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