American female hurdler, Sydney McLaughlin -Levrone has won the Athlete of the year defeating Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan and three other nominees in the process.
The announcement was made by World Athletics federation.
Amusan competed favourable with Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Peru’s Kimberly Garcia, and Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas for the awards but got dusted by Levrone.
Amusan took the world by storm when she ran 12.12s in the semi-final of the women’s 100m hurdles at the World Championships in Eugene, USA to break Kendra Harrison’s 12.20s World Record.
Amusan ran a faster time – 12.06s – in the final about one hour later to claim gold, although the time wasn’t deemed legal as it was wind-aided.
The Nigerian hurdler continued her blistering form by retaining her Commonwealth Games title in Birmingham, UK, setting a Games record of 12.30s.
She also retained her Diamond League trophy in her season-ending race.
In the Men category, Sweden’s Mondo Duplantis nicked the award, while American teenager sensation Erriyon Knighton and Serbian javelin thrower Adriana Vilagos won the men’s and women’s Rising Stars awards respectively.