The Swiss tennis player Roger Federer, current number one in the ATP ranking, has been the main protagonist of the Laureus World Sports Awards, adding two other distinctions to his career, that of Best Athlete of the Year and Best Comeback of the Year.
In the first category, Federer has prevailed in the voting against his greatest rival also on the courts, the Spanish Rafael Nadal, with whom he shared the Grand Slams in 2017, and the Portuguese footballer of Real Madrid Cristiano Ronaldo, who is leaving again empty after five nominations.
Also aspired to this award were three British athletes: Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, cyclist Chris Froome and athlete Mo Farah.
The academy of ex-athletes has also awarded Federer the Laureus for Best Comeback of the Year, assessing the way in which the 36-year-old Helvetian overcame injuries to return to the top with his Open victories from Australia and Wimbledon.
In this category, the Barcelona soccer team, nominated for their spectacular comeback against PSG in the knockout stages of the Champions League, has defeated the Chapecoense soccer team, victim of a tragic plane crash, the athletes Justin Gatlin and Sally Pearson and Italian MotoGP rider Valentino Rossi.
The Chapecoense, however, has won the award for Best Sports Moment of the Year, that of his return to competition after the tragedy.
Federer has left the gala, held in the Hall of the Stars of Sporting de Monte-Carlo, with six Laureus in his record, because to the two obtained today, delivered by Boris Becker and Martina Navratilova, we must add those who won consecutively, between 2005 and 2008, also as Best Athlete of the Year. Nobody has more Laureus than him.
It was tennis night, because the Best Athlete of the Year was American Serena Williams, who started last season winning her 23rd Grand Slam title in Australia, before retiring from the courts for a few months to be a mother.
The youngest of the Williams sisters has beaten the Hispanic-Venezuelan tennis player Garbiñe Muguruza, who in 2017 became number one in the world and won the second Grand Slam of her career at Wimbledon. Athletes Allyson Felix and Caster Semenya, swimmer Katie Ledecky and skier Mikaela Shiffrin were also up for the award.
Serena Williams has thus added her fifth Laureus award, after those achieved in 2003, 2010 and 2016, in the same category, and that of the Best Comeback of the Year, which she achieved in 2007.
The Best Team of the Year award went to the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team, which defeated Real Madrid in football and the Golden State Warriors of the NBA.
The New England Patriots of the NFL, the French team of the Davis Cup and the New Zealand team of the America’s Cup were also nominated, but the Laureus Academy has preferred to reward the four consecutive years that Mercedes has been winning the Formula One Constructors’ World Cup.
Real Madrid, which had its best season by proclaiming itself champion of the Spanish League, the Champions League, the European Super Cup, the Spanish Super Cup and the Club World Cup, has been for the fourth time without an award it has already chosen , with the same result, in 2003, 2015 and 2017.
The Spanish representation has had to settle, therefore, with the recognition that the academy of former athletes has given to the golfer Sergio García, who has won, for the second time, the award for Revelation Athlete of the Year, for his victory in the Masters of Augusta, the first ‘Major’ he has achieved in his career after the 74 he has played.
To win the award, which he already won in 2000, the Spaniard from Castellón has won the vote against the young sensation of French football, PSG striker Kylian Mbappé; the heavyweight world champion, Briton Anthony Joshua; Roland Garros-winning Latvian tennis player Jelena Ostapenko; American swimmer Caeleb Dressel; and Greek NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo.
At the gala, ex-Roma footballer Francesco Totti was also distinguished with the Outstanding Achievement award for developing his entire career with the Italian team; with the Achievement of Life award to former athlete Edwin Moses, winner of two Olympic golds and undefeated for nine years in the 400 meter hurdles; and with the award for Disability to the Swiss Marcel Hug, triple world wheelchair champion. EFE
Federer takes two Laureus on tennis night
