KINGSTON, Jamaica – Following an exceptional 2021 season performance, two-time sprint double Olympic Games gold medalist Elaine Thompson-Herah has copped the North American, Central American, and Caribbean Athletics Association (NACAC) Female Athlete of the Year title.
Thompson-Herah after winning gold in the 200m at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. (Photo: Reuters/AFP-JIJI)She was honored alongside American shot putter Ryan Crouser, who was chosen as the Male Athlete of the Year, according to a statement issued by NACAC on Monday.
The association said the 29-year-old Jamaican’s 2021 season “will go down in history, as she produced one of the greatest runs of excellence of all time”.
“…Beyond a shadow of a doubt, as far as athletics goes, 2021 belonged to Elaine Thompson-Herah. In uncertain, challenging times, she treated the world to superlative displays that will mark this as one of the greatest years ever in women’s sprints,” NACAC said.
Within the span of just over three weeks, between the end of July and late August, Thompson-Herah won two individual gold medals at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. Her 100m win came in an Olympic record time of 10.61, while her 200m victory four days thence yielded a national record time of 21.53 seconds.
Shortly after her double Olympic triumph, which she topped off by winning the sprint relay with Jamaica, she lined up at the Prefontaine Classic, in Hayward Field, Eugene, Oregon, USA. Thompson-Herah stamped her class with a run of 10.54 seconds, a new national record, and–like her 200m Olympic win–the fastest time in the world since Florence Griffith-Joyner’s World record in 1988.
Thompson-Herah went on to take her third Diamond League title, winning the women’s 100m final in Zürich with a time of 10.65 seconds. It was the seventh Diamond League title for Jamaica in the women’s 100m.
Only five women this century have ended a season with the fastest times in both the 100m and 200m. This season, the double women’s sprint champion from the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil became the first woman ever to repeat that feat.
