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Sportswoman of the Year
Sifan Hassan, the Ethiopian-Dutch athlete who represents the Netherlands nearly pulled off the Zatopek-triple by winning three gold medals on the track. Zatopek won two on the track and one in the marathon on the roads, but still. She fell short in the 1500m event picking up a bronze. The two golds came in the 5000m and 10,000m events.
Hassan was likely planning to only run as fast as she needed to during the 1500m preliminary round to qualify for the semi-finals, however, she fell and had to dig deep to get back into the race. Otherwise, she was likely good for three athletics golds.
In June, she broke the 10,000m world record with her performance at the Hengelo meet in the Netherlands, clocking a 29:06.82 performance. She holds nine national, eight European, and three world records.
For her Olympic performances alone, she earns the nod.
Hassan couldn’t outrun the coronavirus and had to stay home to recover, therefore, was unable to accept the honour in person.
SafeSport upholds lifetime ban to former coach Alberto Salazar
The US Center for SafeSport has upheld the lifetime ban to 53-year-old former coach Alberto Salazar for his alleged abuses of athletes. This makes permanent the temporary band that the organisation handed down in January 2020.
Earlier this year, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a four-year ban for a series of alleged doping-related violations that are said to have occurred while Salazar coaching at the Nike Oregon Project (NOP). Subsequently, Nike shut down the group.
United States Track and Field (USATF), had banned Salazar at the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships in October 2019. He was removed from the games and his athletes were told to stop any communications with him.
Salazar coached Mo Farah, Galen Rupp, Kara Goucher, Mary Cain, Dathan Ritzenhein, Alan Webb, Cameron Levins and Hassan many others. He was associated with Mary Decker and a generation of runners from the 1980s era.
