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The two-time Olympic champion Hassan has been recognized as the best athlete in the Netherlands for the second time in a row. This happened for the first time in 2019, but in 2020 the best ones were not identified due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
The athlete, who was born in Ethiopia in 2021, won this award, overtaking Annemik van Fleiten, the Olympic road cycling champion, and Suzannni Shulting, a short track runner, who won five World Championships this year.
The European Athletics Association (EA) recalls that Hasan achieved almost unimaginable success at the Tokyo Olympics this summer, winning Olympic gold medals in the 5,000 and 10,000-meter races, as well as bronze in the 1,500-meter race. She became one of a very small number of athletes who won three medals in individual disciplines at the same Olympics, including another Dutchman, Fanie Blankers-Koon, in London in 1948.
Hassan also set a world record in the 10,000-meter distance in the Dutch city of Hengelo – 29: 06.82 – and, demonstrating his versatility, achieved the best result in the world in a mile run in Brussels – 4: 14.74.
At the award ceremony, Hassan also revealed that in the not too distant future she wants to extend the running distance: “I want to run a marathon one year before the Paris Olympics.”
Hassan was unable to attend the award ceremony due to a positive Covid-19 test, but she is feeling well and is experiencing no symptoms.
Verstapen became the best athlete in the country in 2016 for the first time.
The athletes of the year are identified in the survey by Dutch sports journalists.
In October, EA Hasan was also named European Athlete of the Year.
She was also nominated among five athletes for the World’s Best Athlete of the Year award for Jamaican sprinter Eleina Thompson-Hera.
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