Noah Lyles fails to make cut for men’s world track athlete of the year
Sign up now: Get the biggest sports news in your inbox
Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles will not be the male track athlete of the year despite his triumph in Paris.
PHOTO: AFP
PARIS – Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles is not one of the two finalists for male track Athlete of the Year, World Athletics revealed on Nov 4.
The American won one of the closest finals in Games history to take gold in Paris in August by five thousandths of a second from Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.
But 200m Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo of Botswana and Norway’s 5,000m gold medallist Jakob Ingebrigtsen were the two male finalists for the track athlete award.
Lyles was aiming for an Olympic sprint double but had to settle for the 200m bronze behind Tebogo and his US teammate Kenny Bednarek.
He later revealed that he had raced in the 200m despite testing positive for Covid-19.
“The top two leading athletes in each category – track, field and out of stadium – have been chosen from the first round of voting, which comprised votes from the World Athletics Council, World Athletics Family and a public vote on social media. One of these two athletes will take the crown in their category,” a World Athletics statement said.
“Now, in a new addition to this year’s awards, a final round of voting – cast by fans of the sport – will take place between Nov 4 and 10 to decide who the overall World Athlete of the Year is.”
While Lyles misses out, the winner of the Olympic women’s 100m final, Julien Alfred of St Lucia, is one of the two women’s track finalists.
She will be up against Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the American who broke her own world record to win the Olympic 400m hurdles title for a second time in a row.
In the field events, Olympic men’s pole vault champion and world-record holder Armand Duplantis will be hot favourite to take the men’s award.
The Swede is up against Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece, who won the men’s long jump gold in Paris.
Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh, who broke the 37-year-old women’s world record with a clearance of 2.10m four weeks before taking Olympic gold, will go head-to-head with three-time Olympic heptathlon champion Nafissatou Thiam of Belgium.
The women’s out-of-stadium award pits world marathon record holder Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya against Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, who won the Olympic marathon in Paris.
In the men’s category, Ecuador’s Brian Pintado, gold medallist in the 20km race walk at the Paris Games, will compete against Olympic marathon champion Tamirat Tola from Ethiopia.
“The Athletes of the Year in each category, as well as the overall winner, will be revealed at a ceremony in Monaco on Sunday, Dec 1 as part of the World Athletics Awards 2024,” World Athletics added. AFP
