For track and field, novelty races don't serve bigger goal of keeping the sport in spotlight
Don't let the jump cuts fool you, Lyles vs. 'IShowSpeed' proved the Olympian dusted the influencer
Yes, I've seen video of the footrace between Noah Lyles, the Olympic 100-metre champion, and Darren Watkins Jr., a.k.a. IShowSpeed, the social media megastar whose content often involves feats of athleticism. In one post he leaps over a moving car, so who's to say he can't, at the right distance, upset the current world's fastest man?
Lyles, for one.
Don't let the jump cuts and creative camera angles fool you. The Olympian dusts the influencer in a race that, if it proves anything, shows us how well most people's fastest friends would fare against top-tier, elite sprinters.
Not very.
Here we have an influencer with "speed" in his handle, and he's not even the fastest person in his video.
Which brings us toward answering the second question a lot of you might have. It's the same one that arises every time we find ourselves at the intersection of niche sports and novelty events. Usually, it's boxing, where the influencers have entire series to themselves on DAZN's streaming service. Right now it's track and field, whose various stakeholders are looking to keep the sport relevant now that the Olympic afterglow has faded.
Two sports, one answer: No, we don't need more of these events, except as a periodic reality check for people who can't recognize the yawning gap between a very good high school athlete and a world class pro.
If you're a broadcaster, or a fan hoping that a growing audience will make track more accessible by keeping it in the mainstream spotlight, I can see the superficial logic. Watkins has 27 million Instagram followers. If some fraction of those people fall in love with the sport in the five seconds it takes for Lyles (IG following: 1.5 million) to outclass their favourite content creator, track has gained some long term fans. Everybody wins, except IShowSpeed.
WATCH l Aaron Brown gives his take on the iShowSpeed vs. Noah Lyles race:
Internet celebrity
But if that strategy worked then boxing, which has been dabbling in Internet celebrity events since 2018, would have reclaimed its place in the North American Pro Sports Big Three – not as big as the NFL and NBA, but catapulting past MLS and the NHL.
Or other leagues would put social media stars on the field, because whether a sport needs new fans (think boxing and track), or simply wants them (think the NFL), every sports property on the planet is in the market for new paying customers.
The reality is less appealing. Novelty events expose normal people's limitations without properly showcasing a superstar's gifts. The setup is a formula for disappointment, no matter how hard we imagine the next gimmick race or farce fight will deliver something satisfying.
So in that sense, for track and field, novelty races don't serve the bigger goal of keeping the sport in the spotlight during non-Olympic years. They actually risk doing the opposite – alienating existing fans without creating new ones.
As for the influencers themselves; if there was a market for seeing them line up and race each other in sprints, we'd see more events like that. They can't be more difficult to organize than Misfits Boxing or the Creator Clash fight series, and they're likely much cheaper to insure. But in boxing, an evenly matched bout can yield compelling action at various skill levels. It's tough to tell how good somebody is or isn't if they're facing an equal.
But runners compete against each other and against the clock. Numbers don't lie, and they don't forgive. You can try to create the impression that your favourite social media star can go stride for stride with Eliud Kipchoge in a marathon, but you can't edit your way around the GOAT finishing in 2:04 and the influencer running 3:10, if they're fast.
There's no disputing that Watkins does huge numbers online. Nearly 34 million people subscribe to his YouTube channel. Search hard enough and you'll find some high school football clips, along with third-hand reports that he was a five-star recruit in basketball. The numbers and anecdotes build a case that, athletically, he might be in Noah Lyles' class.
The full-length video of their race has been viewed 2.8 million times.
But do you see any verifiable numbers in the race details?
That's by design.
We're told that this was a 50-metre race, but without official start and finish lines we can't be sure. An electronic stopwatch is also absent, and that's key. A standard track meet timing setup would tell us just how hard Lyles was running.
Not very, based on the fact that he goes all out in serious training and high-stakes races, and this event didn't check either box.
No high school stats for Watkins
And because Watkins, unlike a lot of American prep football stars, doesn't have an Athletic.Net profile, we don't have his high school track stats. An electronically measured 50-metre time would tell us exactly how fast Watkins is relative to the Christian Colemans and Trayvon Bromells of the world.
Again, not very.
And that's not an insult. The fastest person you know is slow compared to those athletes, just like your tallest friend is probably short compared to Tacko Fall.
And here's where he hit another of the hard limits of novelty races as fan base expansion strategies. If you're selling sports, you're selling drama. And if you're selling drama, you're selling uncertainty. We love 50-50 matchups, and tend to yawn through blowouts. If Watkins wants to create real mystery he should race an NFL possession receiver, or a run-stopping strong safety. But if the B-side is a pro sprinter, the A-Side influencer will lose. Badly. Every time. There's no drama in that.
As for his audience – there's no guarantee they'll keep watching track.
And the track fans?
You have to keep selling them on track.
Sports with more sustainable popularity get it. U.S. college football tinkers with its playoff format every few years, hoping to grow the TV audience, and generate bigger paydays for broadcasters, ticket sellers and head coaches. But the playoffs always involve the best teams available, playing the same game loyal fans love. They don't mandate punting on second down, hoping soccer fans will tune in for more kicking, and they don't put Mr. Beast at middle linebacker, thinking all his followers will want to see him try to tackle Ashton Jeanty.
So adding events in new formats could work. Grand Slam track, if it doesn't do anything else, offers big names a chance to get paid ahead of next year's world championships.
Nurturing and promoting future stars is the priority. Gout Gout. Christian Miller. Quincy Wilson. They'll attract more long-term fans than any novelty race could.
If fans and organizers choose to chase gimmicks, they'll see how far that strategy will carry the sport.
By now, you should know.
Not very.
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