Olympic Champion Eliud Kipchoge was for the second year running named the World Athletics Male Athlete of the Year in the 2019 gala held in Monaco on this past weekend.
Kipchoge, the winner of the award last year, added to his phenomenal marathon running career in 2019. In April he captured his fourth victory at the London Marathon with a 2:02:37 course record, the third-fastest performance of all time.
The 35-year-old Kenyan followed up this record-breaking streak in October by blasting through the distance’s two-hour barrier with a 1:59:40.2 performance at the Ineos159 Challenge in Vienna, The Sauce.
In the women’s category, Dalilah Muhammad, 29, was named the Woman Athlete of the Year. She broke the world record in the 400m hurdles twice this year, first with a 52.20 performance at the US Championships in July to eclipse a mark which had stood since 2003.
Muhammad broke it again at the World Athletics Championships Doha 2019, clocking 52.16 in one of the championships’ most eagerly-awaited finals to claim the world title for the first time.
Muhammad also won world gold in the 4x400m relay and won five of her seven races. The rising star athlete of the year went to Selemon Barega. The 19-year-old was the silver medallist in the 5000m at the World Championships and finished fifth in the senior race at the World Cross Country Championships Aarhus 2019.
The Ethiopian also produced world U20 leads at both the 5000m and 10,000m with 12:53.04 and 26:49.46, respectively.
Female Rising Star was won by Yaroslava Mahuchikh. Mahuchikh, the 2017 world U18 champion, continued her ascension into the high jump elite at the World Championships where she twice broke the world U20 record, first with a leap of 2.02m and again with a clearance of 2.04m to secure the silver medal. The 18-year-old also won the European U20 title.
The Ethiopian distance running legend who won Olympic 10,000m titles in 1992 and 2000, Tulu has served as acting president of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation since November 2018.
She is also a Council member of the African Athletics Confederation and vice president of the East Africa Athletics Region.
This article was first published by Capital Sports.
