Lol. World Athletics track athlete of the year finalist are SML and Femke Bol. What a joke. Where is Beatrice Chebet or MJW?

These awards have been a massive joke since 2023. Especially on the Men’s side. Jakob was snubbed for two straight years from 2023-2024.

WA & DL are the same org for the most part they like one lap and less. WA is the rep for 200 federations, DL is run for meeting directors of gigantic traditional meets except eug which is so small, isolated, and ignored. i know WA/DL tried to add California spring relay dozen. So Cal simply ignored the overtures. WA's federations sorta stand in the way of change. WA & DL are snooty Europeans wearing Pierre hats they don't have Americans involved in the front office.

It’s an award for athletics, not for distance running.

no one cares. if they wanted a serious T&F awards show it should be in Hollywood with real stars and the Hollywood 7 Billion pairs of eyes as a world audience. instead it;s cheap, amatuer, low cosr

We all know it should be Beatrice who set the 5k wr, won the 5k/10k at worlds and Melissa who won the 100/200/4x1. Honorable mention to Syd and Faith tied for 3rd for their respective WR/unofficial wr.

the cynical me says the award will end up going to Bol (for all the DL wins I guess) but they could hardly name her a finalist without also naming SML. So Faith and Beatrice and Melissa get the short straws.

Considering any Kenyan for athlete of the year right now is ridiculous. Tell Gault to get his virtue-signaling behind off his woke high-horse.

DEI nominee.

Only real argument for Femke over Chebet/MJW is volume, she won two relay golds at Euro Indoors and won the Diamond League 400h final while all the other top candidates skipped to focus on Tokyo.

Does Euro relay gold and a DL title make a better season than double WC gold and a 5000WR or the second women ever to pull off the sprint triple gold? Femke's great and deserves credit for racing everything... but come on. This feels like a popularity contest.

It’s not even that, though fans online gave the most support to Chebet/Kipyegon lol. It’s the WA voting panels

Bol's best chance of beating SML

I think Bol herself would be a little bit embarrassed by that. Is she supposed to attend? I'm not even sure there is a gala. She won the European award again this year but didn't attend for the first time. She had an early return to training this year, presumably due to switching to the 800.

Anna Hall & Valarie Allman snubbed in favour of Tara Davis-Woodhall & especially Nicola Olyslagers makes no sense. This year, Hall moved to #2 on the all-time list. Allman moved to #6 on the all time with the best mark since 1989 in her event.

For comparison, Olyslagers moved to #16 on the all-time list. TDW didn't even set a PB this year.

Hall & Allman also both went undefeated this year (as did TDW for that matter, although she did compete sparsely). Olyslagers got beaten multiple times by Mahuchikh.

WA rates GST as a B tier meet which is vastly lower than a diamond league. Bol did technically win more diamond leagues , including the DL final, while Melissa won less. Most of her wins came from GST. What I don’t get is how she isn’t a finalist when Lyles was and Ingebrigtsen wasn’t in 2023. What a bizarre choice.

According to the World Athletics website, the voting is weighted as follows:

• World Athletics Council - 50%
• World Athletics Family - 25%
• Social media fan voting - 25%

They should rethink the process after this. Not having MJW nor Chebet as finalists is sheer lunacy.

worldathletics.org

World Athlete of the Year – how it works | World Athletics

The standout athletes of the year will again be celebrated at the World Athletics Awards 2025

Open link

Agreed Gault should be deported back to England.

Will the winner get a trophy?

Why? Probably for competing more than Melissa, breaking multiple meeting records at DLs and/or Continental Tours, winning medals indoors and outdoors championships this year. It's a weird one because Melissa had a great season. I also wonder if they're being petty and using this as payback to GST since she was the standout woman from the series and got her best success this from those races. I could be wrong but I'm really looking at it from all angles.

Per that X table, Bol was 2nd (20k) while Chebet was 3rd (16k). The ordering in the table is wrong.