For track and field, novelty races don't serve bigger goal of keeping the sport in spotlight

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:

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.