The Award for Laureus Comeback of the Year is always a particularly special one.
Although Comeback Nominees are of course chosen for their sporting achievements just like the Sportsman and Sportswoman hopefuls, another very important factor is also taken into account.
And that factor is the courage, commitment and, as is particularly the case this year, the bravery that it took for these sportspeople to get back to the top of their game once again.
Because of that, all the Nominees this year truly deserve recognition for their achievements, but whose do you think are the most inspiring and worthy of success on Awards night?
Here are all the hopeful Nominees and a brief insight into the remarkable lengths they went to in the pursuit of finding sporting success once again…
ERIC ABIDAL
Eric Abidal
Eric Abidal’s story from the past year has to be one of the most remarkable in the history of football.
On March 15 last year he announced that a tumour had been found on his liver. He underwent surgery to have it removed two days later.
Eric’s turnaround remains an inspiring feat of bravery and commitment to sport. It was just two months later that the Barcelona defender returned to the game playing against Manchester United in the Champions League final. In a moving tribute he was handed the captain’s armband for the match. On Barcelona’s victory, he was the first to receive the trophy in recognition of his fantastic return after illness.
DARREN CLARKE
Darren Clarke
Darren Clarke’s victory in the Open Championship at the age of 42 was one of the most heart-warming sporting moments of the year.
It was his 20th attempt to win The Open, his home Major Championship, and came at the end of very difficult time for him following the death of his wife Heather in 2006, which meant his priority became looking after his two sons.
He dedicated his Open victory at Royal St George’s to his sons and his late wife. He said: “In terms of what’s going through my heart, there’s obviously somebody who is watching from up above and I know she’d be very proud of me. It’s been a long journey to get here.”
CRUSADERS
Crusaders
The Crusaders finished runners-up to the Queensland Reds in the Super 15 rugby competition, but nothing can be taken away from the passion and commitment it took for the team to reach even that stage.
The team was badly affected by the devastating Christchurch earthquake of February 2011. 181 people were killed in the disaster and the widespread destruction included their very own stadium.
It meant they had to travel over 100,000 km in 2011 alone just to play their rugby.
SERGIO GARCIA
Sergio Garcia
For professional sportspeople, one of the hardest things to do is simply find a way back to top-flight success after a long period of disappointment.
Sergio Garcia, however, who won the Laureus Breakthrough of the Year at the first Awards in 2000, did just that when he once again emerged in 2011 as a powerful force in golf.
After a three year stretch without a win, Garcia won two successive tournaments in 2011; the first at the Castello Masters, followed just a week later by victory at the Andalucia Masters.
In a moving tribute he dedicated his victory at Castello to Laureus Academy Member Seve Ballesteros, who died last May.
LIU XIANG
Liu Xiang
As a true sporting hero to the Chinese people, nothing can overstate how important Liu Xiang’s success is to his home country.
This is why his dropping out of his main event, the 110 metres hurdles, at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 with a hamstring injury would have been such a personal setback.
Xiang went a long way toward making up for this in 2011 with a second place finish in the 110m hurdles at the Daegu World Championships.
QUEENSLAND REDS
Queensland Reds
The Queensland Reds were the team who defeated fellow Nominees the Crusaders in the Rugby Super 15 final.
And, just like the Crusaders, they had persisted through great hardship to emerge with such success in 2011.
A series of floods in late 2010 killed 35 people from their home region and the subsequent success the Crusaders found after several seasons of mediocrity gave the area a real lift and source of pride.
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Clearly all these Nominees have an inspriring story behind their success in 2011, but which one speaks the most to you?
Let us know who you would like to see win the Comeback of the Year Award in the box below.
And, of course, tweet us @LaureusSport as well and be sure to follow to find out all the latest news on the Awards and the ongoing work of the Sport for Good Foundation.
Back at the 2005 Laureus World Sports Award, it was the inspiring Alessandro Zanardi’s remarkable courage that won him the Comeback of the Year Award.
This was following his return to motor racing having lost both his legs in a horrific crash just four years earlier.
Zanardi receives his award from Teri Hatcher
His 2001 accident in the European Memorial CART race in Lausitz, Germany was one of the worst ever seen.
His car spun coming out of the pits and was hit by another coming down the straight at 200mph. The impact was so great that his vehicle was ripped in two.
Demonstrating incredible commitment and passion, Zanardi returned to motor racing in October 2003 and went on to complete a full season in the European Touring Car championship in 2004.
On his return, he drove a specially adapted car in which the throttle was mounted on the upper part of the steering wheel, the brake pedal was shaped to prevent the driver’s artificial limb from losing grip, whilst the clutch actuated through a button on the gear lever.
Though his return to his sport in this way made him worthy of recognition by the Laureus Academy, Zanardi’s journey following this has gone on to show how inspirational a figure he truly is.
Though he retired from motor racing in 2009, it certainly wasn’t because he was finished with sport altogether.
That’s because he would now focus on the new sport he had adopted since 2007: hand cycling.
From the very start, success came remarkably quickly.
In 2007 he achieved 4th place in the New York City Marathon in the handcycle division after only four weeks of training.
By the end of 2011, however, Zanardi had finally won the New York Marathon at his fourth attempt. He added this first place finish to previous victories at the Venice Marathon in 2009 and the Rome Marathon in 2010.
Perhaps his most exciting achievement of the past year, however, has been his qualifying to race for the Italian team at the London 2012 Paralympics.
Zanardi may be approaching 46 by the time the Games come around later this year, but considering his achievements so far, it’s a safe bet he will be chasing nothing but gold.
To suggest social project spending cuts in Britain are to blame for the problems on the streets seen here over the past few days is at best inaccurate or, at worst, opportunistic and misleading.
Clearly countless contributing factors go toward social problems of this kind.
As difficult as accounting for all these factors might be, by looking at one at a time, some light may be shed on how society can stop this from happening both in the future and for the future.
This is why Laureus is passionate that governments should invest in social projects that focus on a country’s youth. For it is through such projects that children and young adults will learn the values that will turn them away from violence and anti social behaviour.
Laureus champions the use of sport as the unique and near universally engaging tool through which these goals can be achieved.
And a report Laureus published just a few months ago demonstrated how this belief is already showing itself to be true.
Before I show you the evidence the report offers, however, the anecdotal evidence proposed by our Academy Member Daley Thompson is convincing in itself, and not to mention pertinent considering the gang violence across England in recent days.
At the report’s release, Daley said:
“The key lies in the similarities between sport and gangs; both present a sense of belonging, status and excitement.”
For the benefit of my blog today I’ll look at two of the projects that the report looks in to: The Boxing Academy in Tottenham and the Kickz project in Elthorne Park; both of these are in London.
The Boxing Academy in Tottenham, for example, costs half as much as what is known as a ‘Pupil Referral Unit’ and has lower re-offending rates amongst the youngsters it works with.
The Boxing Academy in Tottenham, London was found to offer a £7 return for every £1 invested
A Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) is a centre for children who, through their behaviour, have been deemed unable to attend a mainstream or special school.
In addition to the project’s documented success over PRUs, the report also found that for every £1 invested in The Boxing Academy, society benefits from a return of £3. This comes from a higher average of future earnings for participants but also from reduced crime rates in the area too.
The Kickz project, however, can boast even more remarkable success from our report’s findings.
The Kickz project, which uses football to work with troubled youths, demonstrates an incredible £7 value for every £1 invested.
Quite simply, this means that if that £1 funding was to be cut from their budget, it would actually end up costing government a huge £6!
This is because, by cutting crime rates, the project helps save the costs to victims, costs to police and subsequently costs to the courts and prisons.
There are 75,000 new entrants into the youth criminal justice system each year. This ended up costing government a staggering £4 billion last year alone.
Laureus believes that maintaining funding in sports projects, such as those I’ve talked about here, can not only offer some of our most troubled youngsters a brighter future, but also significant financial return at a time when countries across the world are in such desperate need of it.
This is just a brief introduction to the report’s findings but you can have a look at the entire document at the Laureus website here.
Every year 375 cars built between the 1927 and 1957 travel from Brescia to Rome and back in a three-day regularity race known as the “Mille Miglia”. Initially a performance based, open road race, the Mille Miglia was abolished by Italian government in 1957 after the Spanish F1 driver Alfonso de Portago crashed his Ferrari 335 S killing himself, his co-pilot, and 10 spectators. Today the Mille Miglia is a historical race commemorating the unique and heroic spirit of the competition and is a tribute to the automotive industry of those years. Passionate collectors from all over the world fly to Italy every year to take part in this event, which manages to round up 7 million people along the route in what is a unique and spectacular experience.
Mille Miglia 2010 Laureus Car, Mercedes 300SL "Gullwing"
In 2010 Mercedes Benz Italia and Fondazione Laureus Italia have agreed to use this event to promote Laureus by applying the Laureus Fondazione Italia logos onto two Mercedes Benz 300SL “gullwings” taking part in the race.
I think that when you are woken up in the morning by one of your best friends sobbing with his hands over his face, lying next to you in his sleeping bag, the reality of what we are doing hits home! Poor old Hollers was in complete agony with an infected blister. A few minutes later a girl started wailing in pain in the camp. Suffice to say that Day 5 was hard work!
It looks like most people got through the day which is great and there are now 87 people left in the race, of 111 starters. However, as I write this, there are still two more finishers to cross the line 26.5 hours after we set off.
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