Kipchoge, Ibarguen top athletics awards
MARATHON WORLD-RECORD holder Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya and Colombian long jumper Caterine Ibarguen won the IAAF Athlete of the Year awards yesterday.
Kipchoge, 34, clocked 2 hours, 1 minute, 39 seconds at the Berlin Marathon in September, shaving a whopping 78 seconds off the previous world record set in the German capital in 2014 by fellow Kenyan Dennis Kimetto.
Kipchoge also won a third London Marathon victory in April.
Ibarguen dominated women’s jumping this year, winning the long and triple jumps at the Central American and Caribbean Games, the IAAF Continental Cup, and at the IAAF Diamond League finals.
She was unbeaten in all eight of her triple jump competitions, ending the year with a worldleading mark of 14.96m in her specialist event and a national record of 6.93m in the long jump.
RECORD BREAKER
Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis, who won the senior European title by breaking his own world Under-20 record three times within the competition, was named as the Male Rising Star Recipient. He went over 5.95m, 6.00m and 6.05m on his first attempts, winning with a height that has been bettered outdoors only by Sergey Bubka.
Earlier in the year, he won the world Under-20 title in Tampere with a championship record of 5.82m and won on home soil at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, beating many of the world’s leading senior pole vaulters.
The Female Rising Star award went to American Sydney McLaughlin.
The sprinter broke her own world Under-20 400m hurdles record of 52.75. Not only was that mark the fastest time in the world this year, it also moved her into the top 10 on the world all-time list.
Earlier in the year, she recorded the fastest-ever indoor performances by an Under-20 athlete at 300m and 400m, clocking 36.12 and 50.36, respectively. She ended the year as the world Under-20 leader for the 200m indoors and outdoors, the 400m indoors and outdoors, the 400m hurdles, and the 300m indoors.