Anear cycling and tennis, and before football and motor sport, it’s time for “omnisport”.
1233: Armand Duplantis (Athletics)
Angel face, penetrating gaze, wick that seems to play with the wind: Armand Duplantis has barely blown 21 candles but the American-Swedish is already one of the stars of world athletics. As if he was born and designed for pole vault, a discipline his father Greg practiced in the United States while his mother Helena was heptathlete, “Mondo” (his nickname) has been leaping like a kid since he was tall as three apples, on the saltire in the family garden in Louisiana. It is said to be a bit dreamy, he is now familiar with the clouds… On February 8 in Torun, he broke for the first time the world indoor record, until then held by Renaud Lavillenie (6.17m, that is to say one centimeter better than French). A week later in Glasgow, he did it again and added a small centimeter to his performance (6.18m). On leaving the first confinement, his aspirations for freedom are stronger than anything: during the meeting in Rome (September 17), Duplantis passes over the Bubka statue and takes the outdoor planetary record to 6.15 m.
618 + 615 = 1233 centimeters, the accounts are good for “Mondo”, crowned “Athlete of the year 2020” a few days ago. European Champion 2018, vice-world champion 2019 and now “world record holder”, both indoors and outdoors, all that is missing from his record is Olympic gold. The appointment is set next summer in Tokyo. If the Covid-19 accepts it.
4 : Lebron James (Basket)
Nominated Sportsman of the Year by the prestigious “Time Magazine” and “Sports Illustrated”, LeBron James strikes the spirits by the stainless nature of his performances on the NBA fields, for eighteen years already, but also by the vigor and the depth of its social commitments.
Through the association “More Than a Vote”, he called on African Americans, relentlessly, to register on the electoral rolls and go to the polls in large numbers during the presidential election, to express more firmly democratic choices.
But King James is also an exceptional athlete, who has conquered four NBA titles with three different franchises (Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers), in ten finals. At 35, he continues to panic the indecreatable amateurs of statistics but remains, above all, in a total mastery of the subject. As if time had no hold and reinforced its legend.
32 : Kobe Bryant (Basket)
Just before entering an endless health nightmare, the world of sport is brutally struck in the heart on January 26, 2020. At the age of 41, Kobe Bryant perishes in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, California . His daughter Gianna (13) and seven other people are also swept away in a crash that hits the planet in disbelief. Five-time NBA champion with the Lakers, double Olympic gold medalist, he is one of seven players in the legendary North American basketball league to have scored more than 30,000 points, in twenty years of a career in which “Black Mamba Has made loyalty and efficiency rhyme. Rather than a boring litany of franchise or league records and stats, we picked numbers 8 and 24 (= 32), the only two that hit his jerseys between 1996 and 2016. They were both retired and are on display at the top of the Staples Center in Los Angeles. A glance is enough to rekindle the personal memories of millions of basketball fans across the globe.
154 : Teddy Riner (Judo)
He remained undefeated for 9 years, 4 months and 27 days, before losing to the Japanese Kokoro Kageura, in the 3rd round of the “Grand Slam de Paris”: Teddy Riner is a sacred monster of judo and world sport but the Guadeloupean colossus is of flesh and bone, 204 centimeters and 140 kilos of muscle, not an invincible god of Olympus. After an incredible series of 154 victories in the premier category of his discipline, the heavyweights, the ten-time World champion, five-time European champion and two-time Olympic champion bends his back in February 2020.
Rather than lament, the favorite teddy bear of the French sees it as “a booster shot”, while the Tokyo Olympics have not yet been postponed because of the pandemic. With never feigned optimism, he goes back to work, shoulders freed from a weight. “Everyone was waiting for me to win, everywhere, all the time. I also love victory and hate defeat. But this record was becoming exhausting… ”A new start for Teddy, with Tokyo then Paris 2024 as objectives.
4: Caeleb Dressel (Swimming)
The path traced by Michael Phelps in the pools necessarily creates an aspiration to stay on top of the wave, almost to walk on the water… Titled with the American relay from the Rio Olympics, Caeleb Dressel is the new head swimming gondola ride. Packed with world titles in recent seasons (7 in 2017, 6 in 2019), the Florida sprinter continues to gain strength. Thus, after a semester without competition, Dressel led his Cali Condors team to victory in the International Swimming League, a short course meeting, this fall at the Duna Arena in Budapest. Elected MVP of the final, Dressel notably broke four world records there, in three separate events which illustrate his versatility: 20.16 in 50 m freestyle; 47.78 in 100 m butterfly; 49.88 then 49.28 in 100m medley. Don’t look for the future Tokyo Jo star!
20: Joshua Cheptegei (Athletics)
It’s a bit as if he had never stopped running, circling tirelessly on the tracks since his first world title, during the 2019 Worlds in Doha… New holder of the planetary records of the prestigious 5,000m and 10,000m, in addition a world cross country champion title, Joshua Cheptegei has asserted himself in recent months as the new middle distance master, at just 24 years old.
In this year unlike any other, the Ugandan broke three planetary records. From his first meeting, in February in Monaco, he set a world record over 5 km “road” (12.51). He then set new standards for the 5,000 m (12.35.36), still on the Monegasque Rock, and the 10,000 m (26.11.00), in Valence this time, taking de facto the baton in the legend of the Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele. 5 + 5 + 10 = 20 markers which mark out its course on its paths of conquest.
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