By NAN Sports Editor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Oct. 28, 2016: Caribbean sports fans have the opportunity to make one of their own the IAAF 2016 World Athlete of the Year for another consecutive year.
There are just five days left to go before voting for the 2016 World Athletes of the Year concludes. This year’s men’s and women’s long-list candidates include three from the Caribbean – specifically Jamaica.
They are:
1: Triple Olympian Usain Bolt, who successfully defended his Olympic titles in the 100-m, 200-m and 4x100m relay at Rio 2016 and ended the season unbeaten at all distances, including preliminaries. The 30-year-old clocked 9.81 and 19.78 season’s bests.
2: Omar McLeod, who emerged as the world’s top sprint hurdler, winning both the Olympic title at Rio 2016 and world indoor gold in the 60-m hurdles events, with world leads indoors (7.41 60-m hurdles) and out (12.98). The 22-year-old produced six of the eight fastest performances outdoors and became the first sub-13-second 110-m hurdler to run faster than 10 seconds for the flat 100-m.
3: Elaine Thompson, who emerged as the world’s premiere sprinter, winning Olympic titles at both 100-m and 200-m in Rio and ended the season with 10.70 and 21.78 world leads, respectively. The 24-year-old also won Olympic 4x100m silver and world indoor 60m bronze.
A three-way voting process will determine the finalists. The IAAF Council and the IAAF Family will cast their votes by email, while fans can vote online via the IAAF’s social media platforms as follows: Facebook and Twitter.
A ‘like’ or ‘favorite’ will count as one vote. Vote for the top male athlete on Facebook here and for the top female athlete here.
Voting closes on November 1st.
The winners will be announced at the IAAF Athletics Awards 2016 in Monaco on Friday, December 2nd.
