BBC announces nominees for the Indian Sportswoman of the Year award

What's the story??

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have announced the five nominees for the inaugural BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year award featuring top woman athletes - PV Sindhu, MC Mary Kom, Vinesh Phogat, Dutee Chand and Manasi Joshi.

The background

The BBC announced last year in December that they will be creating an award for honoring Indian sportswoman to provide them recognition for their contribution to the uplift of Indian women in sports.

The heart of the matter

BBC have announced the list of five nominees that will be competing for the BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year Award 2019. The list has been put together by prominent sports journalists who decided upon the five names after shortlisting a large number of women athletes from a variety of sports.

The final list features Indian badminton sensation Pusarla Venkat Sindhu, popularly known as PV Sindhu who will be a prime contender to bag the prize. She won the BWF World Championship in 2019 defeating her Japanese counterpart Nozomi Okuhara.

MC Mary Kom is India's most decorated boxing champion with a tally of six World Championships and was the first Indian woman boxer to qualify for the Olympics back in 2012. She was recently awarded India's second highest civilian award Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India.

The first Indian wrestler to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics 2020, Vinesh Phogat is the third member of the nominee list. She won two gold medals in 2019 at the Yasar Dogu International and 2019 Poland Open wrestling tournament. She also bagged the bronze medals at the 2019 Asian Wrestling Championships and World Wrestling Championships.

India's fastest sprinter Dutee Chand is the fourth name on the list as she became the first Indian sprinter to win the gold medal at the Summer Universiade 2019 in the 100 metres race clocked a timing of 11.32 seconds.

The final athlete to make up the list is Indian para badminton athlete Manasi Joshi who crowned her 2019 season with a Gold medal for India at the Para Badminton World Championships which were held at Basel, Switzerland.

The winner will be decided on the basis of online voting by fans on any of the BBC's websites in the various Indian languages - Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil.

What's next?

The inaugural BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year award will be presented at an official BBC function in New Delhi on March 8, 2020.