Millrose Games To Make Debut At The Armory After 98 Years At MSG

The Millrose Games, “once the center of indoor track and field,” will be held at the 5,000-seat Armory in Upper Manhattan for the first time Saturday. The event in recent years “failed to fill” Madison Square Garden or “draw television audiences, and the corporations stopped sponsoring the hallowed meet.” The Millrose Games were “losing close to $500,000 per year, drawing only 9,611 fans in 2011, and after 98 years at the Garden, the Millrose board passed the event over to the Armory foundation” (N.Y. TIMES, 2/9).

Runner Natasha Hastings said the event moving from MSG is "kind of bittersweet." Hastings: "You're talking about a track meet that has lots of history. To move it from a place as monumental as Madison Square Garden is kind of sad on one hand. On a personal note, I ran my very first indoor 400 meter at the Armory. ... It's kind of special to me to be going home, to what you could call my home track" (AMSTERDAMNEWS.com, 2/10).