World champion American hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, both 23, won the World Athlete of the year awards on Monday.
McLaughlin-Levrone broke the world women’s 400m hurdles record twice while Duplantis set three new world highs in 2022.
US-born Swede Duplantis claimed the award for the second time in three years with his three world records plus the men’s world indoor title in March and the world outdoor gold in July.
“Going into the year, I had really high expectations of myself and I had some really big goals,” he said.
“I wanted to win the world indoors, the world outdoors, the Europeans, the Diamond League final, and I wanted to break the world record a few times.”
“I try not to put limits on myself. I can definitely jump higher than I’ve jumped right now. So I guess we’ll see how high, but I want to push it higher than people think is even possible, that’s for sure.”
Both titles were claimed in world record heights of 6.20 and 6.21 metres respectively and he also sealed European gold in Munich. He won 18 of his 19 competitions, and vaulted six metres or higher 23 times.
Duplantis is the first pole vaulter to collect gold at the Olympics, World Championships, World Indoor Championships, World Junior Championships, World Youth Championships and European Championships.
The other men’s finalists were Moroccan steeplechaser Soufiance El Bakkali, Norwegian runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge, and American sprinter Noah Lyles.
It was the first World Athlete of the year award for McLaughlin who clocked an astonishing 50.68 seconds in July obliterating her own world record by more than half a second.
““I would describe 2022 for myself by just saying incredible, all of my goals were accomplished this year,” she said. “We were able to accomplish everything we set out to do. It couldn’t have been any better.
“There’s more possible, and I think as a whole this generation of athletes is figuring out there’s a lot more we can do.”
She is billed as a once-in-a-lifetime talent and has hinted she could change discipline to the 400m flat. She will be one of the most closely watched performers at the world athletics championships in Budapest in August.
“My coach thinks there’s a lot more to be done,” she said. “The sky’s the limit for sure,” she said in July.
McLaughlin also won Olympic gold in 2021 in Tokyo in a then-world record time.
The other women’s finalists were Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan, Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Kimberly Garcia of Peru, and Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas.
Earlier on Monday, Erriyon Knighton, 18, became the first athlete to win the Rising Star Award twice as his performance in winning world 200 metres bronze at the World Championships in Eugene was honoured.
“Winning this award back-to-back means my talent is getting recognised on a bigger stage,” Knighton said.
The women’s Rising Star award went to 18-year-old Adriana Vilagos of Serbia, who successfully retained her world under-20 javelin title with a championship record. (StraitsTimes)
