[caption id="attachment_1770" align="alignleft" width="319" caption="Photo credit: AP"]
[/caption]None other than Usain 'Lightning' Bolt won the Male Athlete of the Year Award - naturally. Who can argue with 9.58 and 19.19?
No-one - ever?
Exactly. And we bet the big man is going to fulljoy himself next week at his 9:58 Super Party in Kingston - this is just icing on the cake of his superlative year.
The Female Athlete of the year was Jamaican-born US Athlete Sanya Richards, who finally snagged her first individual gold medal at the World Championships this year, fulfilling the promise expected of a woman who has the most sub-5o second 400 metres of any female in history.
Sanya said that seeing how her countrymen (the Jamaican ones, not the US ones) like Usain enjoyed their running, helped inspire and lift her to that first gold this year in Berlin.
"These athletes were just having so much fun. I was so focused on winning, the medals and the money and everything that came with being a champion that I forgot the simple enjoyment and fun of track and field. ...I just felt like I was running a lot lighter, the races became a lot easier," she told the AP.
I know nuff yaardies have up Sanya for running for the US of A when she lived in Jamaica half her life (she migrated to Florida when she was 12 years old and she's 24 now) but she doesn't leave out JA, neither in word or deed.
Actually, just this month she was in the island for her third Fun 4 Kidz Fast Track programme event, which provides literacy training and extra-curricular activities for children in downtown Kingston high schools.
So big up yuself Sanya and congrats to all our island athletes both here and in the diaspora who continue to make us proud.
Caribbean to the worrrrld!
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