From the individual to the team, take stock of the women's strength of "Oscar of Sports" Lawrence.
Text | Liu Xueting, Liu He
Four female athletes
Winner of the Lawrence World Sports Awards
The Laureus World Sports Awards, founded by Daimler and Richemont, are one of the most influential awards in the world of sport and a global sports awards ceremony. After a period of great sporting, including the Tokyo Olympic, Paralympic and European Championships, this year's Laureus World Sports Awards were unveiled in Seville, Spain, on 24 April.
Guo Yang, editor-in-chief of ECO Krypton, was also honored to participate in the voting session of the laureus World Sports Award candidates as a judge.
A total of four female athletes won the Lawrence Award, and the number of female winners accounted for 4/10, maintaining the average gender ratio of the Lawrence Award in the past four years. Among them, Jamaican sprinter and Tokyo Olympic women's 100m champion Thompson won the Best Female Athlete Award, US Open champion Emma Raducano won the Best Breakthrough Award, Gold Medalist Bethani Shriver won the Best Extreme Athlete Award for the Tokyo Olympics through crowdfunding, and Tokyo Olympic Bronze Medalist Sky Brown won the Best Comeback Award.
Awards and recognitions are a tribute to these female athletes who bravely chased their dreams. While female athletes shine on the sports field, in addition to overcoming high-intensity training and competition, they also have to face challenges such as menstrual period and pregnancy. Every professional female athlete is a "star among stars" in competitive sports. It is precisely because of them that we can see women's challenges to the limits of the body and the infinite energy contained in the female body.
· Best Female Athlete: Thompson
The 6 athletes nominated this time, 2 in athletics, 2 in swimming, 1 in tennis, and 1 in football, are all mainstream sports favored by the Lawrence Award.
It is worth mentioning that many media have questioned that Gu Ailing, who won two gold and one silver at the Winter Olympics, failed to win the award. Whether it is the Best Breakthrough Award or the Best Extreme Athlete Award, Gu Ailing has not been nominated - because the nomination list is released in early February 2022, and the Beijing Winter Olympics have not yet opened, so Gu Ailing's breakthrough results are not counted in the Lawrence Award cycle. In the future, Gu Ailing is bound to have the absolute strength to impact the best extreme athletes and even the best female athletes.
Nominee for Best Female Athlete
In this cycle, the nominees are basically athletes who have achieved outstanding results at the Tokyo Olympics. Alison Felix, who won the gold medal in the 4x400m relay and the bronze medal in the 400m at the Tokyo Olympics, successfully surpassed Carl Lewis in Tokyo to become the Olympic track and field athlete with the most medals, which is the veteran's fourth nomination, but she has not yet touched the honor.
Thompson won three gold medals in Tokyo and broke the 33-year-old women's 100m Olympic record, a dominant performance that earned her the title of 2021 IAAF Best Female Athlete.
In the swimming world, Emma McCanion and Katie Ledecky were both selected for their "medal harvester" performance at the Tokyo Olympics. Mackenweng was the athlete who won the most medals at the Tokyo Olympics, and Ledecky was the American female athlete who won the most medals at two consecutive Summer Olympics, which is also ledecky's fourth nomination. Although swimming is also one of the mainstream events of the Lawrence Awards, only Missy Franklin has won best female athlete in 2014 since the 23rd edition.
In more commercial sports, extremely personal tennis is undoubtedly Lawrence's most popular sport, with 7 of the 23 best female athletes winners from tennis, at least one tennis player nominated in almost every edition, and this year's nominee is former world number one and Wimbledon champion Ashley Barty, who also won a bronze medal in mixed doubles at the Tokyo Olympics.
The field of football is not the same, although many men's and women's football superstars Messi, C Ronaldo, Morgan, Marta, etc. have been nominated dozens of times together, and only Messi has won 1 award. The results of Laureus's Nominated Ballon d'Or winner, Miss World Soccer and Triple Crown Captain Alexia Putras this year are outstanding, but after all, football is a solid team sport, and football stars have always been nominated for popular candidates, not award-winning candidates.
Putras' more important goal this year is to lead Barca in defending the Champions League
· Best Breakthrough Award: Emma Raducanu
Emma's 2021 results are beyond words. The Best Breakthrough Award nominations include Medvedev, the first post-95s Grand Slam men's singles champion in 2021, and Ariane Titemass, Australia's new "pool queen" who won Ledecky, and Emma's Best Breakthrough Award can be described as full of gold.
Due to political factors, Medvedev's nationality on the official website has been hidden
· Best Extreme Athlete Award: Bethani Shriver
Since the Beijing Winter Olympics are not counted in this Laureus Award cycle, the Tokyo Olympics are still the main theme of the Best Extreme Athlete Award, and the winner is british athlete Besani Shriver. In addition to the double winners of the 2021 Olympic Games and the BMX World Championships, she raised £50,000 through crowdfunding before the Tokyo Olympics to fund her participation in the qualifying rounds, which made her achievements even more commendable.
· Best Comeback Award: Skye Brown
The winner of the best comeback award was British skateboarder Sky Brown, the 13-year-old and Britain's youngest Olympic medalist.
The best comeback award was to encourage the little girl to overcome difficulties to win the bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympic Women's Park Skateboarding Final after suffering a skull and left hand fracture in 2020. Skye Brown was also nominated by diving star Tom Daly and 3-seat Best Female Athlete Winner Byers. Like her name (Sky), Skye's dream is to constantly chase higher and more extremes. Skye plans to compete in both skateboarding and surfing at the Paris Olympics, and perhaps in the future we'll see Skye's name in the nomination for Best Extreme Athlete.
The Power of Women in the Lawrence Award
From individuals, to teams
Let's first explain the laurel prize mechanism.
The Laureus Sports Awards are nominated by senior editorial journalists from the world's media, and more than 2,000 journalists from around the world vote together to select the final list of nominees; then members of the Laureus World Sports Academy vote to select the most suitable list for the award.
Therefore, in addition to bolt, who is indeed a superstar with strong dominance, most of the previously nominated athletes come from highly professional sports such as tennis, racing, and golf, indicating that these professional sports are still the focus of the world's senior sports journalists.
The Lawrence Sports Awards, which have been established since 2000, have established the best female athlete awards from the beginning, and they are also very popular for female athletes in the selection of the best breakthrough awards. In 2019-2022, the female power in the Lawrence Single Awards is rising rapidly, especially in 2019 and 2020, the number of female winners is about 50%, and in 2021 and 2022, it will be about 30%. Compared with the Women's Ballon d'Or Awards, which only began to be established in 2018, the sense of equality of the Lawrence Award can be described as very advanced.
In recent years, in the nominations for the "Best Breakthrough Award", the number of female athletes can gradually occupy half of the country, and the female athletes nominated can come from various sports. For example, this year there are female athletes in track and field, swimming, and tennis. Compared with the appearance of only 1 female tennis player in 6 nominations more than a decade ago, it can be said that the media's attention to women's sports is also rising, and it has broadened in the project.
But in the team awards, no women's team has yet won the best team award. Especially in team sports, very few women's professional sports have been nominated.
The development of men's professional sports is much ahead of the history and extent of women's professional sports, and among the nominations for the best team, we can see so many nominations for football, NFL, NBA, MLB clubs. However, the nominations of women's teams before this year were all national teams, such as the U.S. women's national team and the German women's national team that were nominated three times each.
Fortunately, this year's Barça women's football team became the first women's football club to be nominated, which is not only an affirmation of the achievements of Barça women's football team last year, but also a proof of the increased attention of the mainstream media to women's professional sports.
As a complement, we also take a brief inventory of some of the greatest female athletes we consider to have won the Laureus World Sports Awards.
Cheers to all the great female athletes who won the award!
Serena Williams
Serena Williams
2003, 2010, 2016, 2018 Best Female Athlete Award
Nominated for Best Female Athlete in 2004, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015
2007 Best Comeback Award
2000 Best Breakthrough Award Nomination
Serena Williams, often referred to simply as "Serena Williams". Serena williams has 23 Grand Slam titles, including 7 Australian Open titles, 3 French Open titles, 7 Wimbledon titles and 6 US Open titles, and is the undisputed first in women's tennis in the Open era.
Looking back at her Lawrence awards, Serena Williams (version 1.0) swept the tennis world in 2002, winning the 2003 Lawrence Award for Best Female Athlete for the first time.
By 2009, Serena Williams' Grand Slam titles had reached 11, beating Fraser and many other famous players to win the Laureus Award for Best Female Athlete for the second time.
The three Grand Slams of the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon in 2015 achieved Serena Williams' third Laureus Award for Best Female Athlete, surpassing Isinbayeva to become the most laureate female athlete in history.
In 2018, Serena once again broke her record, winning the Australian Open during her pregnancy, beating Mugurazza, Felix and Mikaela Severin for the fourth time. Serena Williams, who has won the Laureus Award for Best Female Athlete four times, is the undisputed first female athlete of the Lawrence Award.
Simone Biles
Simon Byers
2017, 2019, 2020 Best Female Athlete Award
When it comes to taking stock of outstanding female athletes, Byers' achievements may be underestimated.
Simon Byers, who has just turned 25, is already hailed as one of the greatest gymnasts in history. The International Gymnastics Federation named four movements after Byers. These include "The Biles" in Biles' powerful free gymnastics.
With a performance of 4 gold and 1 bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, In 2017, Byers won the Laureus Award for Best Female Athlete for the first time. The Doha World Championships with a score of 4 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze allowed Biles to win the 2019 Laureus Award for Best Female Athlete, twice in three years, and Biles also became the second athlete to receive this honor twice after Serena Williams and Isinbayeva.
In 2020, with a brilliant result of winning 5 gold medals at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart, Biles uncontroversially won the 2020 Lawrence Award for Best Female Athlete. She also became the second largest laureate of the Lawrence Prize in terms of awards after Serena Williams.