Usain Bolt and Mo Farah in contention for IAAF Athlete of the Year award

Great Britain’s Mo Farah (L) and Jamaica’s Usain Bolt (R) at the London Olympics last year

Usain Bolt and Mo Farah, two of the biggest names in the athletics world, have both been shortlisted for the IAAF 2013 World Athlete of the Year award, as per reports from TOI. The two along with eight other athletes are part of a 10-man shortlist that has been released by the IAAF.

Both Farah and Bolt are the reigning Olympic and World champions in their respective events. Bolt took gold in the 100m and 200m sprint events at the World Championships in Moscow in August to follow up his gold-winning exploits in the same two events at the London Olympics last year.

Farah did likewise, achieving the rare distinction of picking up the gold in both the 5,000m and 10,000m at both the Worlds and the Olympics.

Prominent amongst those in the women’s shortlist are Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Ethiopian long-distance champions Meseret Defar and Tirunesh Dibaba.

The complete list of nominees for both the men’s and women’s award is given below.

Men

Mohammed Aman (Ethiopia), Usain Bolt (Jamaica), Bohdan Bondarenko (Ukraine), Ashton Eaton (USA), Mohamed Farah (Great Britain), Robert Harting (Germany), Wilson Kipsang (Kenya), Aleksandr Menkov (Russia), LaShawn Merritt (USA), Teddy Tamgho (France)

Women

Valerie Adams (New Zealand) Abeba Aregawi (Sweden) Meseret Defar (Ethiopia) Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia), Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (Jamaica), Zuzana Hejnova (Czech Republic), Caterine Ibarguen (Colombia), Sandra Perkovic (Croatia), Brianna Rollins (USA), Svetlana Shkolina (Russia)