Lionel Messi, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce are Laureus World Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year award winners
The legendary Argentine's World Cup triumph captivated the world in 2022, while Fraser-Pryce cemented her 100m legacy. The annual event took place in Paris Monday (8 May).
3 minBy Scott Bregman
The accomplishments keep adding up for Lionel Messi and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
Both were awarded Laureus World Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year awards, respectively, Monday (8 May) during a ceremony in Paris.
Messi captivated the globe in 2022, finally capturing the one accolade lacking in his historic career: a win for Argentina at the FIFA World Cup. The 35-year-old was instrumental in his team clinching the title, scoring seven goals including two in the final against France.
Argentina also won the Laureus World Team of the Year Award for its World Cup title win. Messi is the first person to win both the Sportsman and Team of the Year awards in the same year.
Fraser-Pryce, who beat out fellow Olympic champions Mikael Shiffrin, Katie Ledecky and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone for the award, underlined her credentials as one of the greatest track and field athletes of all time in 2022 when she won her fifth career World Championship gold medal in the women's 100 metres sprint in Eugene. In claiming the crown at 35 years old, the Jamaican also became the oldest sprinter to win a world title gesturing to her dominance in the discipline.
Beijing 2022 Olympic champion Ailing (Eileen) Gu won the World Action Sportsperson of the Year award, beating out fellow Olympic gold medallist Chloe Kim and Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallist Rayssa Leal.
Gu broke new ground in Beijing when she won two Olympic golds in big air and halfpipe and a silver in slopestyle. Just 18-years -old, she became the youngest freestyle skiing Olympic champion and the first to win three medals at a single Games.
20-year-old tennis phenom Carlos Alcaraz, who won a second-straight Madrid Open title on Sunday (7 May), picked up the World Breakthrough of the Year Award. Olympic figure skating men's singles champion Nathan Chen was also nominated in the category.
Laureus World Comeback of the Year award winner was Denmark's Christian Eriksen. The 31-year-old suffered cardiac arrest on field in 2021, but was able to return to the pitch in 2022 after being fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. In November, he played for his country at the FIFA World Cup.
Catherine Debrunner was honoured as the 2023 Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability. In 2022, Debrunner won the Berlin Marathon and, then, seven days later, set a new record time en route to winning the London Marathon.
The Laureus Sport for Good award went to Team Up. TeamUp is "a psycho-social support intervention developed by War Child, Save the Children and UNICEF Netherlands, which helps children in difficult situations to relieve stress and tension," according to the Laureus website.
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