Two-time Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge will battle nine world champions for the men’s 2022 World Athlete of the Year Award.
The 37-year-old Kipchoge, who is fresh from breaking his own marathon world record, won the 2018 and 2019 awards but also made the final list for the 2020 and 2021 awards.
The winner of the prestigious award in world athletics will be revealed on World Athletics’ social media platforms in early December.
The announcement on Thursday marked the opening of the voting process for the 2022 World Athletes of the Year ahead of the 2022 World Athletics Awards in December.
Olympics 400m hurdles champion Karsten Warholm last year became the first Norwegian to win the Male Athlete of the Year Award, beating four other finalists who included Kipchoge and Olympic 5,000m champion Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda for the award.
Kipchoge will face world champions Ceh Kristjan (discus) from Slovakia, Brazilian Alison Dos Santos (400m hurdles), the 2020 winner, Swede Mondo Duplantis (pole vault), Moroccan Soufiane El Bakkali (3,000m steeplechase) and American Grant Holloway (110m hurdles).
Others are Norwegian Jakob Ingerbrigtsen (5,000m), Noah Lyles (200m) from United States, Grenada’s Anderson Peters (javelin) and Pedro Pichardo (triple jump) from Portugal.
The athletes were selected by an international panel of athletics experts, comprising representatives from all six continental areas of World Athletics.
“It has been another memorable year for the sport and the nominations reflect some of the standout performances achieved at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, World Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade, one-day meeting circuits and other events around the world,” said a statement from World Athletics.
Kipchoge recaptured the Berlin Marathon title, smashing his own world record by 30 seconds on September 25 in the German capital.
The 2016 and 2020 Olympic marathon champion clocked 2:01:09 to win, beating his previous world record time of 2:01:39 set when winning in Berlin in 2018.
Kipchoge had on March 6 this year won the Tokyo Marathon in a course record time of 2:02:40, beating the newly crowned London Marathon champion Amos Kipruto to second place in 2:03:13.
Kenya’s Olympic and world 1,500m champion Faith Chepng’etich was on Wednesday named among the 10 nominees for the female 2022 World Athlete of the Year award.
