic? Cause I know the Olympics make billions.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:21Cameron Hanes?

  How do you see that the Olympics and the athletes type of relationship?

• 40:25Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. And I actually think it's it's a really great question that people sometimes don't know. They they assume when they see athletes at the Olympics, especially athletes who are performing really well at the Olympics, that they are making a lot of money. And they may be making money from endorsement deals or from, you know, personal sponsorships that they might have. But from a US sense, they don't. And the US OPC did pay medalists in these last Olympic Games. But it, you know, it's in the tens of thousands that you would get for a gold medal on down to bronze. For the first time, World Athletics, which is the governing body for for track and

• 41:08Speaker 01

  field, they did put up at the last Games, 50 grand per gold medalist. They only paid gold medalists. That was the first first time that they had done that in attachment to the Olympic Games. So that was a pretty big deal. So, you know, if you're a US athlete, you know, you get 50 from from World Athletics for winning a gold medal, you get, I think it's like 37,000. That's, you guys might need to fact check me on that one. It's something like that.

• 41:36Cameron Hanes?

  We don't fact check. We just say whatever we want.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  I know. Ben was like, he's like, they just keep talking. I was like, okay, I'm a good talker, so I can do that. But it's like, somehow, you know, the combined total is like 87 for an Olympic gold medal that you get from both the international governing body for track and the US Olympic Committee. Which like, I don't know. Is that what people think people get when you get a gold medal at the Olympics?

• 42:01Cameron Hanes?

  No, you think you'd be a millionaire.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Right? Especially from, especially when we're, I mean, that's we're talking about, you know, track gold medalists.

• 42:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's a big deal.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Which is pretty high profile, you know, placement that most people tune into. Which again, like, it's amazing that that money is there. I'm not, I'm not knocking on that money. I'm glad that it exists. It certainly didn't always exist. And so the fact that it does is a big deal. And I think, you know, certainly the athletes appreciate it. But should be more, right?

• 42:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that that mentality of, you know, even when, from my understanding, because I obviously wasn't with Grand Samtrack from the beginning. And I know that Michael has been thinking about this for a really long time, this league. But it was like, we don't, we're not talking about doubling prize money. We're talking about 10 times prize money. We're talking about big. We're talking about money that you can't blink at, right? Like, this is money that is real.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  And this is for a slam, right? It's not for an Olympic final. It's for one of our four events.

• 43:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  And so you could win all four and you could make 400 grand in the year. Like, if you were a dominant athlete across these, the two events that you'll be competing in at each slam, you can come out as a competitor with $400,000. I mean, that's a big payday.

• 43:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, I love to see that. And as we talked about earlier, if that drives up everywhere else, as far as what they compensate the athletes for with appearance fees or winnings or whatever, then that's great. That's what it takes sometimes is the new guy coming in going, you know what, we're gonna, we're gonna shake up this model. This model has been okay, but we can make it better. Yeah, I love, I love that. I love that the athletes get these opportunities. But it seems like it should, yeah, it should be more. When I think of the Olympics, it's like, man, I look at the commercials. I look at they're making the athletes wear all the stuff that they're making money from, because they got the sponsors for the Olympics. So the personal endorsements from the athletes are secondary.

• 44:03Cameron Hanes?

  And that's how the athletes make money generally. But they have to wear the Olympic kit. And I'm always like, looking at it that way, going, how do we help these athletes out? So that's why, like, when I first heard a Grand Slam track, I didn't know you were involved at all, but I just saw that, oh, man, cool. These, the athletes are, can make some money. And, you know, it's, I was talking to, oh, I've had Centralitz on here too, who's a gold medalist. And it's like,

• 44:33Cameron Hanes?

  For making money as an athlete, it's like if you win the gold, that's when you make the money, right? But that's once every four years. And it's like on the on the come up before you win, probably not making much. Like maybe, I mean, I think even like a Nike might pay a regular guy forty grand a year. I don't know unless you're a superstar. Then maybe if you win the gold, then yeah, you got four years making probably good money. And then somebody else wins the gold and then it's over.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:02Cameron Hanes?

  That's rough.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  I mean, and you also think, think about like the years of earning potential of an athlete too, right? Like that's, that's also part of it. As, as you know, you're saying like a career person, right? Like a career person builds their career and makes money year after year into.

• 45:18Cameron Hanes?

  Usually more, more and more and more.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, hopefully.

• 45:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Um, and then, you know, they, they work through, you know, all of that processes. But for an athlete who's performing at the highest level, that, that earning potential time is, is finite, right? And so how much you can make in that time before then, you know, you, your body begins to age and you break down and you leave, or maybe you leave at the top of your game because you're, you're ready to be done and you've done everything you want to do in the sport, whatever the outcome, now you try, have to transition, right? And you're starting over in, you know, maybe in something related to sport, maybe something not. But your ability to earn money in that timeline is small.

• 45:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  And so you, you have to maximize it. And if a system is set up that sort of only honors that type of performance once every four years, I mean, that's a, that's a hard formula to make work.

• 46:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I mean, essentially like a good career, you'd have, so you'd have eight years to make a lifetime of money. I mean, if, you know, it's your top of your game and you're competing, say you've made two Olympic cycles, that's just for a small number of athletes. But eight years, and that's got to get you, I mean, people will do other things and that's great, just like Michael starting this, you know? So smart people will figure out ways, but when your whole life has been dedicated to performance and running and athletics. Um, you haven't probably focused on a bunch of other businesses or things like that because you've been so focused on your craft.

• 46:47Cameron Hanes?

  And then all of a sudden you said, because you've aged out, it's over. It's just like, man, now what, you know, it's, it's, I don't know. I always think about that. It's like, nowadays, um, I do like these opportunities, like a podcast has really opened doors for athletes and, um, it's great, but it shouldn't be like they have to hustle a hundred different side jobs, you know, to make, to make decent money.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think there is a component that we're seeing even in, in our racers, right? Like that, for some of them, it's exactly as you described, right? Like their, their focus is pretty singular and this is what, you know, they view, this is my finite time to become the best in the world at what I am, what I want to be. I think that there are also other competitors who are like, I have, I do have other interests. I do have other things that I care about. That's where like for us, the storytelling components come in because both of those are interesting, right? Someone who is just very singularly focused on achieving this thing. This is my life. This is what I care about. Like I want to watch that. I care about that. I want to learn more.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  And then there's also other people who are like, oh, I, I'm very into whatever XYZ. And this is something that's like a big passion of mine. That, you know, maybe that becomes the thing that they do when they're done being an athlete, but that, that is also interesting to audience. It's especially interesting.

• 48:12Cameron Hanes?

  It's a story.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, I think it's interesting to people to know more about who these competitors are, right? Like that's, that's the core, right? And you need to be able to have a platform that enables them to tell those stories. And that can be hard when things are all over the calendar and nobody really necessarily knows how to follow. You have to be like, an informed fan to be able to know how to watch things that are happening in the sport. And so, yeah, that's also part of why Grand Simtrack was founded. It was like, how can we provide a platform? So that whatever is important to the athletes can become something that people care about. Because now, I mean, it's like in any sport, right? If you know something about a person who is participating or competing in that sport, suddenly you have buy in.

• 48:59Cameron Hanes?

  You're more invested, yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Of course. I mean, it's very, very simple, right? And it can be at like the most, you know, dinky kids thing where it's like, oh, if that's your nephew or something, then suddenly you have, it's, it's less, it's less lame, right? Like, you know, you're like, oh, okay, like there's something to cheer for, there's something that I care about. And sometimes it's not even, it's not even that, right? Like when people are betting on sports, sometimes it has to do with what's the point total outcome of something, right? It's not even necessarily about storytelling, but there's something that pulls you in. And I think that that, that element is something that Grand Simtrack is pretty excited to provide.

• 49:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I guess, you know, hearing you explain that, then I was like, kind of reflecting going, yeah, I mean, like when Jordan was so popular, best in the world, there was no other outlet to find out anymore about him.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:46Cameron Hanes?

  So what we knew is what we saw on the court and we loved it. That's, that's all we got. But now, when you're saying that, I was thinking, yeah, because Alexi mentioned, um, when she was running at Oregon, she was working on the movie, you know, she did a couple of movies. So she liked having, where she could dedicate, she was talking about this on the Rich Roll Podcast, but she could dedicate, get her miles in, do the track workouts, whatever. And then she could just turn it off instead of thinking about, like obsessing about running, because she was working on the script or whatever. So it is, athletes are still humans.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 50:22Cameron Hanes?

  And they're not going to have, just be like, maybe I was just like, kind of distilling it down so too simple and just saying that, okay, you're focused on this one thing for your, for these eight years and that's it, but that's not real.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I, I don't think you're wrong. I think that there are athletes who are like that. I think that we have racers who are assigned on our, on our roster, who I think are like that. Who the main thing that they care about day in and day out, the main thing that they focus on, the main thing that they shape everything about their life around is this. So I don't think you're wrong. I just don't, I don't think that that's probably everybody, right? I think that there's shades to it.

• 50:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 50:58Cameron Hanes?

  I do, because like I follow, or I mean, I watch all these videos, but there's another runner, Ally Ostrander, I think. She does a great job with her videos and like kind of it's running. Yes, that's whatever. But you have to, you know, the podcasts and the videos and the just, just putting out more media. Because people do care. So she has, I like listening to her. I like she's like real. And I like her videos and I nowadays they can, athletes can do that and that's cool. And I hopefully they're, she's making money from that and it's, it's, it's great. But yeah, I think, I think to your point about we get so invested in these athletes.

• 51:43Cameron Hanes?

  We want to know more, you know, and that's kind of how media works nowadays. It's like people will take all they can get. If they care about you, they want it all. They want to know everything. So I think that, um, yeah, you got the stars. People, you give them a story, they're going to follow along and it's going to be exciting. It's going to be awesome. Um, I was curious too. So when you, so when you go to these track meets or like you've been to the ultras now, do you look at it like as a marketer and just be like, see all these opportunities or how could, man, I got some idea, we could grow this. Do you, do you do that when you go to like a little ultra race?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  I mean, all the time. I mean, I think there's, there's so much out there, right? Stuff, things to learn in every, every single space. And even more, I mean, I would say even more, it's things to learn from a space, right? In the way that all these different entities build their product, right? The, if the race is their product, right? How they build that product and how they position it. I mean, even if you think like I, I didn't know anything about Hard Rock, but you know, I know you had Emily on too. And Like, learning about Hard Rock from her made me care about Hard Rock.

• 53:07Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know anything about the race. I'm not, like I said, I'm not an ultra runner. It's not like anything, anytime I'm going on a run and there's like a slight incline, I'm like, well, this is the worst part of my day. Like, it's just not something that I'm passionate about.

• 53:21Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  But, you know, hearing her being passionate about that course and what, you know, what that course has meant to her and what that race means to her, like, oh, that's fricking cool. And that race has really cultivated this idea, right, where people think of Hard Rock and they, they think a certain thing, right? And, and being able to have that identity in a somewhat crowded space, I mean, there's a lot of races that people can do, um, a lot of different distances, a lot of different courses, but being able to carve out that identity and have people associate, you know, certain things with you, with your race. Oh, it's really tough. It's really steep. It's really hard. It's a place where people go to like, you know, meet, meet the challenges both in themselves and outside of themselves,

• 54:03Speaker 01

  which I feel like is some of the stuff people say about that race. Um, yeah, I mean, more than anything, I feel like you can learn from that rather than, oh, what could I do better here in that space? Um, I mean, in general, there's always stuff, especially in track. I mean, there's a lot that can be improved on, but I'm also just sort of a, I love track, you know, so I'm not someone who's sitting here like, oh, track is so crappy. Like, there's a lot of people who are naysayers, but like, I love this sport. I've worked in this sport a long time. It makes me-

• 54:34Cameron Hanes?

  So you're not critiquing everything you see?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I think that there's always stuff that can be improved, right? But at the baseline, I get excited to watch meets. I, I think it's fun. I think if you have even a tiny little bit of investment in a single person in it, you begin to get obsessed with it, right? You begin to do exactly what you were describing, right? You're clicking through videos and suddenly you're 50 videos deep on some, some Thursday night, you're like, oh, wow, who, what am I even watching anymore, right?

• 55:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  And I think that there are a lot of people out there who do that. Um, so yeah, I think more than anything, it's, yeah, what, what can I learn from other spaces rather than how can I fix other spaces? I mean, I think about both, but-

• 55:15Cameron Hanes?

  How are you, how are you telling these athletes' stories? Are you guys doing your own videos and interviews and things like that to, to give people a glimpse in? Because you mentioned Emily Hanlon and she's incredible and it does make you- When you listen to somebody who care, I mean, I was just thinking about, I watch fricking ski. I don't even ski. I watch skiing videos, like coming down.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  You're a content consumer. That's what you are.

• 55:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, or, uh, I mean, I don't even, rock climbing.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:48Cameron Hanes?

  Cause you just like, oh, I wonder if that person could make it. So you just watch. But it's, it's all about the story in like, you know, uh, the Golden Trail series does a good job. Solomon does a good job on videos and sharing. I've never run one of those races, but it's fun to watch. And then you're like, you see these athletes who are kicking ass. Um, I ran with, with one, uh, Anna Gibson. And she's competed there. She competed in Olympic trials too, but you start following these people because you learn of their story.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 56:20Cameron Hanes?

  And their personality. And then you're watching everything. So what are you guys doing to, to shine this light on the athletes?

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, so part of it is even in the structure itself, right? And having those 48 racers that are signed with us because it means we can tell a continuous story. Right? If you're going to have a single meet, well, you'll tell stories about the people that you think are going to show up. But they might not show up. And also then it's done. And then the meet's over and someone won. And maybe it was the person that you talked about before the meet and maybe it wasn't. And then next year you have the meet again. There's not the ability to have a continuous thread, right? But with us, because we have a season, because we have those same racers competing slam after slam after slam. You're able to then have a thread, to have continuity. And so that's part of what we're going to be building into our broadcast.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  So, you know, we've been filming features, um, with all of these racers that are going to be a part of our broadcast. But we've also had a pretty intentional push on our social media where we, first of all, uh, last year in October, it was like my second or third week on the job. We had a big, uh, we called it a racer summit, but it was essentially a media day where it was, let's get everyone who's signed so far. We didn't have our full roster at that point. I think it was like 25 or 27 of our racers were on. And we brought them out to LA. We had them in this big hangar and we had all of these stations, right? It was like in front of LEDs so that we could get super cool graphics that can go on

• 57:51Speaker 01

  the big screens in stadiums. It was headshots. It was social media walls. It was, you know, we had a glam bot, you know, that thing that they have at the Oscars. We had interviews, we had, they did these confessionals in a photo, like a little photo booth.

• 58:06Cameron Hanes?

  That's cool.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  We had a promo video that we could have a commercial with. And it was just this like big production, but all of it was, okay, it's October, our first event isn't until April, and we need to churn. You know, we need to have stuff that gets people excited about what's coming up.

• 58:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  I mean, the only way that you can really do that in any meaningful way is if you focus on the competitors themselves. And so we had these racers. We, we have the ability to talk to them, to learn from them, to hear more about their stories. And yeah, so we, we invested a lot in having that opportunity for all of them to come out and have, I think, like nine different stations, which, I mean, we, we pull content from that every single day.

• 58:44Cameron Hanes?

  What do you mean nine different stations?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, that's what I was saying. Like, there's like a social media wall. There's like a photo, you know, they got their portraits taken, then they had headshots taken. And so, you know, it's also like the simple things, right? Like, if you were to look at, like, even like a World Athletics, like, they have all these athlete profiles. They, they actually do an incredible job of keeping track of everybody's personal bests and results and season's best. It's a really very dynamic repository of information. But oftentimes, what they do is they pull photos from credentials, right? So like your little accreditation that you get at every meet. And I can promise you that if someone had to pull a photo of my credential and put it up on my profile page, you'd be like, whoa, that's a rough picture.

• 59:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, never sharing that.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Right? Like, I mean, it's like, if someone had to put a passport photo up of you and that was like...

• 59:33Cameron Hanes?

  Driver's license, yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? Like, you don't want every single person associating that picture with you for the rest of your life, right? Next to all of your performances. And so it was like, let's do high-end, like portrait shots, let's do headshots that can be utilized dynamically, high-res, on-broadcast graphics. There's a really, I mean, I'm very excited for people to tune into the broadcast because it's been a very, very cool... And thoughtful and innovative approach that that team has had building out what that's going to look like. So I'm very excited for people to be able to tune into it and see how Grand Slam track is positioning the sport and how people can consume that content on a broadcast.

• 1:00:15Cameron Hanes?

  How did, is it employees of Grand Slam track that did these packages? Or did you guys hire an outside production company like a Hollywood high end? How did you get, I can't wait to see it. So I'm assuming it's like incredible, but how'd you find talent for that?

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think we were doing the full gamut, right? I mean, we have, you know, we have a permanent full-time team and then we have, you know, external partners and teams that we've hired on to help deliver on. I mean, it's, it is a very big thing to be putting on for massive meets that are all brand new.

• 1:00:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  In places that, you know, the team who's putting on hasn't done it before, meaning us, we're a brand new league. You know, as an example, this first one that we have coming up is in Jamaica, right? And so it's, it's have anyone on our personal team ever put on a meet in Jamaica? No.

• 1:01:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Right? And so it's all of the things that come along with launching something in a new place, in a new stadium, which, which, you know, there's complications there. So certainly there are lots of external people that are helping us.

• 1:01:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  But in terms of the vision and in terms of like that core, what are we trying to achieve and how can we bring this to new audiences and also retain audiences that care about track? That is a very like core pulse that comes straight from our leadership all the way on down.

• 1:01:38Cameron Hanes?

  How do you get the, yeah, that's interesting. How do you get the racers to talk shit about each other?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  They want to.

• 1:01:45Cameron Hanes?

  Really?

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:46Cameron Hanes?

  Cause that's, that's what people love.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  And I think the thing is, right, you. You almost feel like you need permission, right, to say something like, ugh, this guy, or something like that, right? And I think honestly, track tends to be a bit formal, weirdly, right? It's kind of like a low stakes environment often, like it's not uber glamorous, like an F1 with, you know, all of this shiny stuff. Yeah. But, but I think it still does have sort of a traditional kind of formal feel to it. And I think that people are very, generally, very polite to each other and very respectful. And you probably have met a lot of track athletes who are just like, oh, those are really nice people, those are good people. Yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  But I think that also, they're really highly competitive people. Yeah, very much. They want to win. There's a reason that, like you said, they're, they're devoting so much of their time across all of their days and all of their months and all of their years of their life to this purpose. It's because they want to be the best. And they want to beat the person next to them who also wants to be the best. And when you have all of those people in a line together, that's, that's the point, right? That's what racing is. Yeah. So, yeah, it honestly, it's not like you have to really work very, very hard to pull it out. Even people who, you know, are more focused on themselves, right? Because you, I'm sure you're used to hearing that answer on a broadcast, right? Like, oh, I'm just focused on my own race, right? Yeah. But even people who really do believe that, they still want to kick the other

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  person's ass, right? Like, they want to run their own race, and that race means they win. And you can't win if you don't beat somebody else. You have to beat everybody else to win. And so I think that that threat is like, is very, very present in, in everyone. And it's just how it manifests and how you can pull it out. And oftentimes, you pull it out by putting those people, again, in those lanes next to each other. Yeah. To make those fireworks happen.

• 1:03:45Cameron Hanes?

  When I, when I think of like my favorite storylines, it's always the outspoken athletes. It's always like Central West was really good at, you know, he, he, one time he crossed, slid his throw or whatever he did, crossed the line. One of the times I think of, I like, like that sprint series that was on. That was cool. It showed a lot of the rivalry parts. I, so I, I do know there, they are very competitive. That's, comes with the territory when you want to be the best in the world, but it is pretty buttoned up sometimes with track about, and I just like when it's like, gets a little more.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  I love villains. I want villains. I mean, that's what you have to look at it, right? Like you, it is an entertainment product.

• 1:04:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  And I think the people who truly understand that, the, the athletes who understand that across the board in any sport, who understand like, I am delivering an entertainment product is, those are the people who, that's how you create fandom, right? And that's how you create truly crazy fandom, people who become obsessed, right? It's, they understand the position that they have and they use it as a lever to, yeah, to, to show people that.

• 1:04:56Cameron Hanes?

  Right. And that's a, I mean, I'm going to have Shelby Houlihan on here and I like, you know, you can say whatever you want. I just like she's adding a different element and like people are talking about her and track and the 1500 and the 3000 and whether she should be running or shouldn't or making the world, I just love it. People are talking about it.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Cameron Hanes?

  And I'm like, cool. If she, if she has to be the villain, I don't know if she likes it. I'm probably not. I don't know. Some people, I don't know. Maybe some people do like it. But I like that, the storyline. It just adds another layer to it.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and I don't know, it's. Make people care, right?

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and also like if everyone is the nice guy, it gets pretty boring, right?

• 1:05:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  And so you need to have that tension. Tension is what makes things interesting.

• 1:05:47Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Like if there isn't tension, whether that's like internal tension, right? I mean, I think in the podcast that I've listened to you, it's like it's where those moments of just like you met resistance within yourself, right? Like pushing past something. And that's where anything is interesting. Otherwise, why would you tune in at all? If it's a foregone conclusion, it's boring.

• 1:06:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Right? I mean, we're talking about Max Verstappen, Ben and I about F1 just the other day. And it was like, it's like very dynamic this last season of just, there were lots of different race winners and there were lots of people and there was like, people were mad at each other and there was like people leaving teams and drama. And that's what makes something interesting. If it's just sort of, okay, the same, same stuff over and over. Yeah, it becomes hard.

• 1:06:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, if it's just a forum chart and that's just what it was, you didn't have to race, pretty boring.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's why people like March Madness, right? Because there's, there's drama, there's upsets, right? And you have teams that people just hate. And then the people who love those teams are like, yeah, well, I hate you. It just like is what creates something that people will care about.

• 1:06:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Which is, yeah, that's the point.

• 1:06:55Cameron Hanes?

  What, in your long career, doing all these amazing things, what's, what stands out to you? What's a moment where you're like, you'll never forget? Cause you've done, you've done a lot of epic things, been involved in a lot of incredible things. What is something that you're just like?

• 1:07:17Cameron Hanes?

  That's what I was, exactly what I was hoping would happen and where I'd be and able to experience this. Do you have anything like that?

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean. I hope this is, it will be one of those things. Um, I think the first thing that kind of comes to my mind is, um, well, there's, I guess there's two things that come to my mind. And it's funny because as you're living through challenges, right? You're like, this sucks.

• 1:07:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  All right. I hate this. I don't want to do this anymore. And then when you're on the other side of it and you look back on it multiple years later, you're like, that was great. I survived that and it was really, really cool. Um, I think of, uh, yeah, for the world championships, right? I mean, it was, it was a very large scale event that we put on here in Eugene and Eugene is a small place with, um, its own unique challenges. Obviously it's an incredible place. I live here. I love Eugene. Um, but there are things that make it not conducive to a huge, huge scale event. And so figuring out how to overcome those challenges and turn them into opportunities, which is just, you know, a little bit of corporate speak, but it's true, right? Like, how can you make things that make putting

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  on an event hard, um, actually a bonus to people who might be coming and coming and attending the event. Um, and so there were just a lot of things that made that, um, process arduous, but on the other side of it, it was like a lot of pride to have been able to make sure that, you know, the city, the state of Oregon and the US was reflected in those championships. Um, it was the first, uh, world championships in track and field that have ever taken place in the US, dirt champs. Um, and yeah, I was very proud to have helped deliver that. And I remember, and there were lots of sleepless nights of just long, long hours. And, um, you know, on pretty much the last day, I just remember

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  standing on top of the stadium and being like,

• 1:09:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I bet.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  We did it.

• 1:09:13Cameron Hanes?

  That was huge though. I mean, it, I, from a fan, it went off seamlessly. I mean, I know the city gets busy. We're not a big 150,000 in Eugene and 50 in Springfield. So you're not going to have a lot of hotels and things like that. And you had so, you know, the stadium holds whatever. I don't know. Is it not 20,000? How many does it hold?

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  12,650.

• 1:09:36Cameron Hanes?

  Okay. Yeah. But those people have to stay somewhere, right?

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Cameron Hanes?

  And it's, uh, yeah, I could see that could be a challenge, but yeah, that, that meat went off. It seemed like, I think it was 10, was it 10 days? Something like that.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  It's a long event. Yeah, 10 days.

• 1:09:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's a long time. But, well, whatever, whatever part you played in it, good job.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:09:57Cameron Hanes?

  Um, so I'm, Lisa, there's two things.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Oh, well, the other part was, man, we, we had to put on the Olympic trials, the 2020 Olympic trials became the 2021 Olympic trials. And, you know, we had to navigate trying to put on a giant, large-scale event like that in a pandemic with constantly changing guidelines and expectations and rules. And, you know, how you shift from, you can't have fans, and actually, you can have some fans, but they need to be there for that. How are you going to sell tickets? The tickets had already been sold. How do you refund them? Like, just all of those processes.

• 1:10:36Cameron Hanes?

  Extra layer of challenge, or 10 extra layers, really.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, that was, it was definitely a challenge. And, you know, at the core of it, it's still like, we want and need to select a team for the Olympic Games. We need to provide an experience for the athletes that is as good as we can make it. We want people to enjoy in whatever way that they can interact with this event. They want, we want them to enjoy it. But, yeah, I mean, it was definitely hard. Like, the, the thing that I had to do was I basically led all of our comms and media operations for that event, which, for that, we had to have, we couldn't have media onsite. And so we had to set up and develop and deploy a virtual mix zone. And so we had all of these, like,

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  tech and having, you know, computers and the athletes were sitting down here, like, you and I are talking to each other. And then we would have moderators that would be getting questions over the internet from reporters all around the world. I mean, it was a very, very, uh, yeah, it was, it was a complex project that had to be delivered. And it was difficult.

• 1:11:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Um, but in the end, it was really good. And we still got incredible interviews and content out of, out of the athletes who were there, uh, which again is the point, like, if you can give a platform, and if you can create a platform, the athletes will make pretty special moments happen.

• 1:11:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that, well, that worked out, too. And I, I went to the meet, and it was, yeah, that was crazy. That was crazy.

• 1:12:07Cameron Hanes?

  What a mess of a time. But um, so then I guess um, one other thing with all your experience and you're smart, professional, so you should have all the good answers, I think. Um, what advice do you have to athletes that uh, for just capitalizing on their opportunities, like whether it's on the track or off the track, or looking out for the athlete, what would advice would you have people coming through?

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Cameron Hanes?

  From a business standpoint, I guess.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting. Like I,

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  so you know, I went to high school in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. That's where I went to high school. I was a very, very good track athlete in Abu Dhabi because my school had 57 people in my graduating class. And I was very good there. And then I came to the States. Um, and I was a walk on at Minnesota. Um, and I remember sitting down on the first day, um, as I was joining this new team. I obviously didn't know anybody there. I had like basically cold emailed the coach and been like, can I come on the team?

• 1:13:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Um, and I was sitting there and I heard, you know, one of, one of the athletes who was, it was like their beginning of the year awards, right? Where they like honor what had happened the year before. And they had recognized one of the athletes, um, who had, who was very incredible. She had like gotten second, um, in the multi, um, at the NCAA championships, the D1 championships. She's very good.

• 1:13:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Um, and, and they like awarded her for her performance in the high jump. She was a very good high jumper. And I was in the high jump. And like her, what she had done the previous season was like fricking 30 centimeters higher or something than what I had done. And I was like,

• 1:13:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I suck. Like, I'm really bad, actually.

• 1:13:57Cameron Hanes?

  Excuse me, how high did you?

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Cameron Hanes?

  Did I hear that right?

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  What was that height, please? Um, and I just, like, I remember thinking, oh, I'm I'm kind of

• 1:14:09Cameron Hanes?

  Over my head.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, like I'm I'm not gonna be able to do this like the just the reality check of like, you know, what I had thought I I was or how good I was.

• 1:14:18Cameron Hanes?

  Fish, big.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much so, right? And I I don't think that that's probably a a rare story. I'm sure lots of people experience it. But yeah, then it was like adjusting mentally to, I mean, I still love doing what I do. I still want to get better. But I I mean, I was never gonna be, you know, I mean, Ben Ben is an Olympic finalist, my partner. I was never gonna be an Olympic finalist. I I don't have the talent. And adapting expectations and figuring out, okay, well, that's not gonna happen. Okay, but I still really like doing this thing, and it still does bring me a lot of joy, and I still want to be the best that I can be at it. All to say, like, you can still find pathways

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  in sport, or in whatever, even if you're not the best at it, right? And so, you know, Ben has made his whole his whole life and his whole career out of out of track and field. He, you know, he was very, very, very good. He's a 1500 meter runner. He's an ultra runner now. And I also found like a way in sport, and it's not as an athlete. But I really love track, and I have managed to find a spot within it. And I think that's super possible. Even if it's not as an athlete, it it can still happen in a lot of different ways, right? And I mean, like,

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  I mean, you even like, right, even you, right, you've made your career also in sport. And I think there's there's just a reality that there there are a lot of different paths, and I think it doesn't have to be this one path.

• 1:15:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that's a very long winded way of saying, essentially, I think that there are different ways that you can approach goals. And if you can sort of stick with whatever your core is of the thing that makes you really happy or makes you passionate, you can figure out ways to sort of serve that passion.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's good. That's good advice because I could, I could hear people or not here, but like, people say, well, my dream was this and I just couldn't make it happen. It's like, well, yeah, that happens to a lot of people.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:30Cameron Hanes?

  Because if your dream was to make the Olympics, but you realize you weren't going to, what are you supposed to do? Give up? No, you're just like, well, let's just see where this goes. And you, you, you went down that path and here you are. So it wasn't, yeah, I, I like that. It's like, I like not giving up on just because the dream wasn't like, maybe laid in bed at night thinking about, maybe you could still turn out pretty damn good.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:57Cameron Hanes?

  And that's, that's what I heard there. And you mentioned Ben too, it's like, now I see him, you know, he's got his endless miles project. So it's, there's more to just being an athlete on the track, you know, I know he cares very much about, and I, and I know you, you're part of this also, but helping underprivileged youth with shoes and, and gear and,

• 1:17:20Cameron Hanes?

  planting the trees. I don't know how many trees you guys are going to need now for every runner that goes under four minute miles. Like now, now 15 year olds are doing it apparently.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Cameron Hanes?

  So I don't know how much land you got over there at Piscina, but you need some more. But it's a, it's a cool thing. Every runner that runs under four, or male that runs under four minute mile has a, has a tree and that's part of this project you guys are doing. And then every woman that runs her under four 30 for the mile. And that's a legacy type thing where the runner did this and here's the result and here's, you know, giving back to the community and habitat and things like that. That's, but I just love that it's, it's more than just being the athlete. There's more to life obviously than that. And.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think it even goes back to what we were talking about earlier, right? It's like, what is at the core of what, you know, you care about and what are your passions? And sometimes that's solely maybe sport. Sometimes that's this one thing, but also people grow and people are dynamic. I mean, the idea for the endless mileage project, which is the, the nonprofit that Ben founded, and he'd been thinking about it for a long time. I mean, he had just been kicking this idea around in his head of of just like different elements. And it was like, man, I have all this gear. I got so much gear. And I'm very lucky to get all this gear. I appreciate my sponsor who provides it for me. But like, I'm not going to use all this stuff. And what happens with all this stuff? Okay, well, you know, people are just like, one day, they get sick and tired of looking at a closet

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  that's overstuffed, and then they just put it into a bag, and then they they take it to Goodwill or something. And it was like, this is like, really nice stuff. Like, this is stuff that like, could could change a young athlete's life. Right? And and so he'd just been thinking about it for a long time. And obviously, as a miler himself, he'd been thinking about the barrier of of breaking four minutes. And there's a lot of, you know, discussion and debate of like, does that barrier, is that still valid? Does it still matter? And and thinking through, you know, what's the comparable barrier for women for four minutes? And all of those thoughts have kind of been just knocking around in his head, and he would talk about it all the time. I was like, bro, you just gotta Yeah, let's do it.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Just do it. Like, just do it. And so he did. He just started it. And so, yeah, together, I like help out on all on the operations and stuff. But yeah, I think that that entity, the Endless Mileage Project, is just a very, very cool example of somebody just seeing a pretty simple thing that can happen. And oftentimes, we just don't actually do those things because it feels really hard, right? Like, starting a nonprofit, like, Ben was like, how am I starting on? I don't want to do that. Like, I don't, I don't want to do paperwork. I don't, what do I have to do? Do I have to hire a lawyer? How much do I have to pay? All of just like, those little things that make it seem sort of hard. But it's actually just like, really simple. He just started it, and then started collecting gear, able to distribute gear. He actually just got back from a trip where he went all

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  the way up to northern Washington, right at the border. And then came all the way down. And he did this huge loop of some of those rural schools in in central Washington, dropping off gear, right? And he said, he was talking to one of the coaches, and the coach was like, how did you hear about us? How did you know we existed? And he was like, we talked to this coach, we talked to this coach. But I think all of it was just like seeing, seeing something simple that could be done, right? We can collect gear from people who have an abundance of it and we can redeploy that gear to people who have use of it, who can use it. And, and that can sort of transform their journey as a young athlete. Um, I mean, and we've experienced that. I mean, we've had people come tell us like, you gave me a rain jacket when I was, you know, younger

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  because we've been operating now for a few years. Um, and I, you know, I've worn it for the last four years and now I'm a, you know, I'm in this run club and running is a huge part of my life. And like, it started with that rain jacket. And it sounds super cheesy because it is kind of cheesy, but it's also really cool, right? Like the fact that it doesn't take very much, right? And that's what's so beautiful about running. It doesn't actually take very much to do, but you need to have, like, you need to have a pair of shoes, right? And the places that we go to sometimes and you see people and they're, they are, they're, they're running in a pair of, you know, knockoff Crocs. Actually, they're running in a pair of, of Converse. Um, because that's what they have.

• 1:21:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Um, and so, yeah, being able to, to sort of collect all of that stuff, redistribute it to people who can use it. Um, and then with the trees, again, it was like, it is a big deal to break four, break four thirty. But there's not really, uh, any monument to it. It's not like, there's not that many people in the world and certainly, you know, the, the fast forest, which is what we're talking about, um, recognizes the US athletes who have done it. Um, and so it's, it's not, I mean, through 2023, I think we were at like eight hundred and forty? No, no, through, through 2024, we were at eight hundred and forty some total in the fast forest. Um,

• 1:22:18Cameron Hanes?

  And you guys-

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  In history, in history, right?

• 1:22:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yes. And you guys have the tree in their name.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:22:23Cameron Hanes?

  By the tree. And it's like,

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Cameron Hanes?

  That's, they can watch it grow.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like the, the, you know, that there's this thing that was planted in your honor because you, you did this achievement, right? And, and, and that's it. It doesn't need to be more than that. It's just something simple that honors a, a pretty impressive performance that otherwise doesn't have any kind of testament to it, like that's tangible. Um, yeah, it's a cool thing and it's right, it's right here.

• 1:22:52Cameron Hanes?

  I just think about like years down the road, say, you know, thirty years down the road, that person had broke four minutes could bring their family or their grandkids or their kids, whatever. And like this is, here's the tree. And here's because I did this. That would be a pretty amazing experience.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  It's even happened already. I mean, I was at the Eugene marathon last year. Um, and, and a guy came up to me, um, the, um, head of marketing there is one of my good friends and, um, she introduced me to him and she had told him because he had broken four, you know, years ago, I mean, decades ago, I think. Um, and she had said, oh, he had emailed them and said, oh, like, what can I do when I'm in town, when I'm in Eugene? And she had mentioned, oh, you should go to the, the fast forest, which is at Doris Ranch in Springfield. Um, and so he had gone and then had been very moved and he had brought his family to like see his tree. He didn't know it had existed. He had got the opportunity to do it. He was there with his family and, and she, she introduced me to him at the like the expo at the Eugene marathon and like,

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  who's, I mean, I'm a pretty emotional person. I'm half Greek. So like, it's a little bit a part of me. Um, but like I was very emotional and he was emotional too. He had like tears in his eyes. And he was like, it's just so cool. Like this thing that I did that like was a big part of my life. But it was, you know, a part of my past, like being able to bring my family and like show them just this simple thing. And I mean, they are like, they're little trees right now. It's not like they're these, you know, people have a vision of what that might look like. And it's like, it's kind of twig like, you know, it's not a robust tree that has had many years of growth.

• 1:24:19Cameron Hanes?

  It will though.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  It will though. Exactly. And he was just like, just seeing it made him, made him pretty, just pretty moved, which I felt pretty special.

• 1:24:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that is neat. I mean, I mentioned, I thought, I mentioned Piscia, but I meant Doris Ranch. So it is in Springfield here. So shout out to Springfield.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Springfield's the place.

• 1:24:36Cameron Hanes?

  Do you guys live in Eugene?

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  We live in Eugene. Yeah. I know you're a townie. Ben says you're a townie.

• 1:24:42Cameron Hanes?

  But yeah, I mean, that I did want to just give a shout out to Ben with doing that with the shoes and the gear because if you could, if you've ever run a mile fast and like you had to wear Walmart high tops compared to actual running shoes, a whole different experience. So those people that didn't have the right stuff that were forced to run the mile like because if that's what PE class did in the wrong stuff, you'd never want to do it again. But if you had something good and you actually felt good, yeah, it could change your trajectory. And yeah, I mean, that's, that's awesome. I love it.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  I mean, think about being a kid who, who goes for a run because you have to do it in PE and you don't have a rain jacket in, in a Pacific Northwest.

• 1:25:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  You know, winter or spring, like it's not.

• 1:25:28Cameron Hanes?

  Not that fun.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Not awesome, right? Like you're soaked and like we have that sort of damp cold here that just like makes you just feel it more, even though it's not, it's not a Minnesota winter.

• 1:25:39Cameron Hanes?

  No, it's a deep, that's dry cold.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's a, yeah.

• 1:25:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, but this, this wet, like if it's 38 degrees and raining, it doesn't get any worse. It's miserable. But yeah, so if you don't have the right stuff, um, yeah, whole different experience. But that's, I mean, I did, I'm glad I remembered that. I don't take notes. I think I'm Joe Rogan and I can just like have this great conversation with no notes, but I'm like, God, I'm glad I remembered that one.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:26:08Cameron Hanes?

  Cause Ben does a good job with that or and you too.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  No, no, that, that's Ben takes all the credit for that. It was, it was definitely his, his passion project. I just helped out.

• 1:26:17Cameron Hanes?

  He's so unassuming, but like people love Ben Blankenship, like his Eugene Marathon or whatever. No, it's Big Timber Running, right?

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep.

• 1:26:27Cameron Hanes?

  He told me the other day that like 80 people show up and I chart, I think he charges like a dollar a year or something like that. I'm like, dude, 80, what do you, what do you do with 80 people over there at the track? It's like. Man, that's a lot, but people just love like, oh, this guy was an Olympian. He's such a nice guy and he's helping me. So I don't know, a lot of excitement.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  You would embarrass him. He hates people talking about him.

• 1:26:52Cameron Hanes?

  Really?

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he'll like, listen to this. I can imagine him. He's just gonna be like, ugh.

• 1:26:56Cameron Hanes?

  No, he's such a, he's such a stud. I'm like the biggest fan. Um, and he's such a good runner. And like when he was getting ready for that, for his hundred, whatever he was doing, the 10,000 feet a day, and I don't know how many miles. It's like, God, just a machine. Such a stud. I know. It's a lot of work. That's why I'm like, I'm always like, how can these athletes be compensated fairly for this stuff? It's like ultra runner.

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  It's back to the main point. It always is, right? Like the, the, the degree of difficulty is high and what it takes to be excellent, what it takes to be

• 1:27:33Cameron Hanes?

  Sacrifice.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  That highest level is, is tremendous. And so how can we set up a system that, yeah, pays for that? That, that honors that.

• 1:27:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I'm always like, I'm always getting mad at these big companies. Like I'm always like, I'm a big Courtney DeWalter fan. So I see Solomon and I'm like, why don't they have a Courtney DeWalter shoe kit, shorts with her name on it? It's like, would you celebrate the goat, please? Are you kidding me? He's like, oh, we gave her her colorway and maybe that's what she wants. So I was like, who am I to say anything? Maybe she's like, no, I don't want my name on it. But I'm like, I want, I want these, these incredible athletes just to be elevated and I want them to be household names. So I'm always interested in that. Well, normally, once I get done rambling, these dipshits over here have some questions. So this is Connor, but we call him Larry and this is

• 1:28:29Cameron Hanes?

  what is, uh, James, who we call him Gideon.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:28:32Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  Gideon's, uh, my middle name and Lawrence is his and we've known each other since first grade. So we've always gotten by Gid and Larry.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Gid and Larry. You got, that's like, I feel like those are the names of the Muppets that are like in the, the like theater. They're like in the, the like balcony in the theater. That's what I imagine right now. That's what it looks like.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  We are Muppets.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  I can kind of see that about you guys.

• 1:28:58Cameron Hanes?

  And here we are with the Muppets. What's a, what's a question from the Muppets today for?

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  Okay. Um, one thing, as you were talking about broadcasting, um, something of mine that's kind of a favorite is on college game day, they have like guest appearances in the broadcast, like Shane Gillis did one. And you know, it's, I feel it brings in some outside interest to, you know, watch either the, the pregame or maybe it's post, he's been in a couple of those too. Do you see any chances for that with the, with the league or?

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  What a great question. You teed me up perfectly. Uh, we do. So, you know, we have a, we're going to be on CW and Peacock in the US. Peacock, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, all live, all events. Uh, CW, the Saturdays and Sundays of slams, because all, all four of the slams are Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So yeah, you can watch both, um, on a streamer and you can watch on a, on, on TV, um, on free to air. Um, and so, so that those deals are a three hour window. Of which the first half hour is a pre-show. Then you have two hours of competition and then a half hour post-show.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  And so all designed to kind of give you that time and window to hype up the races that are about to happen, to talk to people, to have dynamic analysis, to, yeah, I mean, joke around and just like get people excited or, you know, whatever, anxious, pumped up about everything that's about to come. And then to like have true time. You're not going to the exact last minute of when the broadcast window has to sort of, yeah, talk about what happened and really take the time to let something unfold. Um, I mean, there are a lot of people who, who I think rightfully,

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  acknowledge that there's room to grow in announcing in the sport of track. Um, and I think part of it is, you know, sometimes you do need a little bit of bandwidth, a little bit of space to tell a full story. And so, yeah, part, part of that exact vision is to be able to have that time to do that, to, to really explore what happened, why, different opinions on what that means and what that might mean for the next slam, because we have a next slam. So you can sort of position it as like, what does this mean for the rest of the season? Um, which, you know, otherwise you, you can't really do too much, um, in a standard, uh, track meet. So, yeah.

• 1:31:21Cameron Hanes?

  So we need, we need Tony Hinchcliffe up there roasting the runners. I think, I think a roast would be good.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  That would be good.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  I'm excited for, for people to, to see the, the pre and post show. We've, we have assembled a, we haven't announced it yet, but we've assembled a really great, um, team of broadcast talent that I think, uh, will be pretty exciting for people. So.

• 1:31:40Cameron Hanes?

  Good.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Um, okay. Next question.

• 1:31:43Cameron Hanes?

  Go Muppets.

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  Something that I like that the, uh, the PGA Tour does is with like the US Open, they have a qualifying series where your average Joe could get in basically by, by a series of qualifying events. If they win and they place themselves, there's a couple open spots for the US Open for, you know, your, your local course legend to, to make it. Um, and then also they, the PGA Tour has Monday qualifying events where anyone can go and qualify for the tournament on the, the coming weekend. They might be a little bit, uh, into the future, but do you foresee that for, for this as well? Um, and how would you kind of navigate?

• 1:32:21Cameron Hanes?

  All comers meet qualification?

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's a super interesting question, right? Because I think what I will say is there are a lot of very creative minds who are sitting down thinking about how can we package this? And I think part of it, first of all, is we want everyone's focus at all time to be on one thing, right? Which is, which is, I mean, honestly, the, the core of why it is just racing, right? It is just track races. There aren't field events. And it's not because, you know, Michael Johnson doesn't like field events. It's because he knows track races. He was a 200 and 400 meter runner. And, you know, part of that core is we can't tell people that the thing that you're watching is the most important thing and then have something else happening at the same time, telling you that you need to pay attention to that too.

• 1:33:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  Right? The thing that's in front of you has to be the most important. Otherwise, why would somebody tune in? And why would somebody sit in a seat and concentrate on something?

• 1:33:14Cameron Hanes?

  Because sometimes they cut to other things.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even inside a stadium, right? Like, I love track and I was a high jumper. So like, I, I, I love the high jump. It's one of my favorite events to watch. But you're either watching the high jump or you're watching what's happening on the track. And, and telling an audience to do both and saying both are equally important is a hard thing for a general fan. Right, for a track fan, that's, that's not a problem. But for someone who's flipping channels, right? And maybe doesn't really know the context of what they're watching. You're saying like, well, what, what am I, what are you telling me is important, right? And so in any case, I think that the, the model is designed to drive focus and attention. Right? And so there's people who are involved.

• 1:33:57Speaker 01

  I mean, there are people who are, who are part of Grand Slam Track, who are coming from a lot of different areas. Like, my boss, my, my VP of Marketing and Partnerships, she spent 10 years at Red Bull. Right? And so she has a mentality from, from that background. We have people who come from the NFL. We have people who come from WWE, who are just coming from a lot of different areas within sports and events, broader marketing society. I mean, also people who have worked on, you know, award shows in Hollywood, people who have worked on large-scale film productions. And so like, across the board, there's just a lot of different ideas and a lot of different information. And how all of that feeds into what are the things that we can do to sort of create a compelling narrative

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  that centers our competitors and the races that are happening? And doesn't necessarily make those things a sideshow, but also elevates other elements that, that, you know, make people want to tune in because you have to, you have to do those things. And so I would say, you know, in a sort of roundabout, very roundabout way of, of answering your question is, I think there's a lot of different ideas that are on the table and part of the long-term vision for. For what Grand Sim track will be and whether that's exhibition races, whether that's, you know, unique matchups and completely off events for different competitors who are coming from a very high end of the spectrum and distance to low end of the spectrum of distance and meeting in the middle. And I think there's a lot of different ideas for

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  how it can happen. You know, people from the outside coming in and participating in a race. Absolutely. That's something that, you know, I've heard talked about around a table. I do think that for us for year one, we have some education to do. We need to explain our product to people. And because of that, I think we have to be somewhat focused on, on saying like, this is what you should care about. It's the best competitors in the world. This is head to head rivalries, matchups, and they're really fricking fast.

• 1:35:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  Right? And so we have to focus on that to create buy in and to have people care about that, those elements. And then I think through that, then, then we can, we can expand.

• 1:36:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I think when you're talking about the track fans are used to, okay, we're going to run the 400, but now you got this triple jumper out there and he's like trying to get the crowd to clap for him, you know? So we're used to like, oh, wait, they're going to do this, but let me focus on this jump real quick. Whereas a viewer flipping through, yeah, it doesn't get that part of it. And then I was thinking about, when you're talking about different events, like, I can't even remember what his name is, but the pole vaulter, he ran that, I think 100 meter.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mondo.

• 1:36:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah. And actually fast as hell. Both of them, both of them were pretty fast. But that's not their event. And it was, I think a lot of people paid attention. So yeah, I could see that happening down the road, you know, to your point. But what else you got?

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  What kind of resistance have you guys gotten from the traditional governing bodies or organizations in track? And how have you navigated that to kind of maybe appease them, but also push the success of Grand Sim track forward?

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think that this is a question that, It's kind of like a lot in the social media sphere and a lot of and in press and in media too. And I would say, I mean, and it really is true that we sort of think that, you know, a rising tide raises like raises all ships or whatever the expression is. And I think, I do think that the governing bodies also, also think that because we don't really, we don't view Grand Slam track as like an alternative to World Athletics. I mean, our, our events are sanctioned by World Athletics. They still exist within the sphere of, of, you know, all of the governing structures that govern sport.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  You know, we need a, a USATF sanction for our US slams as an example. So I, I don't, I don't necessarily know that I, I would frame it that way that it's, that it's resistant. I think it, it is, it is actually pretty cooperative. But I think that what our goals are as, as a league are, are different, kind of necessarily, than what the goals are of, of like a USA Track and Field, for example. Because at the core, if you even think about it, and this is like pretty, pretty in the weeds track stuff. So I, I apologize for viewers who might not care too much about, about track, but, but USATF is our national governing body. And really what their, their core, you know, ethos is, is on, on a professional senior

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  track event side is really to serve to select Team USA. And, and that's their purpose. And so there, you, you think about it like, right, with the NBA versus like with USA basketball. Like people aren't looking at USA basketball to like change the, the course of history and, and market everything for, for, for basketball. People look to the NBA to do that, right? And so sort of the vision is, is that Grand Slam track comes in and serves that purpose, right? Serves as a marketing unit, a league that can, that can, that can do those things, right? And, and it takes money, right? There is a pretty significant fundraising effort and, and first initial investment round

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  that happened to enable that to happen. Um, because a lot of it does come down to money, right? It's expensive.

• 1:39:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Twelve point six million dollars across the course of the entire season in prize money. That's a lot of money. You need to raise that money.

• 1:39:33Cameron Hanes?

  Let alone the, the stadiums you're renting and the production and.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. The staff that it takes to do all of those things. So, um, I mean, I, I don't think that there's any, um, realistic way that anybody can think that one entity is going to just come in and just, you know, completely take over and change anything in this like combative type of, of thing. I, I don't, at least I don't view it that way. Um, I really do think it's about, you know, there was, there is a packaging problem. Um, and how can we better package something that people care a lot about so that it can reach a broader audience? Certainly in the United States. Um, I mean, there's definitely different, uh, I mean, peaks and valleys across the world about how interest of track is. I mean, in the UK, it's a very, very popular sport with

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  tons of public media attention and household, all of those athletes are household names. Definitely the ones who are getting medals at an Olympic Games are, are celebrities and stars. It, it isn't really like that in, in the US. Um, and so, yeah, sort of thinking through how we can position ourselves as a league to fill that need, um, I think is more how, how we frame it.

• 1:40:45Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm. Yeah, that's good. That's a win.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  Um, we've talked about this a couple of different times on the podcast, but I want to hear your opinion on, uh, having ultra in the Olympics.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  I mean, I, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, I, my, you say that, am I a mind as like a person who puts on events immediately goes to the broadcasting of that, the, the sheer, you know, the, the, the needs that come from that. It's funny because, um, Ben and I were talking, we're, we're watching, um, Kokodona.

• 1:41:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Um, and I mean, the ability to, when you think about the logistics that are involved in covering a race of that duration.

• 1:41:27Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  And that physical distance, it's really hard. I mean, if you look at marathon coverage, uh, like if you watch a New York City marathon and like how they've done it a lot. And the reality is it's just like, sometimes it's really hard to have a live feed go through really tall buildings, right?

• 1:41:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  It's just hard. You're like, how can it still be hard? Like we've been doing it so long. How can this feed still cut out? But that stuff's really hard. Um, and so my immediate mind, when you talk about ultra going into the Olympics, I'm like, oh, think about the challenge of the broadcast that that would bring. But I think it would be a really cool challenge and I definitely think that it should happen. People talk a lot about um, cross country going into the winter Olympics. That would be so cool.

• 1:42:07Cameron Hanes?

  It would.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  I would tune into that.

• 1:42:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's uh, you know, ultra has, you've heard, have you heard of backyard ultras?

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:14Cameron Hanes?

  So it could be just a four, basically it's a four mile track and you do it every hour, as long as you can do it every hour. So the, the coverage, it wouldn't be like a Coca dona 250 miles to cover. It'd just be a four mile course. But you'd have to think that, I mean, right now Harvey, I think Lewis is his last name, but he's went for 450 miles. Every hour, so it's like four days, no sleep because you got to line up every hour. Could you imagine when a gold medal's on the line? That was for, probably, probably didn't get anything for going 450 miles. Maybe got like a, a coin or a.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  Packet of trail mix.

• 1:42:59Cameron Hanes?

  Something, yeah.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  A fruit leather.

• 1:43:02Cameron Hanes?

  Right. So when you have an Olympic gold medal on the line, what could people do?

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  I, I think about that all the time because I think that there's so much growth that we're about to see in ultra. I mean, I think in general, it has continued to professionalize over the last probably two decades or so. Um, and I think it's, I, I feel like we're on the cusp of like this pretty big explosion and, and it's, it's probably already happening. And again, I'm not an expert in the ultra running field, so maybe I'm talking out of my butt. But um, but I, I am around people who talk about it. So maybe I'm just like a parrot right now. Um, but no, I think that there's, there's a tremendous interest in it. There's, there's the, the capacity where if you have informed people who are talking about it, like the commentary can be really cool. And that's what, like when I was watching that Coca dona stuff, I was like so sucked in.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  And like I, again, like I don't know the people who are running. I don't, I don't know much about any of it. But, but they do a really good job of that broadcast and you're just like. What now? What next?

• 1:44:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  What's going on? Who's there? What's that camera? Oh, I think I see someone in the background of that camera. What are they doing? Oh, my gosh, they don't look great. And you just sort of get sucked in.

• 1:44:12Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 1:44:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, I could see where there's so much potential there because in a race like that, it's always about, you could talk about how the person trains because it's always like, like I was saying, Ben's training, how many miles a week did they prepare? How much vert were they getting every week? In the race, how much are they fueling? Like, you know, how much, what are their carbs per hour? That's always a thing, or nowadays is a thing. It's like, there's so many different layers to it because to navigate for two or three or four days over the course of a race, you have to, it's up and down. Did this guy sleep? How long is there's a sleep cam, you know, keeping track?

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  So good.

• 1:44:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's like, because on the track, you just don't have those challenges. It's over. You know, even the long races are over quick. But, yeah, I mean, I could, I was just thinking about all the things you could, like on a high in production, man, and Aerovipa does a good job. That's who puts out the Cogadona. And they do a great job, but it's like, man, the, the potential is insane.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  I mean, so much of that, right, comes down to the information that an audience is able to get out of what they're watching, right? And it's, and it is why the Olympics are, are, are very good to watch, right? Because you have the experts in those fields who are talking about the things that you're watching. And like, you know, I'm, I don't know much about diving, but I get sucked into diving when I watch the Olympics. Like, I, I'm sure I would, you know, maybe be able to make it into the pool in some kind of like pointed angle if I were to try, but I would probably be pretty scared to do it on like the really high one. And like, that's about my understanding of diving, you know, and like synchronized diving, like, oh my gosh. But you get so sucked in, right? It's like that, that whole thing where you're just like, I can do that as you're like sitting with your bag of potato chips on the couch.

• 1:46:01Cameron Hanes?

  Like the big splash, you're like, oh, fricking terrible.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  But you get so, you do, right? Like you get, so you're like, oh, my God, they just, their chances are done.

• 1:46:09Cameron Hanes?

  Under rotated.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  The Canadians idiots, right? Like, you just kind of become a consumer of that sport. And then it like drives you forward and the Olympics do a really good job of that. And I think that exactly what you're describing, like you, I can easily imagine it, right? Where they're talking about, you know, their voices get quiet and they're like, Is he going to take the the second gel now?

• 1:46:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  Or is it gonna happen on the next one?

• 1:46:32Cameron Hanes?

  He needs those calories.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  You know, and like this, like the close up of the athlete sweating and like wiping the sweat out of his eyes.

• 1:46:37Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, he didn't take a gel. What an idiot.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  I know. And then, and then you'll

• 1:46:40Cameron Hanes?

  He's gonna bonk.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  And then you'll see it, right? You'll see the devastation.

• 1:46:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see that. I would watch that.

• 1:46:46Cameron Hanes?

  I know. That's, that's kinda cool.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  That's all from the Muppets.

• 1:46:50Cameron Hanes?

  That's all the Muppets got? Wow.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  I'm so excited. I hope that this becomes a thing. Now you can call them the Muppets.

• 1:46:56Cameron Hanes?

  We're going to. I call them dumb Muppets.

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  Peanut gallery.

• 1:47:00Cameron Hanes?

  Peanut gallery.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  See, exactly. Or that's what that's like, the vision is exactly like that. The setup makes me feel like that. It is a peanut gallery.

• 1:47:07Cameron Hanes?

  I like not being able to see them.

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  We're gonna have to wear Muppet costumes.

• 1:47:13Cameron Hanes?

  Well, thanks, guys. That was a, I'm not gonna say it was a good addition, but you guys have done worse. So we're going in the right direction.

• 1:47:23Cameron Hanes?

  Well, Jesse, I don't know. I mean, it was, I had a great discussion. I loved learning more about your journey and also Grand Slam track. And it's, uh, it's awesome to have you here. And I just want you to kick ass and can't wait to watch this stuff. So I appreciate you.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. I hope, I hope everybody tunes in. We're really excited. Four slams, four cities, Kingston, Miami, Philadelphia, LA, all coming up between April and June of this year. First one's April 4th to 6th. Tune in.

• 1:47:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, get it going. You got a meet coming up quick. So get ready.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Gotta go, gotta go write some emails.

• 1:47:58Cameron Hanes?

  All right. Thank you.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:47:59Cameron Hanes?

  All right. Keep hammering, guys.