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Mounting hurdles Athletics can't keep kidding itself - only a rescue plan can save track and field
The Guardian
|September 09, 2025
The world's fastest man is being trash-talked by a YouTuber. "Are you ready man?" asks Darren Watkins, AKA IShowSpeed, on a live stream broadcast around the world.
"You know my name's Speed, right? And you know I am going to win." Noah Lyles, the Olympic and world 100m champion, smiles at the teenage upstart. Then he bites back. "You gave yourself that name? That's so cute."
The pair agree to race over 50m for $100,000. Speed confesses he has never worn a pair of spikes, but keeps telling his 43.8 million followers that he can beat Lyles. As the pair line up, Speed does a backflip. Then the YouTube megastar, Mr Beast, who has 431m followers, fires the starter's gun. This isn't track and field as we know it. But thousands of people are watching. The result isn't a surprise. But the 39-minute video of the encounter last November has now had 3.5 million views on YouTube - making it by far the most watched athletics race on the platform since the 2024 Olympics.
This story is from the September 09, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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