Some say sports are among the most popular forms of entertainment today. Unlike the fictional heroes we all see on the silver screen, sportspeople achieve their amazing performances without the help of special effects and stunts: what you see them do is the result of their own hard work, dedication, and skill. To honour their performance, the Sport for Good Foundation (founded in 1999 by German carmaker Daimler and Switzerland luxury goods holding company Richemont) presents the best sportspeople each year with the Laureus World Sports Award, often called the Oscars of sports. Here are this year’s winners.
Lewis Hamilton
Formula One is perhaps the most popular branch of motor racing. It has hundreds of millions of fans around the world, it has inspired countless video games, even a slot machine you can try at the Lucky Nugget Online Casino, and has given the automotive world countless innovative solutions in the fields of safety, performance monitoring, and energy efficiency.
Last year’s best F1 driver was Lewis Hamilton – he won 11 of the 21 races in 2019, including his seventh win in Montréal. This was his sixth title – with it, he’s second only to legendary driver Michael Schumacher at the number of F1 world championship wins. And this year, he also won the Laureus Sportsman of the Year award.
Lionel Messi
There’s no sport like association football – soccer, as we know it. And it seems that there’s no other professional soccer player quite like Lionel Messi, the Argentine footballer currently playing with Spanish club FC Barcelona.
Last year, Messi scored his 600th career goal, won a Ballon D’Or (his sixth), and was named the FIFA World Footballer of the Year. His achievements in 2019 also brought him a Laureus Sportsman of the Year award.
Simone Biles
American gymnast Simone Biles has a total of more than 30 World Championship and Olympic medals to her name. Last year, Biles won five of the six gold medals at the 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, becoming the most decorated gymnast in the competition’s history with a total of 25 medals (19 gold, 3 silver, 3 bronze).
And this year, she was named Laureus Sportswoman of the Year.
The Springboks
(Photo: thesouthafrican.com)
South Africa’s men’s national rugby union team, better known as the “Springboks”, performed great at last year’s Rugby World Cup hosted by Japan. Moreover, they did something only New Zealand’s well-known All Blacks could do before them: led by captain Siya Kolisi they defeated England’s national team in the World Cup finals.
For this massively symbolic win, the Springboks won the Laureus Team fo the Year award.
Other Laureus awards
At the Laureus 2020 award ceremony, the organization presented several other athletes with awards for their achievement in 2019.
Colombian cyclist Egan Bernal won the Breakthrough of the Year award for becoming the youngest athlete ever to win the Tour de France (22).
German Formula 3 racer Sophia Flörsch won the Comeback of the Year award for returning to the Macau racetrack in November a year after suffering a massive crash there.
Ukrainian-American Paralympic skier Oksana Masters won the Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability award – Masters was born with a disability caused by the radiation leaked from the Chernobyl disaster. Last year, she won five gold medals (and one silver) at the World Para Nordic Skiing Championships 2019.
American snowboarder Chloe Kim was named the Action Sportsperson of the Year for winning gold medals in the World Championship halfpipe and X Games superpipe at the age of just 19.
Finally, German retired professional basketball player Dirk Nowitzki won the Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award.
By Harry Miller
CanadaNewsMedia
