Thompson-herah among nominees for World athletics Female athlete of the year
TRIPLE Olympic Games gold medallist Elaine Thompson-herah has been nominated for World athletics Female athlete of the Year for the second-straight season after she was named among 10 nominees yesterday.
Thompson-herah is coming off one of the greatest seasons ever by a sprinter, male or female, successfully defending her Olympics sprint double title at the Games in Tokyo, Japan, and adding a 4x100m relay gold, all three in new national records.
Her 10.54 seconds in the 100m and 21.53 seconds in the 200m are also the second-fastest ever, only behind the late Florence Griffiths-joyner, set 33 years ago in 1988.
The full list of women includes three who set world records — Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela, who added the outdoors triple jump record when she won the Olympic gold, to the Indoor record she set earlier; American Sydney Mclaughlin, who broke the world record in the 400m hurdles, the second time in the Olympic finals; and Holland’s Sifan Hassan who won two gold medals in the Olympics in the 5,000m and 10,000m and was third in the 1,500m.
American Valarie Allman who won the Olympic discus throw title and later broke the American record; Jasmine Camacho-quinn of Puerto Rico who won the Olympics 100m hurdles; Faith Kipyegon of Kenya who won the Olympics and Diamond League 1500m titles; Mariya Lasitskene, an authorised neutral athlete who won the Olympics and Diamond League high jump; Shaunae Miller-uibo of the Bahamas who retained her Olympics 400m title and teenaged American Athing Mu who won the Olympics 800m title.
The men’s list was released a day earlier and is headed by Norway’s Karsten Warholm, who broke the world record in the 400m hurdles, while retaining his Olympic title and American Ryan Crouser, who broke both the indoor and outdoor world records and was undefeated the entire year.
Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei, the Olympics 5,000m champion and 10,000m silver medallist; Sweden’s Mondo Duplantis, the Olympics polevault champion; Jakob Ingebrigtsen of
Norway, the Olympics and European indoor 1,500m champion; Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, who won the Olympics marathon; Portugal’s Pablo Pedro Pichardo, the Olympic Games, Diamond League, and European indoor triple jump champion; Daniel Stahl of Sweden who won the Olympics discus throw, Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece who won the Olympic Games long jump and Damion Warner of Canada who won the Olympics decathlon gold medal.
A release from World Athletics said, “The nominations reflect the remarkable range of exceptional performances that the sport has witnessed this year at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, one-day meeting circuits, and other events around the world.”
President Sebastian Coe was quoted to have said, “As always, the World Athletics Awards will recognise athletes who have performed at the highest level across the year, taking into account not only the Olympic Games, but the one-day meeting circuits. We do recognise that athletes in some parts of the world faced greater challenges than others in accessing international competition this year, which complicated the nomination process. However, we saw some impressive breakthroughs at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and we look forward to those athletes having more opportunities to shine next year, with five World Athletics Series events and a full schedule of one-day meetings on the calendar.”
The voting will be in three sections, says the release. “The World Athletics Council and the World Athletics Family will cast their votes by e-mail, while fans can vote online via the World Athletics social media platforms. Individual graphics for each nominee will be posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram this week; a ‘like’ on Facebook and Instagram or a retweet on Twitter will count as one vote.”
The World Athletics Council’s vote will count for 50 per cent of the result, while the World Athletics Family’s votes and the public votes will each count for 25 per cent of the final result, they also pointed out and added, “Voting for the World Athletes of the Year closes at midnight on Saturday 6 November. At the conclusion of the voting process, five women and five men finalists will be announced by World Athletics,” before the winners are announced in December.