Je­lani Beck­les

AS pre­dict­ed by the Guardian on Tues­day, track and field ath­letes Cleopa­tra Borel and Machel Ce­de­nio won the Sports­woman and Sports­man of the Year Awards at the 18th An­nu­al T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Awards cer­e­mo­ny held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain, on Tues­day night.

Again, track and field took the li­on's share of the awards on the night, five of the sev­en awards, as Khal­i­fa St Fort (Ju­nior Sports­woman of the Year), Akeem Stew­art (Sports Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year) and Ren­ny Quow (Peo­ple's Choice Award) were all ho­n­oured for their out­stand­ing per­for­mances dur­ing 2015.

Al­so win­ning awards were swim­mer Jeron Thomp­son (Ju­nior Sports­man of the Year) and for­mer na­tion­al net­baller Janet Bai­ley (Alexan­der B Chap­man Award).

It was no sur­prise that Borel and Ce­de­nio took home the top awards as both ath­letes had stel­lar per­for­mances. It was the third straight time and the fifth time over­all that Borel won the award, af­ter per­form­ing at a high lev­el in the shot put event. The high­light of the year for Borel came in Ju­ly at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Toron­to, Cana­da when she won gold with a top throw of 18.67 me­tres. It was Borel's first gold medal at the Pan Amer­i­can Games, fol­low­ing a bronze in Brazil in 2007 and sil­ver in Mex­i­co in 2011. Borel al­so won the Sports­woman of the Year Award in 2006, 2010, 2013 and 2014.

Ce­de­nio, who was a dom­i­nant ath­lete at ju­nior lev­el for a num­ber of years, had a break­through year at se­nior lev­el. The 400m run­ner al­so had a mem­o­rable Pan Am Games snatch­ing two medals.

In the men's 400m event he won sil­ver and then an­chored the T&T men's 4x400m team to gold. The re­lay team in­clud­ed Jar­rin Solomon, Lalonde Gor­don and Quow, who re­ceived 1347 votes to win the Peo­ple's Choice Award. Borel and Ce­de­nio helped T&T to its best ever fin­ish at the Pan Amer­i­can Games with eight medals, bet­ter­ing the per­for­mances of the 1967 (Win­nipeg), 1971 (Cali) and 2003 (San­to Domin­go) na­tion­al teams, which each man­aged sev­en.

Par­a­lympian ath­lete Stew­art al­so en­joyed his time in Toron­to, set­ting world records in the dis­cus (63.03m) and javelin (53.36m) events in the F44 cat­e­gories at the Para­pan Am Games in Au­gust.

Thomp­son, com­pet­ing in the 13-14 boys cat­e­go­ry, won nu­mer­ous medals to lead T&T to the most gold medals (27) at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Na­tion Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship (CC­CAN) in Bar­ba­dos in June.

St Fort, coached by for­mer na­tion­al sprint­er Ato Boldon, broke the na­tion­al Un­der-18 record to win sil­ver in the girls 100m event at the IAAF World Youth Cham­pi­onships in Colom­bia, stop­ping the clock at 11.19 sec­onds.

For­mer na­tion­al net­ball star Bai­ley, who played goal de­fence and goal­keep­er, was giv­en the Alexan­der B Chap­man Award. Bai­ley passed away at age 80 in No­vem­ber. The Alexan­der B Chap­man Award rec­og­nizes achieve­ments or con­tri­bu­tions in any sport.

Ho­n­our roll

Sports­woman of the Year - Cleopa­tra Borel (track and field)

Sports­man of the Year - Machel Ce­de­nio (track and field)

Ju­nior Sports­woman of the Year - Khal­i­fa St Fort (track and field)

Ju­nior Sports­man of the Year - Jeron Thomp­son (swim­ming)

Sports Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year - Akeem Stew­art (track and field)

Peo­ple's Choice Award - Ren­ny Quow (track and field)

Alexan­der B Chap­man Award - Janet Bai­ley (net­ball)