Update on the IAAF World Athlete of the Year Awards:
Sprinter Tyson Gay and middle-distance runner Meseret Defar won the World Athlete of the Year titles at the IAAF awards ceremony that took place in Monte Carlo.
Gay won the 100 and 200-meter sprints at the world championships in Osaka, Japan, and was part of the victorious 400-meter relay team. That made him the fourth man to win three golds at a single worlds.
Defar set the two-mile world record at the Van Damme Memorial meet on Sept. 14, smashing her own mark by almost 12 seconds. She finished in 8 minutes, 58.58 seconds.
Although he didn’t reclaim his World Athlete of the Year Award, Nutrilite-sponsored sprinter Asafa Powell didn’t walk away empty handed. He won men's performance of the year for his world-record time of 9.74 seconds in the 100-meter sprint, set in Rieti, Italy, in September.
Nutrilite-sponsored athlete and World and Olympic 110-meter hurdles champion Liu Xiang of China is one of three finalists in the running for the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) Male Athlete of the Year award.
Liu, who holds the world record in the 110-meter hurdles, is up against 100-meter and 200-meter world sprinting champion Tyson Gay of the US and Ethiopian marathon-runner Haile Gebrselassie.
Liu has gained more and more popularity since becoming China's first male track world champion.
The winners of the 2007 World Athlete of the Year Awards will be announced live during the 2007 World Athletics Gala, which will take place in Monaco, on November 25.
For more information on the World Athlete of the Year Awards, go to http://www.iaaf.org/
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has made known the names of the 22 athletes competing for the 2007 World Athlete of the Year Awards. (There is one for Male Athlete of the Year, and one for Female Athlete of the Year.) The winners will be announced on November 25th.
Nutrilite-sponsored athletes who made the list are: Asafa Powell, Liu Xiang and Sanya Richards.
Athletes, coaches, federations and journalist will vote, along with the general public, and will have the responsibility of choosing three finalists for each branch, and a jury will be in charge of deciding the winner, who will be announced on November 25th in Monte Carlo.
