Uganda’s Olympic hero Joshua Cheptegei has been nominated for Male Athlete of the Year award ahead of World Athletics Awards slated for December.
Cheptegei who won Gold (5000m) and Silver (10,000m) medals at the Tokyo Olympics is nominated alongside other nine athletes for the award.
The two-miles world record holder will tussle it out against Eliud Kipchoge (Kenya), Ryan Crouser (USA), Mondo Duplantis (Sweden), Jakob Ingebrigtsen (Norway), Daniel Stahl (Sweden), Miltiadis Tentoglou (Greece), Pedro Pichardo (Portugal), Damian Warner (Canada) and Karsten Warholm (Norway),
The nominees were selected by an international panel of athletics experts, comprising representatives from all six continental areas of World Athletics.
Commenting on the Awards, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said as it has always been, they will recognise athletes who have performed at the highest level across the year, taking into account not only the Olympic Games, but the one-day meeting circuits.
“We do recognise that athletes in some parts of the world faced greater challenges than others in accessing international competition this year, which complicated the nomination process. However, we saw some impressive breakthroughs at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and we look forward to those athletes having more opportunities to shine next year, with five World Athletics Series events and a full schedule of one-day meetings on the calendar.” Coe said.
According to World Athletics, finalists will be determined by a three-way voting process which begins this week with voting ending midnight Saturday, November 6, 2021.
The World Athletics Council and the World Athletics Family will cast their votes by email, while fans can vote online via the World Athletics social media platforms.
Individual graphics for each nominee will be posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram this week; a ‘like’ on Facebook and Instagram or a retweet on Twitter will count as one vote.
“The World Athletics Council’s vote will count for 50% of the result, while the World Athletics Family’s votes and the public votes will each count for 25% of the final result.” World Athletics noted in a statement.
