Chris Musumba
13 October 2008
Nairobi — Olympic champions Pamela Jelimo and Samuel Wanjiru have been short listed for this year's IAAF World Athlete of the Year Award.
Jelimo (800m) and Wanjiru (marathon) have been listed alongside Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.
Bolt won three golds set two world records in 100m, 200m and 4X100m relay. Wanjiru set a new Olympic marathon record of 2:06.
Jelimo' is the first Kenyan to win the IAAF Sh74 million ($1 million) jackpot in the Golden League. She's also the Africa champion.
Moreover, her rise from obscurity to stardom took her only four months having run her first competitive 800m race during the national trials for the Africa championship.
Her Olympic winning time was also the World Junior record time yet it was her seventh competitive race of her career in the two-lap event.
There will be an open vote on the IAAF website (www.iaaf.org) for the candidates. The IAAF family vote will account for 70 per cent while Internet vote will fetch the other 30.
The three male and three female athletes with most points will be declared as finalists with the winners named during a special gala in Monaco, on November 23. The vote will close on November 9.
Candidates
Men - Kenenisa Bekele (Ethiopia), Usain Bolt (Jamaica), Bryan Clay (USA), Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia), LaShawn Merritt (USA), Dayron Robles (Cuba), Irving Saladino (Panama), Andrey Silnov (Russia), Andreas Thorkildsen (Norway), Samuel Wanjiru (Kenya).
Women - Veronica Campbell-Brown (Jamaica), Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia), Gulnara Galkina - Samitova (Russia), Yelena Isinbayeva (Russia), Pamela Jelimo (Kenya), Francoise Mbango (Cameroon), Barbora Spotakova (Czech Republic), Valerie Vili (New Zealand), Blanka Vlasic (Croatia) and Melaine Walker (Jamaica).
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