By Victor Kanayo
World record holder and Nigeria’s sprint sensation Tobi Amusan is among the legion of all times great sports personalities shortlisted for the 2023 Laureus World Sports Awards.
Disclosing this through its Twitter handle, Laureus described Amusan as a global athlete that burst onto the scene in a breathtaking fashion.
Amusan who broke the 100m hurdles world record on the way to claiming Nigeria’s first-ever gold medal at the 2022 World Athletics Championships, was shortlisted in the #Laureus 23 World Breakthrough of the Year category which identifies those athletes and teams who took a giant step forward in the past year.
Also shortlisted is Argentine and PSG forward, Lionel Messi and his club mate Kylian Mbappe.
While Messi won 2022 World Cup, French star Mbappe finished as runners up.
This is Messi’s seventh time to be nominated for the award he won in 2020 and remains the only person from a team Sport to ever win the award.
Messi scored 35 goals and provided 30 assists from 51 games in 2022, and he won the 2021/22 French Ligue 1 with Paris Saint-Germain.
He has scored 11 goals and made 10 assists in 19 League matches for the Parisians in the ongoing season.
Motor racing legend Max Verstappen, Mondo Duplantis (Athletics), Rafael Nadal (Tennis) and Stephen Curry (Basketball) are all nominated for the award.
The other contestants in the six-man shortlist are tennis stars Carlos Alcaraz and Elena Rybakina, Scottie Scheffler (Golf) and Nathan Chen of USA (Skating).
Also nominated in the same category are the Morocco Men’s Football Team who captivated the world on their adventure to the semi-final of the World Cup.
