The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

SHAUNAE Miller-Uibo missed out on the hat trick of awards in athletics, losing out in the voting process for the International Amateur Athletic Federation’s Female Athlete of the Year to Colombia’s Caterine Ibarguen.

“I had an enjoyable time. Like I have said before all of the ladies had great credentials. Congrats to the winner and off to 2019 God’s willing,” Miller-Uibo told The Tribune.

The IAAF held its Athletics Awards 2018 to crown the male and female World Athletes of the Year on Tuesday night in Monaco.

Miller-Uibo, the 24-year-old NACAC and Bahamas National Female Athlete of the Year, was hoping to add the prestigious IAAF award for the tri-factor to complete her unblemished season in which she was unbeaten in 15 events and added the Bahamas national 400 metre record to her 200m mark.

However, after the voting procedure was done, the 34-year-old Ibarguen emerged as the winner, having dominated the long and triple jumps at the Central American and Caribbean Games, the IAAF Continental Cup and at the IAAF Diamond League finals - winning the latter two titles in two different cities within the space of 24 hours.

Eliud Kipchoge, also 34, won the Male Athlete of the Year after he clinched the title at the London Marathon and five months later, he established a world record at the Berlin Marathon.

Miller-Uibo was accompanied to Monaco by her husband Maicel, her parents Shaun and May Miller, who were celebrating their 27th wedding anniversary, along with newly elected Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations’ president Drumeco Archer and second vice president Rupert Gardiner.

Also in attendance were IAAF councilwoman Pauline Davis-Thompson and Dennis Marshall, a member of the IAAF Women’s Council.

Prior to the awards ceremony, the IAAF completed its council meeting yesterday as they approved and released the qualifying standards for the IAAF World Athletics Championships that will be held in Doha, Qatar, September 28 to October 6.

The IAAF revealed the changes during its IAAF Council Meeting yesterday in Monaco just before they staged their Athletics Awards 2018 with the crowning of the male and female World Athletes of the Year. In releasing the standards, the IAAF indicated that the performance standards for athletes to use as a measure stick for competing in Doha, are similar to those used for the 2017 World Championships that was held in London, England.

However, there are two notable differences for Doha, one of which would affect the Bahamas.

• Target numbers have been introduced for the road events and 10,000m races - 100 for marathons, 60 for the 20km race walks, 50 for the men’s 50km race walk and 30 for the women’s, and 27 for the 10,000m

• There will also be an increase in the number of teams qualified from the IAAF World Relays from eight to 10 in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays, for a total of 16 entries. For the 4x400m mixed relay, which will be contested for the first time, 12 teams will qualify from the IAAF World Relays in Yokohama.

Most countries will have an additional event to compete in, while the Bahamas will be hard pressed to duplicate its performance at the last IAAF World Relays that was held at the Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium in 2017.

The IAAF had to move the World Relays from the Bahamas after the government decided that it was too costly to stage the two-day event for the fourth time. Yokohoma has agreed to stage it in Japan from May 11-12.

During the last setting of the World Relays in 2017, the team of Steven Gardiner, Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Anthonique Strachan and Michael Mathieu won the introduction of the mixed 4 x 400m relay.

They did it in a time of three minutes, 14.42 seconds to hold off the United States of America, second in 3:17.29 and Jamaica, who had to settle for the distant third place in 3:20.26.

At a two-day meeting in Monaco, the IAAF Council also made the following decisions:

• The 2023 IAAF World Championships will be held in the Hungarian capital Budapest. Part of the organizing committee’s bid includes the construction of a new stadium, built along the east bank of the Danube River, which will later serve primarily as an athletics facility.

Budapest is the first IAAF World Championships host to be named under the new bidding process announced in February 2017 through which the IAAF assesses its strategic goals for growing the sport, targeting cities from countries and regions which will best assist in delivery of those aims.

• The IAAF Council also accepted the Russia Taskforce’s recommendation not to reinstate RusAF until the following two conditions have been met in full: confirmation that the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) has been given data and access to the samples that it needs to determine which of the Russian athletes in the LIMS database have a case to answer for breach of the IAAF anti-doping rule and that RusAF pays all the costs incurred in the work of the taskforce.

• Council also voted to permit national teams, for the first time, to display the logo of a national sponsor on their kit for the IAAF World Athletics Championships (WCH) at the 2019 World Championships in Doha.

Note: Prior to the Congress, the IAAF announced the appointment of Jon Ridgeon, a former international athlete and businessman, as its new CEO. Ridgeon, 51, will take up his new role in March 2019.