Laureus Sports Award: Beyond the raw numbers, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce win a reflection of how much she has transcended athletics

So happy to see Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce win the Laureus Award. Since my first interview with SAFP in 2011, she has always been gracious, funny and thoughtful in interviews. This is a wonderful tribute by Deji Ogeyingbo.

Laureus Sports Award: Beyond the raw numbers, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce wins a reflection of how much she has transcended athletics

There are few people in this world who are recognizable only by their first names. Fewer still are women in sports. Fraser-Pryce is an exceptional human who has transcended the shores of dominating our athletics. The average kid wants to pick up a running shoe because of her impact on the sport. 

The fact that she narrows that niche further still, as a woman of color, maybe shouldn’t matter, but it does. Because Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has changed what it means to be a sportswoman, to be a successful Black woman who comes from an Island nation of fewer than 3 million people, to be a mother, to be so much more than the sum of all of her achievements. 

World 100m champion @realshellyannfp was named Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year tonight at the prestigious 2023 @LaureusSport Awards in Paris.#Laureus23

— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) May 8, 2023

Fraser-Pryce scooped sport’s most prestigious award- Laureus Sports Woman of the Year ahead of fellow track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Alexa Putellas (Football), Katie Ledecky (Swimming), Iga Swiatek (Tennis) and Mikaela Shiffrin (Alpine Skiing). She is the second consecutive Jamaican sprinter to win the award after Elaine Thompson-Herah. This award is synonymous with the Oscars, and as we know, only the very best are deserving of them. 

On and off the track, Fraser-Pryce’s cerebral and magnificent appearance is worthy of emulation for generations to come, and her impact off the track is even more profound, even more enduring, and even more wide-reaching. That is why the diminutive Jamaican is and will continue to be so celebrated. In an age when women are still pressured to choose between career and motherhood, strength and beauty, sport or fashion, success or popularity, one box or another, Fraser-Pryce is all of it and so much more.

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce 🇯🇲 after her Laureus Sportswoman of the year award in Paris. pic.twitter.com/Rf9gFr6ETR

— oluwadare (@Track_Gazette) May 8, 2023

Athletics fans who have followed her know that her greatness goes beyond what she achieved last year. That doesn’t mean…