Duael’s One-On-One Racing Brackets Are Yet Another Stab at Saving Track

The U.S. track and field team racked up a whopping 34 medals at the Paris Olympics, its largest total since 1984, before most of its athletes were born. Between Noah Lyles’s photo-finish 100-meter win, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s 400-meter hurdles world record, Cole Hocker’s upset win in the 1,500 meters, and the women’s 4×100 and 4×400 golds, moments on the track created some of the most memorable American highlights from these Games. 

The question for everyone in the sport now is how to maintain the momentum in between Olympics. With the next Games set to take place in Los Angeles in 2028, many well-heeled supporters of the sport are pondering how to build a bridge that covers the next four years.

Duael Track, a new well-funded running venture, hopes they can ride the wave until next spring. Originally planned to debut in September, the inaugural Duael 100 meters will now take place in March 2025 at a U.S. location to be named. 

Duael (pronounced “duel”), plans single-elimination tournaments in which two runners go head-to-head in each race, starting with the 100 meters and 1-mile. Eight men and eight women will compete in 1-on-1 races, bracket-style. The company will hold its first 1-mile race later in 2025.

Duael is the brainchild of two former college athletes: Barry Kahn, a former Cornell distance runner, founder of ticketing software company Qcue, and an adviser at Endeavor; and Ben Schragger, who played baseball at Rice. On Monday, the company announced it has added another notable former college athlete to its executive team: Brandon Wimbush, who played quarterback at Notre Dame and UCF, has joined full-time as VP of strategic partnerships. 

“Track-and-field athletes are not making a lot of money, and you can compare it to NIL, right, it’s only brand-building endorsement deals if you’re the top athlete,” says Wimbush, who cofounded MOGL, a software platform for student athletes to get NIL deals. “35.4 [million viewers on NBC] on Sunday to watch Gabby Thomas. … Since Tokyo in 2021 all the viewership numbers from NBC have since doubled.”

Duael won’t name any specific runners who’ve committed. But the company is confident it can score known names to run in its inaugural event next year, including Olympic runners eager to promote themselves in a sport that is rarely lucrative for its stars, especially between Olympic Games. Wimbush also tosses out “NFL players like DK Metcalf and Tyreek Hill” as theoretical examples—and that was even before Hill said in an interview Monday that he “would beat Noah Lyles in a race.”

Wimbush, who ran track in high school, believes success for Duael will rest on eyeballs, and that eyeballs will come mainly from social media.

“We want the best of the best,” he says. “That’s what this is for. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to land these types of media deals, the ESPNs, that the college sports or the NBAs are demanding. … The only way we’re going to be able to do that is having the premier names in the world of track and field, and we feel really comfortable and confident, with our relationships, that we’re able to go get some of the names that you’re seeing out there in the Olympics this year.”

But Duael is hardly the only new track competition.

In April, Reddit cofounder and investor Alexis Ohanian and newly minted gold medalist Gabby Thomas announced the since-renamed Athlos, a women-only track event boasting “the largest purse ever for a female-only track event,” in his words. The event will pay out $60,000 for first place, $25,000 for second, and $10,000 for third in each event. In June, the legendary sprinter Michael Johnson announced Grand Slam Track, a series also launching in 2025 that is promising $12 million in prizes at its first event. 

Duael will have a comparatively more modest $500,000—still healthy by track standards—up for grabs at the first Duael 100. It hopes to make its business thanks to a broadcast deal, and eventually, hosting fees from the locations where it holds meets. And its simple format could be a savvy way to lure casual fans to track: one type of race per meet. 

Wimbush compares Duael’s head-to-head format to the UFC or Power Slap. “These sports have kind of been able to reignite what entertainment looks like,” he says. “10-second sprints are going to be organically created for social media, and that’s where a majority of social sports content is being consumed these days. With this product being a product built for broadcast and media, we expect to create storylines.”