Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah and Norwegian hurdler Karsten Warholm were announced as the winners of the World Athletes of the Year at the World Athletics Awards 2021 at a ceremony held virtually on Wednesday.
Thompson-Herah capped off a banner season in which she won almost everything available to her with one of the more prestigious awards in athletics. Achieving this award in an Olympic season is even more impressive, but undoubtedly backed by her incredible consistency and result-oriented successes. She became the third Jamaican woman to be awarded this honour after Merlene Ottley (1990) and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (2013), and the fifth overall after Asafa Powell (2006) and Usain Bolt who won this award a whopping six times.
Receiving her award, she teased even more success, “I went very close to the world record so you know, anything is possible.”
Retaining her Olympic titles at Tokyo 2020 in the 100m (National Record) and 200m (Olympic Record) sprints, as well as an additional gold in the 4x100m, Thompson-Herah would have been quite pleased with that start to the season as she rose to second in the world all-time list and came within touching distance of very long-standing world records in one of the most competitive disciplines in all of athletics.
The Norwegian Warholm, like Thompson-Herah, had been consistently world-class throughout their careers but had a particularly outstanding 2021 season. Having already broken the almost 30-year-old World Record (46.70) a month before the Olympics, Warholm substantiated his place in athletics lore by reducing his own record by a staggering three-quarters of a second (45.94) in Tokyo. Many sportswriters and former athletes have recognised that 400m hurdle race as one of the best ever in Olympic history because of the depth of the field as well as the results; all three medal winners finished inside of the pre-2021 World Record.
Commenting on that seminal race after receiving his award, Warholm said, “First when I saw the time, I was like ‘This must be a mistake!’ Because I didn’t see that one coming. And I didn’t see the victory coming before crossing the finish line.”
Other awardees from the event included the teenage American duo of Athing Mu and Erriyon Knighton who received the Rising Star award for their exploits at Tokyo. Mu was undefeated the entire year in the 800m and won Olympic Gold while Knighton broke Usain Bolt’s under-20 world record and finished fourth in the Olympic final at the age of 17.
President of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, ended the night by congratulating all of the winners and finalists on their extraordinary achievements this year.