It is looking increasingly unlikely that the USATF Grand Prix will return to Bermuda this year.

The event, held on the island for the past three years, featured some of world athletics’ biggest stars, including 2024 Olympic Games 100 metres champion Noah Lyles, competing alongside some of Bermuda’s top athletes such as Jah-Nhai Perinchief.

However, the event’s leading backer, the Bermuda Tourism Authority, has decided the event is not providing the desired return on investment despite hailing it as a major success just months earlier.

“The partnership between USATF and the Bermuda Tourism Authority was designed as a multi-year activation leading up to the excitement of the 2024 Olympic year,” read a statement from the BTA yesterday.

“The primary goal was to leverage the heightened global attention during this period. Following the conclusion of the 2024 activation, our Business Development team evaluated the event’s impact and future potential and explored alternate partnership models. The assessment determined that the evolving post-Olympic landscape posed significant challenges to achieving the desired return on investment for spring 2025.

“We remain aligned with the national tourism plan and our team continues negotiation of other high-impact opportunities and partnerships with sporting activations and major media platforms, ensuring the continued success of our marketing initiatives for 2025 and beyond.”

The news that the grand prix will no longer receive BTA backing comes just days after The Royal Gazette revealed that Hazel Clark, the authority’s director of global business development and partnerships, had left the organisation, and mere months after its chief executive Tracy Berkeley praised the event for the value it brought to Bermuda.

“The USATF Bermuda Grand Prix perfectly aligns with our strategic vision to elevate Bermuda’s reputation through world-class sporting events,” Berkeley said after the 2024 event.

“This grand prix showcased elite international athletics and solidified Bermuda’s position as an example of sports tourism excellence for a destination.

“As we look ahead, we are optimistic about the opportunities it holds for our island and the continued growth of our sports tourism sector.”

According to BTA figures, last year’s event recorded 1.23 million views on US television network NBC, a 20 per cent increase on 2023, and was “the most-viewed sport on Sunday” outside US sports events.

Despite the withdrawal of BTA funding, Freddie Evans, president of the Bermuda National Athletics Association, is not ready to admit defeat.

“At this stage we don’t have an event to seek support for because we have no agreement in place,” Evans said.

“What happens is that we get a contract and then apply for sponsorship from the BTA or any other sponsor.

“The BTA has always been the title sponsor and helped to make it happen from the start. We don’t know what their budget is, and if we get a contract next week, we go to them and they might say we’re too late. That’s a possibility too.”

It is not just top athletes who will miss out, as Bermuda’s up-and-coming athletes also had an opportunity to showcase their skills in the Athene Fastest Kid on de Rock, with some of their races broadcast to a global audience on NBC and Peacock.

The Butterfield Future Champions Clinic and Chubb Cooldown also provided opportunities for youngsters to learn from visiting Olympians.

“We did a lot of things to promote track and field in Bermuda,” Evans said. “It also elevated our profile in the region and showed that we can do big events.”

In a further blow to the BNAA, it has been forced to turn down an offer to host this year’s North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletic Association Track and Field Championships. Bahamas last hosted the event in 2022, when Perinchief won Bermuda’s sole medal.

“The NACAC would also like us to do a meet in June,” Evans said. “But as we go late into the summer, our prices go up and hotel room availability goes down.

“We were asked to host the NACAC Championships, but there are not 400 rooms available at that time of the year to do that. Those are the kinds of things that we’re up against.”