So comfortable to see Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce win the Laureus Award. Since my first interview with SAFP in 2011, she has at all times been gracious, humorous and considerate in interviews. This can be a fantastic tribute by Deji Ogeyingbo.
Laureus Sports activities Award: Past the uncooked numbers, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce wins a mirrored image of how a lot she has transcended athletics
There are few folks on this world who’re recognizable solely by their first names. Fewer nonetheless are girls in sports activities. Fraser-Pryce is an distinctive human who has transcended the shores of dominating our athletics. The common child needs to select up a operating shoe due to her affect on the game.
The truth that she narrows that area of interest additional nonetheless, as a girl of shade, possibly shouldn’t matter, however it does. As a result of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has modified what it means to be a sportswoman, to be a profitable Black lady who comes from an Island nation of fewer than 3 million folks, to be a mom, to be a lot greater than the sum of all of her achievements.
World 100m champion @realshellyannfp was named Laureus World Sportswoman of the 12 months tonight on the prestigious 2023 @LaureusSport Awards in Paris.#Laureus23
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) Might 8, 2023
Fraser-Pryce scooped sport’s most prestigious award- Laureus Sports activities Girl of the 12 months forward of fellow monitor star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Alexa Putellas (Soccer), Katie Ledecky (Swimming), Iga Swiatek (Tennis) and Mikaela Shiffrin (Alpine Snowboarding). She is the second consecutive Jamaican sprinter to win the award after Elaine Thompson-Herah. This award is synonymous with the Oscars, and as we all know, solely the easiest are deserving of them.
On and off the monitor, Fraser-Pryce’s cerebral and sumptuous look is worthy of emulation for generations to come back, and her affect off the monitor is much more profound, much more enduring, and much more wide-reaching. That’s the reason the diminutive Jamaican is and can proceed to be so celebrated. In an age when girls are nonetheless pressured to decide on between profession and motherhood, energy and wonder, sport or style, success or recognition, one field or one other, Fraser-Pryce is all of it and a lot extra.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce 🇯🇲 after her Laureus Sportswoman of the 12 months award in Paris. pic.twitter.com/Rf9gFr6ETR
— oluwadare (@Track_Gazette) Might 8, 2023
Athletics followers who’ve adopted her know that her greatness goes past what she achieved final 12 months. That doesn’t imply we should always throw it out the window as a result of, for a 36-year-old, the numbers have been simply staggering. The Jamaican had an outstanding 12 months during which she grew to become the 100m world champion for the fifth time as she grew to become the oldest sprinter to win a world title in a person operating occasion. Fraser-Pryce ran inside 10.70s seven instances final 12 months, with the largest of them coming on the world championships in Oregon, during which she ran 10.67.
Lots of her followers far and vast will know and rejoice her, particularly in methods during which she has modified the game, after all. Her fashion on the monitor has been transformational. The bodily energy and technical prowess she delivered to girls’s sprinting have taken it to a brand new degree and demanded her rivals to compete on an analogous degree in the event that they have been to be any match.
Fraser-Pryce’s best achievements are in transcending how we view athletics, in transcending all of sport, as a result of solely then do athletes actually make a distinction. On and off it. Solely then do they show to us why sport issues and the numerous methods it does? The viral video that noticed her compete in her son’s Interhouse sport was a working example. It was a testomony to how a lot she’s liked outdoors the realm of athletics.
This award that solely a handful of nice sportsmen and ladies have gotten additional signifies how particular she is. Ladies have been lorded over since daybreak with the small-framed picture of perfection, as initiated by means of the male gaze and perpetuated by excessive style. Here’s a highly effective and swish specimen of magnificence, and she or he is somebody who empowers by means of her inspiration. There’s nothing easy about Fraser-Pryce’s stature, it has visibly required an insane quantity of dedication. Literal blood, sweat, and tears.
Eugene, Oregon, USA
July15-26, 2022, photograph by Kevin Morris
Fraser-Pryce’s operating profession could also be nearing the top, however the lady who has transcended her sport, who has extolled motherhood, who has given all the sport a task mannequin we might be pleased with, should channel all that vitality, drive and magnificence someplace.
