The lingering furor over disqualifications at the USA Indoor Track and Field Championships in February may have been the best thing to happen to the Track and Field Athletes Association (TFAA), the latest attempt at forging an athletes’ union in the sport. The controversy created interest among a diverse group of athletes, often more interested in their events than in the politics of their sport.
Since the controversy at the indoor championships, TFAA has been asking for, and last week received, a response from USA Track and Field, according to TFAA president Adam Nelson. Nike, USATF’s largest sponsor, and the company that endorses the largest stable of athletes, also communicated positively with TFAA, Nelson said.
“It’s great, the fact that both Nike and USATF expressed support of athletes organizing,” Nelson, the 2004 Olympic champion in the shot put, said. “Hopefully, we will have conversations that will take place in the very near term. We’re working on an agenda or some objectives we think we can work on together to build a stronger, more vibrant profession for the athletes.”
Best Running Shoes 2025 statement that said, “USATF supports athletes’ collective efforts, whether through USATF governance channels such as the Athletes’ Advisory Committee and direct representation on our board of directors, or through groups such as the PAA or TFAA.” USATF chose not to comment further for this story.
Nelson and others, including Mike Conley, formed TFAA in 2009 as the successor to the Professional Athletes Association (PAA), which lost momentum in 2008. TFAA has a membership of 139, paying annual dues of $20. The union has 12 Olympic medalists, including Allyson Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, After his experience in Albuquerque, Bumbalough is considering joining the union.
“Our growth will depend upon how well we continue to execute and create positive change,” Nelson said.
The union has won some relatively minor concessions regarding athletes being able to wear corporate logos. There are other needs that need to be addressed. Athletes and agents resent the fact that the International Olympic Committee prevents athletes affiliated with non-IOC major sponsors from being used in promotions just before, during, and just after the Olympics.
The sport received a black eye, and TFAA thrust itself into the spotlight at the USA Indoor Championships on Feb. 21-23 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Both the men’s and women’s 3000-meter races were marred by disqualifications, both involving athletes coached by Nike’s Alberto Salazar.
In the women’s 3000, Gabriele Grunewald won the race, but was disqualified for contact late in the race with Jordan Hasay, after multiple appeals. Two days later, Grunewald was reinstated as the champion after the appeal was dropped. In the men’s 3000, Andrew Bumbalough was disqualified for allegedly bumping runner-up Galen Rupp. Replays showed brief contact between Rupp and third-place finisher Ryan Hill, but none between Bumbalough and Rupp. Six weeks later, Bumbalough was still waiting to hear why he was disqualified.
Grunewald is a member of TFAA, while Hasay, Rupp and Bumbalough are not, according to the roster posted on TFAA’s website.
Collegiate Records Go Down at BU.
“I do think the idea behind it is a good one, for the athletes to have a voice or presence for some transparency with the governing body,” Bumbalough said. “TFAA is kind of in its infancy, but it has the potential to do some good. The biggest thing is communication with the parties involved, whether it’s the governing body, athletes, agents and shoe companies.”
Bumbalough remains miffed that he has yet to be contacted by USATF, though his agent, Tom Ratcliffe, has. Bumbalough can’t understand why the federation can’t just own up to a mistake, apologize, and reinstate him.
“When there’s been no immediate effort to clear up what happened and react to that, it lets athletes’ imaginations run a bit wild,” Nelson said.
Health & Injuries.
First, the organization asked USATF that “two athletes, appointed by TFAA, be allowed to sit on all protest and appeal procedures,” at all major USATF Championship competitions. A meeting between USATF and TFAA scheduled for Monday, March 10 to discuss proper procedure for protest and appeals at championship meets was postponed, and has yet to be rescheduled.
On March 26, USATF released a statement saying it was looking into the events at the indoor championships, but no immediate action was planned. “Because it is far-reaching, this process will take place over weeks and months.”
TFAA then asked shoe companies and other major sponsors to support athletes if they didn’t participate in major meets, such as nationals, as a protest.
Shoe companies Brooks and Saucony, as well as apparel companies Oiselle and CEP, and the maker of the cross training device Elliptigo, responded quickly to TFAA’s call for sponsor support if athletes engage in “collective action.” Last week, marketing executives at Nike, the sports' largest sponsor, talked with Nelson. Nike released a statement that said it supported athletes joining an athlete union, but stopped short of offering to continue to support athletes in the event of any sort of protest.
Some observers thought the term “collective action” was a possible call for a boycott of the U.S. outdoor championships in June, since this year the meet is not a qualifier for the world championships or Olympics. Nelson said that is not necessarily the case.
“Collective action can mean a lot of things,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean a boycott. I don’t think anyone wants to rush into those kinds of decisions. I think collective action from our standpoint was more referencing participation in non-sanctioned events or any other activities the TFAA may publically endorse.”
Nelson, 38, knows how to compete on and off the track. As a 6-foot, 255-pound athlete, he utilized incredible technique and torque to overcome his relatively small stature. Along with his Olympic gold in Athens in 2004, he won an Olympic silver medal in 2000, as well as a gold medal and two silvers at the world championships, and three national titles.
A graduate of Dartmouth, where he won an NCAA title, and played football, he earned an MBA from Virginia in 2012. He was sponsored by Nike from 2000-2004, underwent a publicized split with the company, and was on his own for a few years. He re-signed with Nike, then ended his career affiliated with Saucony.
Through his competitive and sponsorship experience, Nelson has seen pretty much every side of the sport, good and bad. Since retiring in 2013 after 16 years as a world and nationally ranked athlete, he choose to continue fighting battles for his sport because of loyalty and gratitude, he said.
“And it frustrates me beyond words when every part of the stakeholder map in track and field is set up to basically exploit athletes because they just don’t know better,” said Nelson, who runs a sports performance center in Athens, Georgia. “I realize there’s got to be a better solution.”
Though track and field, with distance runners, sprinters, jumpers and throwers, is much more diverse than, say, the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball, Nelson finds himself looking at the ways salaries and benefits have grown with those sports.
Meanwhile, there are relatively few track and field athletes, like Usain Bolt, earning major salaries. According to a TFAA survey that confirmed result of a USATF study a couple of years ago, less than 5% of athletes earn more than $500,000.
The greater concern is that more than half of the top-10 ranked athletes in the world earns less than $15,000. The TFAA wants to “grow the middle class” of athletes.
“When I look at our professional sports peers I see other organizations that, while they may not always agree, they’ve found ways to work well together to grow the value of their entire sport, and eliminate a lot of these petty, trivial issues caused by people trying to execute their own will or satisfy their own egos rather than doing what is best for the sport,” Nelson said.
He envisions the international federation (IAAF) and/or USATF providing athletes with medical and retirement benefits like the major US pro sports. He thinks that USATF and the IAAF need to attract more sponsors to bring more money into the sport, but also thinks that the current structure of USATF might prevent that because national governing boards, under the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, were design to govern, not be commercial.
Asked what TFAA’s major victory has been, Nelson answered, “surviving.” He said it is difficult to organize a wide variety of athletes who are also spread out around the world.
“Surviving as an athletic association in Olympic sports is probably the most difficult thing to do,” Nelson said. “Nobody is going to support you. There is simply not enough money from the athlete side to self-fund it.”
Collegiate Records Go Down at BU.
“The question of their success probably will have a lot to do with leadership to the extent they can define their issues in a way that a lot of people relate to them,” said Ken Margolies, a senior associate professor at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, an expert on organizing unions. “In most organizing, the key thing is who steps forward and says, ‘I’m for this.’ In a field like athletics it probably has to be some of the more prominent athletes in the field.
“That was true of actors in the old days when they first organized. It was mainly because the stars took the lead, partly because they had more leverage—the studios needed the stars. For every star, there are a lot of people who aren’t stars and are struggling. That’s one thing to look for—will the most prominent athletes come out?”
As Nelson and TFAA continue to work to bring athletes together, it helps when there is a situation such as the one at indoor national, which makes athletes aware of the union, and prompts the federation, and the sports largest sponsor to communication with the union.
“I think it was positive for athletes to see,” Nelson said. “They understand now there is a need for a real directional change that has to be led by them. So we’re going to continue pushing for that and hope we can reach a consensus on what needs to happen to improve the sport for the athletes.”
