World Athletics Awards: Two Africans make final five for women’s award
Ethiopia’s Letsenbet Gidey and Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir have both been named among the final five nominees for the Female Athlete of the Year award for 2020.
The sports’ governing body World Athletics, which was formally known as the IAAF, reduced the nominations from 10 down to five on Tuesday.
Three other African athletes missed out on the final list, with Ethiopia’s Ababel Yeshaneh alongside Kenyan duo Faith Kipyegon and Hellen Obiri having been among the original 10.
The other two failed to make it to the final five were Femke Bol of the Netherlands and Great Britain’s Laura Muir.
The World Athletics Awards 2020 will be staged as a virtual event on 5 December and streamed live on social media.
The finalists
Letesenbet Gidey, Ethiopia
- set a world record of 14:06.62 over 5000m
- was second in the 5000m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Monaco
Sifan Hassan, Netherlands
- set a world record of 18,930m in the one hour run
- set a European record of 29:36.67 over 10,000m, the fourth fastest performance in history
Peres Jepchirchir, Kenya
- won the world half marathon title
- twice broke the world half marathon record for a women-only race (1:05:34 and 1:05:16)
Yulimar Rojas, Venezuela
- undefeated in four triple jump competitions indoors and outdoors
- broke the world indoor triple jump record with 15.43m
Elaine Thompson-Herah, Jamaica
- undefeated in seven 100m races
- ran world-leading 10.85 over 100m
There was a three-way voting process to determine the finalists.
The World Athletics Council and the World Athletics Family cast their votes by email, while fans voted online via our social media platforms.
The Council’s vote counted for 50% of the result, while the Athletics Family’s votes and the public votes each counted for 25% of the final result. Voting for the Male World Athlete of the Year closed on 15 November.