Eliud Kipchoge and Caterine Ibarguen were named World Athletes of the Year at the IAAF Awards

Kipchoge underlined his status as the world’s most dominant distance runner. The 34-year-old Kenyan won the London Marathon in April in 2:04:17 to finish comfortably ahead of one of the deepest marathon fields in history. Five months later, he won the Berlin Marathon in 2:01:39 to smash the world record. His time in the German capital was 78 seconds faster than the previous world record, representing the biggest single improvement on a men’s marathon world record since 1967. Not content with being the best triple jumper in the world, Ibarguen also tested herself against the world’s best in the long jump this year – and consistently came out on top in that too. The 34-year-old Colombian won both horizontal jumps at the Central American and Caribbean Games, the IAAF Continental Cup and at the IAAF Diamond League finals – winning the latter two titles in two different cities within the space of 24 hours. She was unbeaten in all eight of her triple jump competitions, ending the year with a world-leading mark of 14.96m in her specialist event and a national record of 6.93m in the long jump.

posted Wednesday December 5th