Last November, Vivian Cheruiyot left the Salles de Etoiles concert hall at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club crestfallen. Widely tipped to walk off with the Female Athlete of the Year trophy at the annual awards ceremony of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), Cheruiyot was disappointed to come second, behind Australian hurdler Sally Pearson.
“It’s alright. My time will come,” the petite policewoman, 28, said then as she was comforted by fellow Kenyan athletes and officials invited to the principality.
On Monday night, Cheruiyot’s time did eventually come, sooner than she expected, and in full grandeur, when she was named the world’s best sportswoman at the 13th Laureus World Sports Awards.
And not just in track and field, but in all sporting disciplines, an accolade that would leave Pearson green with envy. 
Kenya's athlete Vivian Cheruiyot holds her trophy of the 2011 Kenya Sports Personality of the Year at the Safaricom Kenya Sports Personality of the Year Awards (Soya) gala in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, on Dec. 14, 2011. PHOTO / XINHUA                



At Central Hall in Westminster, London, Cheruiyot shared the same platform as Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s respected coach, who was just fresh from a thrilling come-from-behind 3-3 draw with Chelsea 24 hours earlier in a thriller at London’s Stamford Bridge.
Sir Alex was at Westminister Hall for the “Oscars of Sport” to receive the Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the Red Devils’ legend, Sir Bobby Charlton, who underwent minor surgery after he was taken ill just before the glittering ceremony.
“Sir Bobby is fine, but it was felt he should go back to Manchester. He is very annoyed not to be here to receive this Award. I’ll be taking the statuette back to Old Trafford for him,” Sir Alex said.
The award was given to Charlton fittingly on the 54th anniversary of the Munich air disaster which took the lives of eight Manchester United players with Charlton one of the survivors.
Monday’s ceremony — hosted by actor Clive Owen — was attended by top Hollywood actors and the world’s leading sporting figures, with Cheruiyot brushing shoulders with Arsenal Football Club manager Arsene Wenger, England national football team coach Fabio Capello and Britain’s former world heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis.
“I want to say thank you so much to Laureus Academy, the organisers and founders of these Awards. I never imagined I was going to win tonight,” said Cheruiyot who was rewarded for her three gold medals last year and a consistent showing at the IAAF Diamond League track and field series.
Cheruiyot won the gold medal at the World Cross Country Championships in Punta Umbria, Spain, in March and followed that performance up with a double victory at the World Championships in Athletics in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres races in Daegu, South Korea.
Serbian world number one tennis player Novak Djokovic was named the Laureus Sportsman of the Year, just over a week after he became only the fifth man in the Open era to win three Grand Slam titles in a row by winning the Australian Open.
Fleet-footed Barcelona were named the year’s best team while the night’s other big winners included South African amputee, Oscar Pistorius, who took the Laureus Disability Award.
Fifteen years before Cheruiyot was born, National Olympic Committee of Kenya chairman, Kipchoge Keino, an Olympic legend, had set Kenya firmly on the road to endless athletics glory when he won the 1,500 metres gold at the Mexico Olympics.And in 1983, the year when Kenya’s sportswoman of the year Cheruiyot was born, Czech star Martina Navratilova clinched the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open titles on her way to becoming the undisputed world number one player.