- Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat is nominated in the ‘Comeback of the Year’ category at Monday night’s Laureus Sports Awards.
- The award function is being held in Monaco and will get underway at 11:30 PM IST.
- Vinesh is the first individual athlete from India to be nominated for the Laureus Sports Awards.
In the many firsts she has accomplished in her young but illustrious wrestling career, Vinesh Phogat is up for another first on Monday night.
India’s top female wrestler is nominated for the Laureus Awards in the ‘Comeback of the Year’ category. She is the first Indian athlete, male or female, to be shortlisted in an individual category at sport’s prestigious awards.
The 2019 Laureus Awards are being held in Monaco and will start at 11:30 PM IST. You can catch the show live on the link below.
Vinesh has travelled to Monaco for the awards function with her husband Somveer Rathee and is up against some pretty big names in her category, ranging from Tiger Woods to Linsey Vonn.
To be nominated for the ‘Comeback of the Year’, Vinesh Phogat had an extremely successful 2018 in which she won the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games gold, along with a silver in the Asian Championships. Vinesh was returning from a long lay-off after she had to undergo an operation following her knee injury that forced her to pull out of the 2016 Rio Olympics quarter-final.
Also nominated is golfer Tiger Woods who won the US Tour Championship in 2018, ending a five year dry spell due to injury and also drop in form.
The other four sportspersons in the category are Winter Olympians.
Japanese men’s figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu couldn't even practise his jumps till three weeks before the Pyeongchang Olympics due to an injury, but reached peaked fitness just in time to win his second straight gold. Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris was involved in a life-threatening snowboarding accident in March 2017 in which he suffered a broken jaw, broken arm, ruptured spleen, pelvic fracture and a collapsed left lung to win a bronze medal in the Winter Olympics a year later.
One of the most known names in ski racing history, Lindsay Vonn also made a successful comeback from injury to win a bronze in the Winter Olympics.
Bibian Mentel-Spee is the only paralympian nominated in this category but her accomplishments may well leave the others behind. A cancer survivor, the snowboarder had to have the C6 vertebra in her neck replaced with titanium and just six weeks after the surgery, she won two gold medals at the Winter Olympics.
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