Isaiah Kiplagat repudiates IAAF’s decision for Women’s Athlete of the Year Award
The nomination and selection of the athletes for the awards has always been controversial. People disagree with the juries for one reason or the other. Isaiah Kiplagat, Chief of the Kenyan Athletics, is one such opponent of the IAAF’s decision for the Women’s
Athlete of the Year Award.
Not everyone has baseless reasons to argue against the IAAF’s decision. Likewise, Kiplagat discredited the decision based on the relative performance of the chosen athlete, compared to another more suitable candidate.
Recently, the world athletics body preferred Sally Pearson, the 25-year-old Australian athlete who specializes in 100m hurdles over Vivian Cheruiyot, the 28-year old long distance runner from Kenya.
Pearson, the silver medal winner of 2008 Summer Olympics, was the victor of the Athletics World Championships title in the 100m hurdles this year. To claim the distinction, the girl who also competes for 100m sprints, had breasted the tape in 12.28 seconds.
Cheruiyot, on the other hand, was the winner of two titles, 5000m and 10,000m at the global athletics event. Not only that, she also dominated the 8km field at the World Cross Country Championships.
Being the title holder of the World Championships 2009, along with a number of other prestigious titles, she definitely had a better profile to strengthen her claim to the IAAF’s World Athlete of the Year Award.
Thus, repudiating the decision, Kiplagat said, “How can they say Sally beat Vivian by 30 votes in online voting? This is not beauty pageantry where winners are decided by their looks and how they cat walk. Vivian won three major world titles this year, which
beats Pearson’s one title in Daegue”.
Kiplagat, who also happens to be a member of the IAAF Council, was of the view that the process of selecting the right candidate for the prestigious award must change and it should be based upon the performance of athletes on the track.
Besides other stellar performances, Cheruiyot also bagged the Diamond League this year and just missed a new world record in Stockholm over the distance of 5000m.
Nevertheless, in her own place, Pearson did not do badly either. Besides hitting the line for a world title, she claimed 15 successes in 16 contests throughout the year.
The voting family for deciding the IAAF title was comprised of federations, meeting directors and the press, whereas the process was carried out through emails.
Isaiah Kiplagat was not at all pleased with the final decision and deemed Vivian Cheruiyot to be a more deserving candidate for the Women Athlete of the Year Award, rather than Sally Pearson.
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