Three Jamaicans on IAAF World Athlete-of-the-Year shortlist
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| Published on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 |
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By Gary Smith
Caribbean Net News Sports Correspondent
Email: gary@caribbeannetnews.com
MONTE-CARLO, Monaco: Three Jamaican Olympic gold medallists, including World sprint double record holder Usain Bolt, are among a shortlist of athletes selected by the IAAF to take home the World Athlete-of-the-Year Awards.
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| Usain Bolt. AFP PHOTO |
Bolt is joined by two-time reigning Olympic 200 metres champion Veronica Campbell-Brown and Melaine Walker, who became the second Jamaican female to win an Olympic 400m hurdles title.
Also on the shortlist is Cuban Dayron Robles, the men's 110 metres hurdles Olympic champion and world record holder.
On the men's, Bolt, a triple Olympic gold medal winner and Robles will face strong challenges from Ethiopian double Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele, the winner in 2004 and 2005 and his fellow countryman Haile Gebrselassie, who recently improved the marathon world record.
American decathlon Olympic winner Bryan Clay and Kenyan Samuel Wanjiru, the 2008 Beijing Olympic marathon gold medalist, among others are also pushing for the award.
In the women's category, Walker, who won the 400m hurdles in an Olympic record of 52.64secs and Campbell-Brown, the half-lap champion who blasted to 21.74secs to copped the crown, will face even stronger contest from Russian favourite Yelena Isinbayeva, who set world records and landed the Olympic title in the pole vault this season.
Other strong contenders for the female athlete-of-the-year award are Ethiopian Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m champion Tirunesh Dibaba, Croatian high jumper Blanka Vlasic, as well as Kenyan middle distance teenager Pamela Jelimo, who dominated the 800m this season.
Following the voting poll, which is now open to the public, a shortlist of 3 finalists on both the men and women side will be presented to a special jury of the IAAF, who will then announce the winners at the 2008 IAAF World Athletics Gala in Monaco on November 23.
Only three Caribbean representatives, Ana Fidelia Quirot of Cuban, former Jamaican representative Merlene Ottey, along with former 100m world record holder Asafa Powell, have won the awards. Powell was the last to win the award in 2006.
Bolt, who ran world records of 9.69 and 19.30 to win the sprint double in Beijing, is well set to become only the second Caribbean male athlete to win the title since it first came into existence in 1988. | | | | Reads : 1408 | | | |
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