Usain Bolt "Champion of champions" for L'Équipe

[ZELLGADISS]

Bolt got this award like best sportman of the world by 3rd time.
It is incredible like for somebody he is not the best athlete this year and for a lot of people he is perhaps the best sportman in the world in 2012.
In laureus award probably it will be a fight between Bolt and perhaps Messi.

[26mi235]

Personality counts more in a Sportsman of the Year award than in T&F AOY.

[gh]

Also makes a difference when being lucky enough to be part of a WR-setting relay is part of your résumé. T&FN's award is for individual achievement.

[ZELLGADISS]

Yes gh like you tel in T&FN's award only counts individual.
It is very curious that in all other important awards like IAAF Athlete of the year,Champion of champions,laureus or others the relays counts too

[maroon]

it is an interesting question, given that sports illustrated has a different set of (unwritten) criteria or maybe the voters have a different bias. an additional anomaly will be, as you noted, that the magazine dedicated to bolt's sport won't choose him as its aoy. maybe it's time to tweak the rules -- what about looking at the athlete's splits on relays without regard to the athlete's overall performance of the relay team. i think the rigid and purist t&fn news rules are the sort that keep the sport boxed in as a niche sport. the iaaf got it right, imo (and i am a safp fan, so i think she had a better olympics than felix).

[gh]

According relays any kind of status in an individual award only further widens the unfair gap between those who have multiple events to choose from (100/200, 800/1500, 5K/10K) and those who don't (hurdlers,jumpers, throwers, multi-eventers).

It's no coincidence that a disproportionate number of end-of-year awards go to those in the first group simply because it appears they were better because of two events when in reality much of the time they're just doing the same thing twice. What would Val Adams' status be like if she had both a 3K and a 4K shot option?

Tack on the relays to the front end and you've got those in the sprints with 3 chances to do the same thing over again.

As for <<an additional anomaly will be, as you noted, that the magazine dedicated to bolt's sport won't choose him as its aoy>> that isn't necessarily the case. The voting process is still underway. What is certain is that Bolt's not my choice. That frequently doesn't mean much, because I regularly "downgrade" doublers relative to others. My choice for men's AOY last year didn't win, and he may not this year either.

[eldanielfire]

Bolt got this award like best sportman of the world by 3rd time.
It is incredible like for somebody he is not the best athlete this year and for a lot of people he is perhaps the best sportman in the world in 2012.
In laureus award probably it will be a fight between Bolt and perhaps Messi.

That's debatable, he still ran a 100m faster than any other human in existance this year and won 3 Olympic golds.

[Per Andersen]

We should just be happy they picked a Track athlete like Bolt rather than Messi.

We can thank Didier Drogba for that

[ZELLGADISS]

Bolt got this award like best sportman of the world by 3rd time.
It is incredible like for somebody he is not the best athlete this year and for a lot of people he is perhaps the best sportman in the world in 2012.
In laureus award probably it will be a fight between Bolt and perhaps Messi.

That's debatable, he still ran a 100m faster than any other human in existance this year and won 3 Olympic golds.

yes eldanielfire, for me without doubt Bolt was the best athlete in the world, you are right.
And the best sportsman perhaps, i have doubts with Messi.
Ok Messi did not get a lot of tittles, but we are comparing individual sport(track and field, although exits relays) with collective sport.
So the individual performance of Messi this year was wonderful, almost perfect and for me with Bolt are the 2 best sportsman in the world in this 2012.

Umm if Phelps does not lose gold medal in the last metre with LeCos in 200 Butterfly ummm he would be in the fight too

[gh]

Oh yeah for those who think that we're picking on sprinters by not considering relays for our AOY selections, note that we also "pick on" distance runners by not including cross country or road racing (other than the marathon) either.