McLaughlin-Levrone and Duplantis, the year’s most outstanding athletes

The American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and the Swedish Armand Duplantis were chosen by World Athletics as the most outstanding figures of the year. In this way, they succeed the Norwegian Karsten Warholm and the Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah, who were chosen last season.

Hurdler McLaughlin-Levrone won against other four athletes competing for the distinction: the Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas, the Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Nigerian Tobi Amusan and the Peruvian Kimberly García; the pole vaulter Duplantis, on the other hand, was chosen over the Moroccan Soufiane El Bakali, the Kenyan Kipchoge, Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen and American Noah Lyles.

At the Tokyo Olympic Games, McLaughlin-Levrone set the world record in the 400 hurdles by winning with 51.46 and this year she broke it twice: in June she set the clocks at 51.41 at the United States Championships and, a month later, she achieved an extraordinary mark of 50.68 in the World Athletics Championship, which was also held at Hayward Field.

McLaughlin-Levrone, 23, in addition to the new record, won a world title for the first time, to which she later added the 4x400 relay title with the United States team.

If the American broke her own time twice, Duplantis went even further. The Swedish, also 23, set the indoor world record on February 15, 2020 in Glasgow by jumping 6.18 meters and in March 2022 he surpassed it by one centimeter on the indoor track in Belgrade. But it didn’t stop there: a few weeks later and again at the Stark Arena in the capital of Serbia, he won the World Cup with 6.20.

On September 17, 2020, in Rome, Duplantis broke Sergey Bubka’s latest record by jumping 6.15 meters with his pole. He broke that outdoor record twice this year: he won the Diamond League in Stockholm with 6.16 and at the Oregon World Cups he set an astonishing 6.21. Thus, the Swedish closed 2022 with world titles both outdoors and indoors; he won 18 of the 19 competitions he played and jumped six meters or more 23 times.

In addition to the awards for McLaughlin-Levrone and Duplantis, World Athletics also awarded American Erriyon Knighton (repeated 2021) and Serbian Adriana Vilagoš as breakthrough athletes of the year.

Knighton, 18, won bronze in the 200 meters at the Eugene World Championship and became the youngest medalist in history in a World Cup speed test. Meanwhile, Vilagoš, an 18-year-old javelin thrower, won the European runner-up in Munich and was proclaimed U20 world champion in Cali (Colombia). In 2021, the award went to the American Athing Mu.