World record breaker and Uganda’s best athlete, Joshua Cheptegei has been nominated for the prestigious Laureus Sports personality Awards for 2021.
The long distance 10,000M and 5,000M runner has been nominated alongside sports greats like Tennis star Rafael Nadal, basketball legend LeBron James, football superstar Robert Lewandowski and 7 time Formula One winner Lewis Hamilton.
Cheptegei set the world records for both 5000M and 10,000M in 2020 an Athletics calendar that was strange for most runners considering the effects of COVID19 on the sporting fraternity.
In December 2020, the Ugandan Athlete missed out on being crowned the Athlete of the year to 21 year old Swedish Mondo Duplantis who had set two world records in Pole vault. The two face off yet again for the Laureus Sports Personality of the year.
For 2020, Lionel Messi and Lewis Hamilton both tied for the awards for the first time in the awarding ceremony.
The last athlete to win the Award was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt in 2017. The question is whether Joshua Cheptegei can join a list of really remarkable athletes around the word.
Who does Cheptegei come up against?
He does come up against some of the finest sportsmen in the World. Lewis Hamilton is coming off the back of an historic 2020 where he won his 7th Formual One title, LeBron James often in the greatest of all time conversations in the basketball circles won himself a 4th NBA title, while Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski who won the FIFA Best award was arguably the best football player of last season.
