By Victor Kanayo
World Athletics has declared Olympic champions Sifan Hassan and Letsile Tebogo as Athletes of the Year, globally.
The announcement was made at the World Athletics Awards 2024 in Monaco.
According to the World Athletics body, Hassan and Tebogo received top honours in an evening that saw six athletes crowned in three categories – track, field and out of stadium – before the overall two winners were revealed, after fans voted
Tebogo was confirmed as men’s track athlete of the year, with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone receiving the women’s honour.
Hassan claimed the women’s out of stadium crown and Tamirat Tola the men’s, while Mondo Duplantis and Yaroslava Mahuchikh were named field athletes of the year.
This year’s Rising Stars were also celebrated, with Sembo Almayew and Mattia Furlani receiving recognition.
Hassan and Tebogo both won gold and claimed multiple medals at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Dutch star Hassan’s medal treble in Paris was capped by her winning the final athletics gold medal of the Games with her triumph in the marathon in an Olympic record of 2:22:55. That performance came just 37 hours after Hassan claimed bronze in the 10,000m, and six days after her first medal in the French capital – also bronze – in the 5000m.
As a result, she became the first woman to win medals in the 5000m, 10,000m and marathon at the same Games, and the first athlete since Emil Zatopek, who won all three men’s titles in Helsinki in 1952.
Tebogo also made history in Paris when he won the 200m, as he claimed a first ever Olympic gold medal in any sport for Botswana. He ran an African record of 19.46 – a time that moved him to fifth on the world all-time list – and that performance followed his sixth-place finish in the 100m final. He went on to form part of Botswana’s silver medal-winning men’s 4x400m team.
He dipped under 20 seconds for 200m a total of nine times in 2024, with those performances topped by his Olympic title-winning mark which remained the fastest of the year.
His fellow track athlete of the year, McLaughlin-Levrone, improved her own world 400m hurdles record twice, to 50.65 and 50.37, and claimed Olympic gold in that event as well as in the 4x400m. Tola, who joined Hassan in being named out of stadium athlete of the year, won the Olympic marathon title in Paris in an Olympic record.
World records were set by both field athletes of the year.
