Commonwealth Games champion, IAAF diamond league Champion, World indoor silver medalist, Intercontinental Cup Champion, World number one and IAAF nominee for athlete of the year are among some of the accolades that Jamaican 400m hurdles queen Kaliese Spencer has garnered during the 2014 track season. She added the top Sportswoman of the Year at the first Caribbean Sports Journalists’ Association (CASJA) annual awards, polling five of the six votes by a six-member panel comprised of Olympians Tonique Williams and Ato Boldon, former World Cup footballer Shaka Hislop and Track and Field Journalists Terry Finisterre (SLU), Vernon Springer (SKN) and Kayon Raynor (JAM).
She won ahead of Yarisley Silva of Cuba, the pole vault gold medallist from the World Indoor Championships in Sopot, Poland, ended second in the female vote.
Jamaican World Boxing Association (WBA) Super World featherweight boxer champion Nicholas ‘Axeman’ Walters could not knock down Grenada’s Commonwealth Games 400m champion Kirani James for the Top Sportsman award. James received three of six votes to Walters two and six-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt ended with just a single vote. James ended the year with the fastest time of 43.74 seconds.
Other Jamaican victory on the night came through the record breaking men’s 4x200m team of Nickel Ashmeade, Warren Weir, Jermaine Brown and Yohan Blake which set a new World best of 1:18.63 minutes at the inaugural World Relay Championships in the Bahamas earlier this year. They walked away with team of the year award for male category. The Soca Princesses ( female footballers) of Trinidad and Tobago, who are one win away from qualifying for next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada copped the Female Team of the Year award, ahead of the likes of the Sunshine Girls of Jamaica.
Jamaica’s junior super star, Jaheel Hyde who won the World Junior 400m hurdle gold and the Youth Olympic Games 110m title had to settle for the runner up spot to Guadeloupe sprint hurdler Wilhem Belocian who won the Rising Stars. Belocian, who captured the 2014 World Junior Championships gold in a world junior record of 12.99 seconds,.
Barbadian Akeela Jones, who secured gold in the Long Jump at the World Junior Championships in addition to receiving the Austin Sealy Award after coping three individual gold medals at the CARIFTA Championships, clipped Jamaica’s Commonwealth Games 400m champion Stephanie-Ann McPherson for the female award.
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