Originally published at: We Noticed: Boston Marathon Qualifiers Announced; SRAM Brings Legal Challenge to UCI; Grand Slam Track Update - Slowtwitch News
There’s a little bit of everything in this morning’s quick hits update around the world of endurance sports; we’ll hit on the field for the 2026 Boston Marathon, SRAM’s legal challenge to UCI rules on gearing, and perhaps a cautionary tale for upstart professional racing series with Grand Slam Track’s latest news.
2026 Boston Marathon Qualifiers Had to Run 4:34 Under Time
This morning the Boston Athletic Association announced that they had accepted 24,362 athlete applications for the 130th Boston Marathon.
In order to come to that number of entries, the B.A.A. only accepted applications from athletes who ran at least four minutes and 34 seconds under their respective qualifying times. 33,249 athlete applications had met the standard qualifying time, meaning that more than 8,000 athletes were rejected from the race.
This is the smallest gap between qualifying time and accepted time since the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also the smallest number of rejected qualifying entries since 2020.
These rejections still come despite the fact that qualifying standards were made five minutes faster for nearly every age group this year, following the rejection of more than 12,000 applications for the 2025 race. In order to gain entry to the 129th Boston Marathon, runners had to run a full 6:51 faster than their respective qualifying times.
Accepted entries came from 13,823 men, 10,429 women, and 110 non-binary athletes. Over 10,000 of those accepted runners will be running their first Boston Marathon.
The roughly 5,500 remaining slots in the race, to reach the full field of 30,000, are reserved for invitees and charities. More than $50 million was raised through various charitable programs for the 2025 event.
SRAM Brings Legal Challenge to UCI Gear Restrictions
SRAM is taking the UCI to court over the forthcoming gear restrictions that effectively bans SRAM’s 10-tooth sprocket. SRAM says that the restrictions have no basis in rider safety and that the rules unfairly impact SRAM-sponsored teams and, in turn, SRAM’s business in the road drivetrain market.
SRAM brought its challenge before the Belgian Competition Authority. The BCA will now investigate SRAM’s challenge that the gearing restrictions as set forth by the UCI “amounts to an anticompetitive decision.”
The UCI brought forth numerous rule changes, claiming that the rules will improve rider safety. These rules include the gearing restrictions, which effectively will ban gearing greater than a 54-tooth front chainring combined with a 10-tooth rear sprockets. Other rule changes include a limit on rim depths to 65 millimeters starting in January, as well as a minimum width for handlebars that have drawn significant criticism from both bike fitters and female athletes.
In its filing with the BCA, SRAM says that it will be forced to manually disable access to 10-tooth sprockets for its sponsored athletes on Lidl-Trek, Visma-Lease a Bike, and Movistar. It also says that, as a result, “SRAM’s gearing has been publicly labeled as non-compliant, creating reputational damage, market confusion, team and athlete anxiety, and potential legal exposure.”
Grand Slam Track Still in Fiscal Crisis
Grand Slam Track, the upstart professional racing series that promised to revolutionize track for broadcast audiences, faces at least million in unpaid fees to athletes and vendors with no end in sight.
The league, led by former track star Michael Johnson, admitted last month that it owed a minimum of $13 million to athletes who starred in the first three of four planned events in 2025. It had self-imposed deadlines to pay by by July at least some of the monies owed, and the end of this month to pay back all of the funds owed to athletes. As of this writing, none of those funds have actually been paid.
The 2025 season was to be the first year of Grand Slam Track, with events taking place in Kingston, Jamaica, followed by Miami, Florida and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The final event, which was due to occur in June in Los Angeles, California, was cancelled as the series began to experience its current financial crisis.
Johnson has pointed the finger at a back-out from a prominent investor as the source of the issue. According to reporting by The Athletic and Front Office Sports, that investment group is Eldridge, led by Chelsea chairman and part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Lakers Todd Boehly.
As of now, athletes have only been paid appearance fees for the meet in Kingston. Johnson, meanwhile, continues to say that Grand Slam Track will return in 2026.