Sabastian Sawe Makes the Final Three for Men’s World Athlete of the Year

Sabastian Sawe’s sub-two-hour marathon in London has carried him into the final three for Men’s World Athlete of the Year, where he will face pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis and 400m hurdler Alison dos Santos, World Athletics announced on Tuesday. The winner is revealed at the World Athletics Awards ceremony in Monaco on Nov. 29.

London on April 26 was the only race Sawe ran all year. He reached halfway in 1:00:29, came home in 59:01 and stopped the clock at 1:59:30, 65 seconds inside the late Kelvin Kiptum’s 2:00:35 from Chicago in 2023. Nobody had gone under two hours in a race that could count for the record books before him, since Eliud Kipchoge’s 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019 was never eligible for ratification. Yomif Kejelcha finished just 11 seconds behind him on his debut.

The plan had been to defend his Berlin title on Sept. 27, but Sawe withdrew in late August with an injury the organizers did not describe. A day later his agent, Eric Lilot, told LetsRun that Sawe had a slight stress fracture in his right tibia and was now aiming for a marathon in spring 2027.

Duplantis and Dos Santos

Duplantis has won this award three times already, in 2020, 2022 and last year. He pushed his pole vault world record to 6.31m at his own meet in Uppsala in March, the 15th time he has raised it, and added world indoor, European and Ultimate Championship titles over the rest of the season.

Dos Santos had the season of his career in the 400m hurdles. In Zurich on Aug. 27 he ran 45.80 to take the world record from Karsten Warholm, whose 45.94 had stood since the Tokyo Olympics, and he went on to win the Ultimate title in 45.98. He won all 11 of his hurdles races, the Diamond League Final among them.

One Award, No Road Category

Kipchoge, in 2018 and 2019, is still the last marathoner to win the main men’s award. From 2023 to 2025 road runners had a separate out-of-stadium prize, which went to Kiptum, then Tamirat Tola, then Sawe himself last year. World Athletics dropped the track, field and out-of-stadium awards in May, so there is now one award per gender and Sawe is up against the best of the stadium directly.

He is also the only road runner left among the six finalists. Tigst Assefa, who lowered her own women-only marathon world record to 2:15:41 on the same morning in London, finished fourth in the women’s voting, and Agnes Ngetich sixth, when those finalists were named on Wednesday. Last December, we argued that the awards lean toward the sport’s most visible names, and that Sawe’s London and Berlin wins in 2025 deserved more than the category title.

This year’s 10 nominees were picked by a panel of eight statisticians and then ranked by four voting groups, each worth a quarter of the result: World Athletics+ subscribers, athletes who competed in World Athletics Series events, accredited media, and the federation’s own officials, council members, meet directors and partners.

Josh Kerr was fourth, only just outside the final three after a year in which he broke Hicham El Guerrouj’s 27-year-old mile world record with 3:42.66 in London, won world indoor 3,000m gold and took the Ultimate Championship 1,500m title in Budapest. Ja’Kobe Tharp was fifth and Kenneth Bednarek sixth.

Monaco will also see the first Moment of the Year award, decided entirely by fans on World Athletics’ social channels, alongside the Rising Star, Coach of the Year and President’s Award honors.