Track stars racing for $150K US at Ultimate Championship sign of progress and work yet to be done

Yes, there will be track and field stars — Sha'Carri Richardson, Gabby Thomas, Mondo Duplantis and more — vying for those $150,000 US top prizes this week at a new event called the World Athletics Ultimate Championship. There will also be runners like Jacory Patterson.

The 26-year-old, 400-metre sprinter from South Carolina might not be the most recognizable face at the three-day meet in Budapest, Hungary, featuring 28 events that kicks off Friday. In some ways, though, he's the reason the event exists.

Last year, Patterson was working a night job loading trucks at a UPS facility. His story went viral when he won a race on the much-maligned and debated Grand Slam Track circuit — another effort, albeit a failed one, that was designed to raise the profile of the sport in non-Olympic years and, ultimately, put more money in runners' pockets.

Thanks to the win, Patterson has a sponsorship deal with Nike. That allows him to train near home, which has helped his performance. That, in turn, landed him a spot on the starting line in Ultimate.

Patterson has the fourth-fastest 400 time of the year (43.76 seconds), good enough to put him in a field featuring the most recent Olympic and world champions and the rest of this year's top-ranked athletes.

"That's one thing about Ultimate, it's the prize money. It's a different opportunity," he said. "We don't have NFL, NBA, MLB money. So, when we see things like that, you kind of just want to go there, perform your best and, hey, see if you can get that 150."

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The Ultimate Championship is a work more than two years in the making. The meet, planned for every two years, including at the end of the 2028 season after