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| November 09, 2006 | Thursday | Shawwal 16, 1427 |
Powell, Richards in contention for top IAAF award
MONTE CARLO (Monaco), Nov 8: Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell and American 400-meter runner Sanya Richards are on the shortlist for the IAAF's World Athlete of the Year awards.
Powell, who has twice equalled his world record of 9.77 seconds in the 100 meters this year, was on the men's list announced Wednesday by the International Association of Athletics Federations along with Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang of China and Lithuanian discus thrower Virgilijus Alekna.
Joining Richards among the women's finalists are Jamaican sprinter Sherone Simpson and Ethiopian distance runner Meseret Defar.
The six athletes will be judged by a special jury and the two winners will be announced Sunday at the World Athletics Gala.
Powell set the world record in the 100 in June 2005 in Athens, Greece. He equaled that time in June at the British Grand Prix in Gateshead, England, and in August at the Weltklasse in Zurich, Switzerland. He still shares the record with American sprinter Justin Gatlin, who has acknowledged a doping violation and faces being stripped of the mark.
Powell won 22 straight races, including a record 12 consecutive sub-10 second races, before being disqualified for a second false start at the Yokohama Super meet in Japan in September.
Liu, the Olympic gold medalist in the 110-meter hurdles, broke his own world record in the event, running 12.88 seconds in Lausanne, Switzerland. He bettered the record of 12.91 he shared with Britain's Colin Jackson, who set the mark in 1993.
Alekna, the Olympic and world champion in the discus, won the European title with a throw of 68.67 meters.
Richards went undefeated this year in the 400 and broke the American record with a time of 48.70 seconds at the Athens World Cup. That was the seventh-fastest of all time and the best performance since the 1996 Atlanta Olympic final when Marie-Jose Perec won in 48.25 and Cathy Freeman took silver in 48.63.
Defar set a world record in the 5,000, clocking 14:24.53 on June 3 at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York.
Simpson stretched her winning streak to eight races when she won the 100 in 10.89 at the World Athletics Final.
The shortlist was trimmed from the original 20 candidates after a public vote on the IAAF's Web site and a poll of IAAF members.
Previous winners include Carl Lewis, Haile Gebrselassie, Michael Johnson and Hicham El Guerrouj for the men, and Florence Griffith-Joyner, Merlene Ottey and Marion Jones for the women.
Both Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia and Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia won the last two years, but both failed to make the shortlist this year.— AP
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