On December 19, the 2017 Sports Personalities Annual Selection announced the nominees for each individual best award, and among the nominations for the Best Non-Olympic Athlete Award, the finalists were snooker player Ding Junhui, Go player Ke Jie, chess player Ding Liren, mixed martial artist Lin Heqin and mountaineer Luo Jing. It is worth noting that Chen Siming, the nine-ball female player who won 9 world championships this year, did not make it a surprise, and had to make people doubt the objective fairness of this list.
The best non-Olympic sports awards are awarded to athletes in non-Olympic sports, most of which are highly commercialized or professional events, such as snooker, nine-ball, mixed martial arts, mountaineering, including Go, chess, chess and other chess and card sports, which are highly professional sports in China. The shortlist for the Nomination for Best Non-Olympic Athlete reached 15, covering 10 events, including 4 Go players, 2 chess players, 2 billiards players, 1 mountaineering player, 1 bocce, 1 bodybuilder, 1 roller skater, 1 finswitch swimmer, 1 water lifesaver and 1 mixed martial arts player.
Relatively speaking, the non-Austrian project finalists, the more well-known are Go, chess and billiards, of which Ke Jie and Ding Junhui are the most well-known, and have also been shortlisted before, and even won the best non-Olympic award. But looking at this year's list, and contacting the 5 nominees selected by the judges, it feels that this list is unfair.
First of all, there is no dispute, Ke Jie's achievements and innovations in Go this year are indeed convincing, and the fierce battle with the go artificial intelligence alphago has become the first person in China, in addition to achieving 22 consecutive wins in the practice of chess has also become the third person in history, and has always maintained the status of the world's first, and the achievements are full of gold, so it is natural to be shortlisted. Ding Liren, Luo Jing and Lin Heqin are the first time to create a Chinese, and there is not much controversy in the shortlist, but it is worth mentioning that the World Championships participated in by the mixed martial artist Lin Heqin are not actually the strongest events in the true sense, because the World Mixed Martial Arts Federation that dominates the World Championships does not include the world mixed martial arts powers such as the United States, Japan and Brazil in the Americas, so the quality of the participants is not very high, and Lin Heqin's victory has a lot of luck components.
The most controversial nomination is Ding Junhui, according to the official report card, Ding Junhui is only the champion of the World Open, and there are no other outstanding results. You should know that now snooker has as many as 19 ranking matches in the whole season, and Ding Junhui has only won one of the championships with a low gold content, but he was nominated for this result. On the other hand, another billiards player, the women's nine-ball star Chen Siming, has won 9 world championships this season, including the World Championships, the Amway Cup, the China Open and the women's nine-ball championships that represent the country, the Asian Indoor Games, each of which is full of gold, and at the same time, in the world rankings, she is also far ahead of other players, ranking first. Such a result, but can not compete with Ding Junhui, is the judges' serious awareness of billiards limited to one Ding Junhui?