Usain Bolt named World Athlete of the Year 2016 after completing historic triple triple at the Rio Olympics

USAIN BOLT has won World Athlete of the Year – the sixth time he has picked up the gong.

The Jamaican sprint superstar received the accolade at the 2016 IAAF Athletics Awards in Monaco from the sport’s president Seb Coe after achieving the ‘triple triple’ at the Olympics in Rio this summer.

Reuters

Reuters

Bolt said: “This is definitely a big deal. When you get athlete of the year it means all the hard work has paid off.

“This one also means as much to me as the first. ”

Bolt, 30, who will retire after next summers’s World Championships in London, first won the award in 2008 when he won Olympic 100m, 200m and 4x100m gold and set world records in all three.

He joked: “I know Seb Coe doesn’t want me to retire!”

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The Jamaican said he wishes he would have taken sprinting more seriously at a younger age[/caption]

Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana who controversially won 10,000m Olympic gold in Rio and smashed a world record that had stood for 23 years set by China’s Wang Junxia who was one of Ma’s Army was awarded female athlete of the year. Athletics fans were among those who took part in the worldwide vote.

Last year’s awards ceremony was cancelled in the wake of a doping scandal which engulfed the sport and last night’s event despite Prince Albert of Monaco in attendance was scaled down and far removed from the largesse under the days of the now disgraced Previous president Lamine Diack.

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Almaz Ayana – who won 10,000m gold and 5,000m bronze – was named women’s Athlete of the Year[/caption]

Coe will try and push forward sweeping reforms for the sport when all 213 member federations meet for the first time in 20 years. Russia – banned from the sport – will not have a representative here.

But many countries are still opposed to changes.