Three Stars Award in Sport – Bookmakers Predict Last Year’s Leaders
Due to the global pandemic, most of the sporting events planned for this year have been cancelled, but despite this, Latvia’s outstanding athletes will once again be honoured at the end of this year, as has become traditional. The year 2020 marks a new turning point in the awarding of the industry’s laureates, with the previous ceremony being rebranded as the “Three Stars Award”. The event organisers promise that it is not only the award’s concept that has changed – the selection of laureates is also said to be more open, with new categories in which the public could also vote for their favourites this time. Who will win the title of Athlete of the Year and claim victory in the other categories will be announced at the end of December, but “Betsafe” bookmakers are already predicting the likely leaders.
The reputation of the annual sports award has previously been called into question several times, for example in light of Martins Dukurs being named Athlete of the Year six times over the past ten years. Last year, in particular, Martins’s triumph over the outstanding performance of handball player Dainis Krištopāns caused a major stir. Although Dukurs’s achievements are undoubtedly significant, opinions are divided over awarding him the title of Athlete of the Year, and Latvia has a number of other athletes who would have deserved this title. Of course, this criterion does not mean the same thing to everyone, which is why the main consideration in the bookmakers’ predictions is the support of the jury and the most active fans.
The laureates of the “Three Stars Award 2020” in 10 categories are selected in two rounds. In the first round, candidates could be nominated by a fairly broad range of participants – 94 Latvian sports federations and other sports administration institutions, as well as 30 sports journalists. After compiling the leading contenders, the jury committee put them through to the second round, when the public vote began. The laureates will be determined by three groups of voters – an online fan vote (50%), 30 sports journalists (25%) and 9 athletes (25%). However, the particular features of the online vote and the fact that the results were available throughout the entire voting period, up to and including 29 November, should be taken into account – this too may affect the final outcome.
“Among bookmakers, there is a prevailing view that, in the context of the Athlete of the Year title, it will finally be awarded to Mairis Briedis. In our opinion, this scenario is highly likely, and it would be a real surprise if Mairis were overlooked once again. Briedis is the undisputed world champion in the cruiserweight division, having recently won another outstanding boxing bout, and this is an exceptional achievement that can even be compared with the Latvian ice hockey team’s Olympic gold,” comments Valters Rozmanis, a forecasting expert at “Betsafe”.
By contrast, bookmakers assign a surprisingly low probability of receiving the award to Kristaps Porziņģis – Latvia’s most popular athlete worldwide, an NBA-level star who played in the playoffs for the first time in his career, but whose chances of taking the leading position are currently the lowest. Meanwhile, “Blue Jackets” goaltender Elvis Merzļikins, who played excellently at the beginning of the year and in the summer and was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team, ranked third in the experts’ predictions, while the chances of cyclist Toms Skujiņš, who has just completed the best season of his career, are rated slightly higher.
Promising Latvian national-team basketball player Dāvis Bertāns, although not nominated for Athlete of the Year, is nevertheless included among the nominees for the “Three Stars Award”, competing for the “Breakthrough in Sport of the Year” award. There, he is up against the aforementioned Merzļikins and young tennis talent Kārlis Ozoliņš. The hockey star, who moved from the Swiss league to the NHL, began the year from a lower starting point, making his breakthrough comparatively greater. Accordingly, bookmakers consider Merzļikins the clear leader in this category, predicting second and third place for Bertāns and Ozoliņš, respectively, with relatively similar results.
The situation is slightly different in the women’s competition, where the selection of the best athlete promises to be even more closely contested. This year, 20-year-old cross-country skier Patrīcija Eiduka is considered the favourite; in March, she finished fourth at the World Junior Championships. Her strongest competitors are biathlete Baiba Bendika, as well as Latvia’s leading tennis players Aļona Ostapenko and Anastasija Sevastova. Although they did not achieve major victories this year, their chances of claiming the title are not ruled out either.
Valters Rozmanis notes: “Interestingly, Mairis Briedis’s fight in the WBSS final, which was planned to take place in Riga but was held in Munich, has also found a place among the ‘Sports Events of the Year’. If foreign competitions involving Latvians can be included in this category, it seems somewhat odd that, for example, the NBA and NHL playoffs have not been nominated. Meanwhile, a noteworthy event in Latvia – the rounds of the Motocross World Championship in Ķegums – is unfortunately not among the favourites. Therefore, it must be emphasised once again that the laureates of the ‘Three Stars Award 2020’ are not always determined by how well they fit the award, but rather by the overall opinion of the voters.”
