Four months on from the biggest pay-day of his career, Andrew Coscoran is still waiting on his $50,000 cheque from Grand Slam Track. There’s perhaps some compensation in the fact he’s certainly not alone.
“I think it will come through, I’m waiting on money from a lot of other events that happened before Grand Slam,” Coscoran says, diplomatically, regarding Michael Johnson’s new four-meeting series this year, which promised a total prize purse of $12.6 million.
“As long as I’ve been involved in the sport, it just takes a while for money to come through. It could partially be the fact that money has to go through my agent and then come to me. But I think generally in the business world, if people can pay late, then they will.”
Coscoran earned himself the $50,000 as the overall runner-up in the men’s long-distance events, while the top prize of $100,000 went to Grant Fisher of the US.
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After the news broke that the final Grand Slam meeting in Los Angeles was cancelled, it emerged that one of Johnson’s big investors had bailed out, casting doubt over the future of the series – and meaning most prize winners have yet to be paid a cent.
“Personally, I’d like to see it back,” Coscoran says. “I think my experience of it was only positive so far, and I’d love to be a part of it if it does come back.”
Coscoran has his eyes on another prize for now, and arrived into Tokyo this week ahead of the World Athletics Championships, which start on Saturday. He’s set to double in the 1,500m and 5,000m, with the heats of the 1,500m up first in Sunday’s morning session.
It’s already been a long and rewarding season, the 29-year-old from north county Dublin making the final of the European and World indoor 3,000m, finishing sixth in both, and also improving the Irish mile record to 3:49.26.
After failing to progress from his heat at last year’s Paris Olympics, he made some big changes – moving away from Dublin to join the New Balance training group in Manchester, under new coach Helen Clitheroe. Speaking from the Irish team hotel in Tokyo, he makes no secret of his desire to make the 1,500m final this time, his first priority over the coming nine days of competition.
“Coming here I just want to get the most out of myself. This whole season has been planned around peaking for the World Championships in the 1,500. There is a day break between both events, so you can completely finish with 1,500m, and then take on the 5,000m. But the main event is 1,500m, and the 5,000m won’t have any impact on that. So it’s a pretty easy decision to double.
“You’re going to have to be in your A-game, to get into that [1,500m] final. But I think there’s a lot of us that are there or thereabouts. So it’s just about getting it right on the day, and going in with a good mindset. But I just want to get the most out of myself and if that’s good enough, then that’s good enough.”
Coscoran has raced in the Japan National Stadium before, finishing 10th in the 1,500m semi-final at the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021: “I think you just learn to fine-tune a little bit more. You learn what you’re missing. This year, I suppose the big changes have been around a bit more speed work, running mechanics, a bit more power. So a bit more concentration in the gym as well.”
Even for an athlete of Coscoran’s calibre, big pay-days such as he enjoyed with Grand Slam Track are rare, and although he’s not depending on it (he also gets €18,000 in Sport Ireland funding this year, alongside his New Balance deal), it’s a substantial amount in the scheme of things.
“Being an athlete isn’t cheap. We travel around, go on camps. Finding the funding to support yourself is difficult at times. I have a few different sources of income. I’m able to get by, I’m not too bad.
“When I first heard about the Grand Slam, I thought, ‘That’s okay to earn a bit of money for myself for the year’, actually be able to put a little bit of money aside for once in my career.
“Then obviously I got a considerable amount of prize money in Miami. I suppose it is what you could consider life-changing money, a deposit for a house, that kind of thing. I know for some athletes, maybe it doesn’t make a huge difference. But it would make a big difference for me. It would be nice if it did come through.”
