Posted: April 28, 2006

Athletics: Bekele Bemoans Laureus Snub

From David Monti

© 2006 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

By Elshadai Negash with David Monti

The Laureus World Sports Academy, a body of sports legends which elects a small group of athletes to join their ranks at a globally televised awards gala each year, did not nominate Ethiopian sensation Kenenisa Bekele for selection this year, much to the puzzlement of the athlete.

"I am not aware of the exact criteria they used," he said in a telephone interview from his training base in Addis Ababa. "But if you see my results, few sports people have the same results and performance that I have showed. I feel the criterion, whatever it is, is not right."

Given that the Academy, which will hold their annual awards gala in Barcelona on May 22, chose to nominate other athletics stars, including Bekele's compatriot Tirunesh Dibaba, Bekele's absence indeed seems odd. During 2005, the performance year which was considered, Bekele was crowned for the fourth time the double world cross country champion, despite bearing the great sorrow of the death of his fiancée, Alem Teshale, on Jan. 4. Bekele went on to win the gold medal at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics at 10,000m, then he lowered his own world record at 10,000m in Brussels with a 26:17.53 performance.

"(It) defies logic," Bekele added.

The Academy currently has 42 members, led by Chairman Edwin Moses, the former hurdler. Athletes as diverse as Dan Marino (American Football), Kapil Dev (cricket), Nadia Comaneci (gymnastics) and Boris Becker (tennis) are members. The prominent athletics members, besides Moses, are Sebastian Coe, Michael Johnson, Kip Keino, Sergey Bubka, Daley Thompson and Kelly Holmes (notably absent is Carl Lewis). While the Academy gives several different awards each year, it is the Sportsman and Sportswoman Of the Year which actually adds athletes to the academy.

"This has been a vintage year for sport and the Academy are going to find it extremely difficult to decide who to vote for," said Moses on April 21 when the nominations were announced in London. "We have great names in every category. The nominations reflect the immense strength of sport at the moment."

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