Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands and Letsile Tebogo of Botswana were voted World Athletics Athlete of the Year award winners for 2024.
Hassan won marathon gold and 5000m and 10,000m bronze at the Paris Games. She was the first person to run all three of those races — the longest distances on the Olympic program — in 40 years. She became the second person to win a medal in all three at one Olympics after Czech Emil Zátopek, who won all three in 1952.
Hassan also won the 2024 women’s out of stadium award over fellow finalist Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya, who broke the women’s marathon world record in Chicago in October.
The other women’s award winners were American hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (track) and Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh (field).
Tebogo won the Olympic 200m title, plus anchored Botswana to men’s 4x400m gold, nearly overtaking American anchor Rai Benjamin.
He is the first athlete from Botswana to win Olympic gold in any sport.
Both Hassan and Tebogo are the first athletes from their nations to win a World Athletics Athlete of the Year award. Tebogo also won World Athletics men’s track athlete of the year.
The finalists — from sets of five or six nominees per award — were determined by a three-way voting process: World Athletics Council vote (50%), World Athletics family vote (25%) and public vote through Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram (25%).
A final round of fan voting decided the overall men’s and women’s World Athletes of the Year.
