Attention may already be turning to the upcoming track and field season, but the stellar performances by Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred in 2024 are still being rewarded. Already a finalist for World Athlete of the Year and the recipient of several international awards, the 23-year-old Olympic champion from Ciceron was handed two additional awards this week.
Respected American website FloTrack deemed the Paris 2024 women’s 100m champion as their Breakthrough Performer of the Year on Monday. Voted by fans and nominated by the FloTrack team, Alfred took the crown based on her World Indoors 60m title, Olympic gold and silver, and Diamond League 100m title – all firsts for Saint Lucia.
World record holders Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the women’s 400m hurdles champion, and men’s pole vault gold medallist Mondo Duplantis were adjudged the men’s and women’s pro athletes of the year by FloTrack which has been following Alfred’s progress since she was a student-athlete at the University of Texas, winning multiple national titles for the Longhorns.
Additionally, Alfred was this week named among the Persons of the Year by popular Caribbean-American magazine Everybody’s. Alfred and fellow Olympic gold medallist Thea LaFond-Gadson of Dominica were among six Eastern Caribbean athletes recognised by the 47-year-old Brooklyn, New York-based magazine.
Alfred can now add these to her trophies from the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), the Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (CANOC), and Athletics Weekly.
Herman Hall, the Grenadian-born publisher of Everybody’s, said that readers chose Alfred, LaFond-Gadson, 800m runner Shafiqua Maloney of St Vincent & the Grenadines, Lindon Victor, Anderson Peters, and Kirani James of Grenada for the awards, based on their outstanding exploits on the purple tracks of the Stade de France.
Everybody’s bills itself as the longest surviving Caribbean-American publication, with subscribers across the USA. Launched in January 1977, the magazine produces and promotes Caribbean plays and concerts.
Ms. Alfred congrats – stay focused and level headed. Godspeed