Flashes of Panic

I don’t mean to gloat, but of course I’m not referring to that little wait-in-line paper-ballot affair last week. I’m talking about the Athletes of the Year. It happens that I picked four of the six athletes from whom the two Athletes of the Year will be selected.

Sammy Wanjiru was the man I voted for who did not make the final round, and given that it was Dayron Robles, who broke the 110m hurdles World Record, who displaced him, I’m not too bitter. Still, Wanjiru’s Olympic Marathon was nothing short of astounding, whereas Robles was practically mechanical in winning his gold. And Robles memorably screwed up at the World Indoor Championships, assuming a false start would be called and getting left flat-footed in the blocks. Gebrselassie was left behind despite his World Record, but Bekele and Bolt advanced. Frankly, I think this is a lock for Bolt. I have no doubt the bizarrely skewed online vote was responsible for Irving Saladino coming in fourth, however.

On the women’s side, I knew Yelena Isinbayeva (the IAAF insists her names be spelled with “y”s, which is counter-intuitive to me) would be a strong pick, but I argued for Valerie Vili instead. A losing battle, I knew, but I did see Pamela Jelimo and Tirunesh Dibaba advance.

The announced polling was 70% to the “IAAF Family” of 1512 names, meaning each vote was worth about .046296% of the total, and 30% to the online vote, which was 250,361 for the men and 242,992 for the women. This is much more even than last year, but also means an online vote was worth less than ever: about .000120% of the total for men, and .000123% for the women. Roughly speaking, my vote was equal to around 400 online votes, which isn’t a whole lot out of a quarter million, but is plenty if you consider how many track fans you may actually know.

Now I have to vote on Performances of the Year, which looks significantly tougher.