The names of the five finalists for Women&rsquo;s World Athlete of the Year honours have been confirmed, as the countdown to the World Athletics Awards 2023 continues.
The five athletes, who represent five countries from four area associations, have achieved sensational performances across a range of athletics disciplines in 2023, winning titles and breaking world records at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23, one-day meeting circuits, Label road races and other events around the world.
The finalists are (in alphabetical order):
Tigist Assefa, ETH, marathon &middot; Berlin marathon winner &middot; World marathon record
Femke Bol, NED, 400m/400m hurdles &middot; World 400m hurdles champion &middot; World indoor 400m record
Shericka Jackson, JAM, 100m/200m &middot; World 200m champion and 100m silver medallist &middot; Diamond League 100m and 200m champion
Faith Kipyegon, KEN, 1500m/mile/5000m &middot; World 1500m and 5000m champion &middot; World records at 1500m, mile and 5000m
Yulimar Rojas, VEN, triple jump &middot; World champion &middot; Diamond league champion
<h3>Voting procedure for 2023 World Athletes of the Year</h3>
A three-way voting process determined the finalists.
The World Athletics Council and the World Athletics Family cast their votes by email, while fans logged their decisions online via the World Athletics social media platforms where a record 2 million votes were registered.
Voting closed on 28 October.
The World Athletes of the Year will be announced on World Athletics&rsquo; platforms on 11 December, as part of the World Athletics Awards 2023.
<h3>Be part of the celebrations</h3>
One lucky person and a companion will win a once-in-a-lifetime VIP trip to Monaco during the annual World Athletics Awards.
The winners of the fan VIP trip will get to spend three nights (9-11 December) in Monaco and meet the best athletes of 2023 in person. Flights, accommodation and evening meals will all be included.
<a href="https://worldathletics.org/news/news/win-a-vip-trip-to-monaco?utm_source=Editorial&amp;utm_medium=Web&amp;utm_campaign=VIP-Trip&amp;utm_content=Bannerads" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Enter now</a>
World Athletics

The names of the five finalists for Women’s World Athlete of the Year honours have been confirmed

Finalists announced for Women's World Athlete of the Year 2023 

On the eve of the World Athletics Indoor Championships Glasgow 24 &ndash; the first global championships of the year &ndash; the International Fair Play Committee (CIFP), in partnership with World Athletics, is inviting fans across the world to nominate moments that epitomise fair play with a view to recognising one standout athlete or moment at the World Athletics Awards later this year.
As was the case last year, the nominations period includes all World Athletics Series (WAS) events and Continental Tour events throughout the course of the year, as well as the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. This will allow for more moments to be included from different events all across the world, and enriches the pool of eligible athletes and potential nominations.
Following the final Continental Tour event of the year in September, a jury will be empanelled to review the nominations and judge on a shortlist of five fair play moments in athletics from 2024.
Fans will then be asked to cast their votes through the World Athletics social media channels for the shortlisted moment that they feel best exemplifies fair play. These votes will be combined with the votes from the jury to determine three finalists for the Fair Play Award. The winner will be revealed at the World Athletics Awards in Monaco later in the year.
To nominate an athlete or moment for the Fair Play Award, please email <a href="mailto:fairplayaward@worldathletics.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-cke-saved-href="mailto:fairplayaward@worldathletics.org">fairplayaward@worldathletics.org</a>.
Letesenbet Gidey was the recipient of last year&rsquo;s award. After securing silver in the women&rsquo;s 10,000m at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Gidey went back to comfort Netherlands&rsquo; Sifan Hassan after Hassan&rsquo;s dramatic fall on the home straight.
The CIFP was established 60 years ago to promote the principles of fair play in sport: fair competition, respect, friendship, team spirit, equality and sport without doping. It honours those who respect the written and unwritten rules of sport, which include integrity, solidarity, tolerance, care, excellence and joy, and who set an example for others, on and off the field. The CIFP&rsquo;s first collaboration with World Athletics dates back to the 2003 World Athletics Championships in Paris. Eleven awards have been handed out since then.
World Athletics

Fans invited to nominate moments that epitomise fair play

World Athletics and CIFP invite fans to nominate fair play moments for 2024

At the end of a year in which he retained his world pole vault title and twice improved his world record, <a href="https://worldathletics.org/athletes/sweden/armand-duplantis-14679502" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mondo Duplantis</a> stood once more with an <a href="https://worldathletics.org/awards/news/world-athletes-year-rising-stars-2023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">athlete of the year award</a> in his hand.
The Swedish 24-year-old, who will open this Olympic year by competing at the first World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Astana on Saturday (27), received the World Athlete of the Year honour for men&rsquo;s field events at the World Athletics Awards in Monaco last month.&nbsp;
&ldquo;As an athlete, you try not to take anything for granted because sport&rsquo;s a very tough thing. You don&rsquo;t know when it&rsquo;s going to get tougher, and you never know what can happen in sports,&rdquo; he said at the Awards, which celebrated performances in the No.1 Olympic sport.
&ldquo;So, I try to enjoy the moments like this and really be appreciative for what I&rsquo;ve done this year. I already knew I had had a good season, but when you get an award like this, it&rsquo;s a nice cherry on top.&rdquo;
<div><img style="max-width: 900px; width: 100%; display: block;" src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/65b0fce4ea771bbfa91867be.jpg" alt="Mondo Duplantis at the World Athletics Awards 2023" />
Mondo Duplantis at the World Athletics Awards 2023 (&copy; Mattia Ozbot)
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It was fitting that Duplantis should sound his note of caution in Monaco, given that it was in the Principality that he endured the most difficult moments of a 2023 season which, while it ended in triumph, produced some challenges.
Reflecting before the awards ceremony on a year that saw him produce world records at either end &ndash; 6.22m at Renaud Lavillenie&rsquo;s All Star Perche meeting in Clermont-Ferrand in February and then 6.23m to win a third Wanda Diamond League title in Eugene in September &ndash; he recalled in particular the Monaco Diamond League meeting in July.
It was his last competition before the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23.
&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t the best day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was probably my worst one of the year, actually. I had some problems with my hamstring, it was quite tight.&nbsp;
&ldquo;And I was starting to freak out a little bit. It wasn&rsquo;t anything so major, of course, because I was able to compete well at the World Championships just a few weeks later. But I was a little bit freaked out as far as it being my last competition before the World Championships, so I didn&rsquo;t want to do anything to strain my hamstring.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I was just starting to get more tight in the competition, so I had to be more aggressive than I would have liked to be as far as the heights that I picked were concerned.
&ldquo;I tried to pick a jump to try to win it, but it didn&rsquo;t work out. Physically I wasn&rsquo;t really quite there.&rdquo;
Victory, in a season&rsquo;s best of 5.92m, went to the US athlete who had taken silver behind him at the Tokyo Olympics and the previous year&rsquo;s World Championships in Oregon, Chris Nilsen.
Duplantis, who had failed twice at 5.92m, sought a final clearance at 6.02m &ndash; but without success. Second and third places went respectively to two of his other main rivals, Ernest John Obiena of Philippines and Kurtis Marschall of Australia.
<div><img style="max-width: 900px; width: 100%; display: block;" src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/658ab83aa927cafe4c4f9f62.jpg" alt="Mondo Duplantis in Budapest" />
Mondo Duplantis in Budapest (&copy; Getty Images)
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&ldquo;When you are jumping, you are just very much alone,&rdquo; Duplantis said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just you at the end of the runway and you are looking at the bar. You have to get over it and there&rsquo;s nobody else on your side &ndash; it&rsquo;s very much up to you.&rdquo;
But in Monaco he was accompanied by his father and co-coach Greg, a 5.80m pole vaulter in his day and a source of excellent and timely advice.
&ldquo;Pole vaulting is a tedious event,&rdquo; Duplantis continued with a faint smile. &ldquo;So, I have the time to go and talk out how I&rsquo;m feeling. My father happened to be around in Monaco, so it was a good thing. Because sometimes it&rsquo;s hard to think when you&rsquo;re in competition mode. All you think about is winning. But sometimes you have to think about what the risk is.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of like having a caddy in golf. You talk through whatever decisions you are making, whether it&rsquo;s a physical or a technical thing. So that&rsquo;s one of the things we were debating in Monaco.&rdquo;
History records that father and son managed the testing occasion well &ndash; with the world title being retained in Budapest on 26 August with a clearance of 6.10m as Obiena earned silver, equalling his area record of 6.00m, and Marschall and Nilsen shared bronze.
Duplantis has more major titles on his mind for 2024. After opening his season in Astana, he will compete at his own meeting, the Mondo Classic, in his home town of Uppsala on 6 February, followed by a return to Lavillenie&rsquo;s meeting in Clermont-Ferrand.
Then he will seek to retain his title at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Glasgow 24 that will run from 1-3 March in Glasgow&rsquo;s Emirates Arena, where Duplantis set his second world record of 6.18m in 2020.
<blockquote>
READ MORE: <a href="https://worldathletics.org/competitions/world-athletics-indoor-championships/glasgow24/news/feature/mondo-duplantis-world-indoor-glasgow-2024-record" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Duplantis already &lsquo;excited&rsquo; about defending world indoor title in Glasgow, scene of his second world record</a>
WATCH: <a href="https://worldathletics.org/videos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mondo Duplantis plays On The Cards</a>
</blockquote>
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to have a schedule like last year of just four indoor competitions, keeping it pretty short and sweet,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So, that&rsquo;s nice. Only just a few competitions but I get to really attack them.
&ldquo;I had more bumps in the road in 2023 than in 2022. There were some competitions, like the one in Monaco, where I had some problems with my body and I worked through that.&nbsp;
&ldquo;But, overall, I think I had some good performances when I needed to have them, and that&rsquo;s the most important thing. But there is more consistency to be found and I&rsquo;ll see if I can improve that outdoors, and I think there are better jumps to be had in that regard.
&ldquo;Overall, it was really good &ndash; but next year&rsquo;s the most important for a track and field athlete of course with the Paris Olympics. So that&rsquo;s the time I need things to be... really good.&rdquo;
Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics

At the end of a year in which he retained his world pole vault title and twice improved his world record, Mondo Duplantis stood once more with an athlete of the year award in his hand

Award-winner Duplantis ready to attack as he targets two more global titles in 2024

For the athlete that Faith Kipyegon calls &ldquo;small Faith&rdquo;, it has been a very big year.
At the age of 19, Faith Cherotich &ndash; the rising talent who has recently been mentored by the multiple world and Olympic champion Kipyegon &ndash; is a senior world medallist in the 3000m steeplechase and reigning world U20 champion.
She is also the women&rsquo;s World Athletics Rising Star awardee for 2023.
&ldquo;I am very happy and proud to receive this award,&rdquo; Cherotich said shortly before receiving her honour at the Prince's Palace of Monaco, where &lsquo;big Faith&rsquo; received the World Athlete of the Year award for women&rsquo;s track after setting three world records and earning two world titles.
Kipyegon has set a dizzyingly high bar in 2023. But one day, perhaps, Cherotich &ndash; who had only finished her studies at school two weeks before the Monaco event&nbsp; &ndash; can hope to operate at a similar level in the No.1 Olympic sport.
&ldquo;Faith Kipyegon has been mentoring me on how to be a good athlete,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I want to be a champion, to follow her. She has been teaching me a lot. I really appreciate it.
&ldquo;It was a very good year for me. It was my first World Championships and I was happy with how I ran. It was a good race for me.&rdquo;
<div><img style="max-width: 900px; width: 100%; display: block;" src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/6594104fbd7c342873227464.jpg" alt="Faith Kipyegon and Faith Cherotich at the World Athletics Awards 2023" />
Faith Kipyegon and Faith Cherotich at the World Athletics Awards 2023 (&copy; Mattia Ozbot)
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The year had begun for her at the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Bathurst, Australia, where she helped Kenya earn silver in the women&rsquo;s U20 team event, missing out on an individual medal by one place.
Having finished third in the previous year&rsquo;s Wanda Diamond League Final, where her time of 9:06.14 moved her to third on the world U20 all-time list, Cherotich began her 2023 Diamond League season by finishing third in the opening meeting in Doha.
But a few weeks later her progress was traumatically undermined when the car she was travelling in &ndash; en route to compete in another Diamond League meeting &ndash; was involved in a collision with a runaway truck, leaving her with minor injuries and concussion.
&ldquo;I had an accident in a car,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But then I recovered, and I had three weeks to train before the World Championships trials. I was able to qualify, so that was good.&rdquo;
In the final at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23, she was the last in the field to hold on to the eventual respective gold and silver medallists, Bahrain&rsquo;s Winfred Yavi and her fellow Kenyan Beatrice Chepkoech, the 32-year-old world record-holder.
Cherotich finished almost five seconds clear of her nearest rival, Ethiopia&rsquo;s Zerfe Wondemagegn, clocking a personal best of 9:00.69.
<div><img style="max-width: 900px; width: 100%; display: block;" src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/6548d9c00339da21ab0e7cf7.jpg" alt="Faith Cherotich at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23" />
Faith Cherotich at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 (&copy; Getty Images)
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In the first Diamond League meeting after the World Championships, in Zurich, Cherotich was again third behind Yavi and Chepkoech.
And in a super-fast Diamond League Final in which the world champion set an area record of 8:50.66 and Chepkoech followed her home in a season&rsquo;s best of 8:51.67, Cherotich broke the nine-minute barrier with a personal best of 8:59.65. That time in Eugene places Cherotich 11th on the senior world all-time list.
Valentijn Trouw from Global Sports Communication, who manages Cherotich&rsquo;s career, is quietly confident of her continuing progress.
&ldquo;I think she is going to be a future star,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She has all the ingredients. It reminds me &ndash; we are here with Faith Kipyegon and Faith Cherotich, and Faith Kipyegon 10 or 12 years ago was coming into athletics like Faith Cherotich is coming into athletics now.
&ldquo;She is extremely talented. But besides that, she has a good mentality, she is calm and she is composed. She knows what she wants and she is coming in gradually in a very nice way but has the future on her side.
&ldquo;She has incredible opportunities. But she has had a tough year this year because she had a quite serious car accident at the beginning of the year,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;She was on her way to Eldoret to take a flight for one of the Diamond Leagues and a truck hit the car and that took her out for about six weeks.
&ldquo;Everybody survived in a good way but with some injuries. But Faith had to take some rest because she had some minor injuries, including concussion. We needed to make sure she took it really easy and didn&rsquo;t start back too quickly.
&ldquo;Then she had a very short time to come up to the trials and she made the team, and then she had time to build on that and be ready for the World Championships.&rdquo;
<div><img style="max-width: 900px; width: 100%; display: block;" src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/659411b6bd7c342873227467.jpg" alt="Faith Cherotich at the Diamond League meeting in Doha" />
Faith Cherotich at the Diamond League meeting in Doha (&copy; Matthew Quine / Diamond League AG)
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It further proved her positive mindset.
&ldquo;In those kinds of situations, you see how somebody is handling the situation. And to be honest, I have never seen her panicking,&rdquo; Trouw continued. &ldquo;She is always calm, she accepts life as it comes and makes the best out of it. And with that attitude, plus her talent, she can achieve anything.
&ldquo;Many times, for us from the outside, if you look at how an athlete is handling those kinds of situations you see also how they are behaving when they are under immense pressure in an Olympic final or going for a record in the Diamond League &ndash; it is very telling.
&ldquo;Faith stayed extremely calm and accepted advice from the team around her. I think she joined our team two years ago. She was at school and she was showing some great potential in cross country.&nbsp;
&ldquo;She helped win team silver at the World Cross Country Championships &ndash; and she expected a little more, but she did well.
&ldquo;She is still very young, but you feel there is so much inside that if we go slow she can have a 15- or 20-year career and go a long way.&rdquo;
Asked if her securing a senior medal in Budapest had surprised him, Trouw added: &ldquo;No. It could have happened that she ran fourth, fifth or sixth and still ran a good race. But to try to go for a medal was realistic. Because after the trials, she still had the time to prepare for the World Championships.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Some people, you don&rsquo;t need to tell them what to do in a competition because their intuition is such that they know what to do. And she is somebody that senses extremely well what she can do and what she can&rsquo;t do.&nbsp;
&ldquo;And so tactical races &ndash; be it fast, be it slow &ndash; it doesn&rsquo;t matter so much for her because she is very much herself and she knows how much fuel is inside to bring it in a good way to the finish line.
&ldquo;So far, I have not seen her making any tactical mistakes, where you would say: &lsquo;You should have done this different&rsquo;. And that, combined with her strength and talent, means she can do good things in championships.&rdquo;
<div><img style="max-width: 900px; width: 100%; display: block;" src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/62eca79e041c184765f08c57.jpg" alt="Kenya's Faith Cherotich on her way to the world U20 3000m steeplechase title in Cali" />
Kenya's Faith Cherotich on her way to the world U20 3000m steeplechase title in Cali (&copy; Oscar Munoz Badilla)
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Prior to the World Championships, it had appeared that Cherotich&rsquo;s predecessor as world U20 champion &ndash; her 20-year-old compatriot Jackline Chepkoech &ndash; stood a better chance of reaching the podium in Budapest. Jackline Chepkoech ran a PB of 8:57.35 in London in the lead up and then placed ninth in Budapest.
&ldquo;I think both Faith and Jackline are the future for Kenya in the steeplechase,&rdquo; said Trouw. &ldquo;We help them both. They don&rsquo;t train together, but they are very good together when they are in the Diamond League. They share the room together and they are friendly, but they don&rsquo;t train together.
&ldquo;Faith is still a bit younger and newer to athletics and to settings like this. But at the same time, she is very much herself, and that helps not just in life in general, but also in sports.
&ldquo;As for her coach, we are now looking for someone to take her career forward. So far, she has been in school and she had a local coach who has been overseeing her. For 2024 she would like to get more experience in the Diamond Leagues, and to run consistently under nine minutes, and to go for a good result at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
&ldquo;She just wants to make the next step in athletics. But she is in a phase of her career where things can go fast.&rdquo;
Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics

For the athlete that Faith Kipyegon calls “small Faith”, it has been a very big year.

Press Release13 Nov 2023

Finalists announced for Women's World Athlete of the Year 2023

Voting procedure for 2023 World Athletes of the Year

Be part of the celebrations

World Athletics and CIFP invite fans to nominate fair play moments for 2024

Award-winner Duplantis ready to attack as he targets two more global titles in 2024

Cherotich – the "small Faith" inspired to rising heights by Kipyegon