Who wins laureus award for breakthrough of the year?

Britain’s Jenson Button is in pole position to be nominated for the 2010 Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year Award following his first Formula One World Championship victory, at the age of 30, after 169 Grand Prix starts.

The Laureus World Sports Awards, which recognise sporting achievement during the period January 1, 2009 - December 31, 2009, are recognised as the premier honours on the international sporting calendar.

The names of the six Nominees for the Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year Award, as voted by the Laureus Media Selection Panel, will be announced next month.

The eventual winners, chosen by the Laureus World Sports Academy, the ultimate sports jury made up of 46 of the greatest sportsmen and sportswomen of all time, will be unveiled during a televised Awards Ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, March 10, 2010.

Following the withdrawal of Honda at the end of 2008, Jenson Button was left without a drive until former Honda technical director Ross Brawn stepped in and engineered a management buyout of the team. Button then found himself in a highly competitive Mercedes-Benz powered car for the 2009 season. He won six of the first seven races of the year, equalling the record of Michael Schumacher and Jim Clark and clinched the World Championship at the Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo with a race to spare.

Argentina’s young prodigy Juan Martin del Potro, 21, beat Roger Federer, the dominant tennis player of the decade, in five sets at the US Open in September to win his first ever Grand Slam title. It was Federer’s first defeat at the US Open since 2003. On his way to the final, del Potro also beat Rafael Nadal in straight sets. An attacking baseline player with a powerful serve and an excellent forehand, del Potro also finished as runner-up to Nikolai Davydenko in the ATP Finals.

Among the other favourites for nomination are no fewer than six golfers, including two from Korea. Y.E.Yang, 37, produced one of the most amazing golfing moments of the year, giving World No 1 Tiger Woods a two shot start in the final round of the US PGA Championship at Hazeltine yet still beating him by three shots. It was the first time that Woods had failed to win a major championship after holding at least a share of the lead after 54 holes. It was also the first major win for an Asian male. Ji Yai Shin, 21, led the money list on the LPGA Tour in 2009 in her first full year with over US$1.8 million prize money, also winning the LPGA Rookie of the Year Award. Despite a slow start, she won the HSBC Women’s Championship, the Wegmans LPGA and the P&G Beauty event. Also on the LPGA Tour, Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist, 22, made a dramatic breakthrough in her first year with her first major championship win in just her fifth tournament – the 2009 LPGA Championship at Bulle Rock. Sh! e also won the LPGA Tour Championship to complete a remarkable rookie year.

American Lucas Glover, 30, had an indifferent 2008, in which he only had two top ten finishes on the US PGA Tour and was ranked 105 th on the money list at the end of the year, but he made a dramatic breakthrough in 2009, winning his first major championship, the US Open at Bethpage in New York by two strokes from Ricky Barnes, David Duvall and Phil Mickelson. He had not made the cut in his three previous US Opens and the win took him to 18 th in the world rankings.

Scotland’s Catriona Matthew won her first major championship, the Women’s British Open at Royal Lytham, in August 2009, at the age of 39, and just 11 weeks after she had given birth to her second daughter Sophie. Her victory made her the first player from Scotland to win a women's major championship.

At 16 years and 61 days, Italy’s Matteo Manassero finished 13th and became the youngest ever winner of the amateur silver medal at the British Open since it was introduced 60 years ago, and the youngest to compete in the tournament in the modern era. A few weeks earlier he had become the youngest winner of the British Amateur Championship in its 124-year history.

The World Athletics Championship in Berlin produced some strong contenders for Nomination. South Africa’s Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, from Limpopo, having reached the 800 metres final at four consecutive World Championships, finally made the breakthrough he wanted so much by winning the gold medal. Veteran javelin thrower Steffi Nerius, aged 37, who had never won a major world competition, finished her career in the most dramatic way possible, with a rousing victory in front of her home German crowd, taking the gold medal with a throw of 67.30 metres. And Poland’s Anna Rogowska claimed a huge upset victory in the pole vault when she took the gold medal and left Russia's world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva in tears. Isinbayeva had won gold at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics and 2005 and 2007 World Championships and was a hot favourite.

Recognised as the fastest cyclist in the world, Britain’s Mark Cavendish, 24, won six stages of the 2009 Tour de France – a record for a Briton. He became the first Briton to wear the green jersey for two days in a row. Also in 2009 he won the Milan–San Remo Classic, known as one of the ‘five monuments of cycling’ and the Sparkassen Giro Bochum.

The German Beach Volleyball Team of Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann became the first European team to win the World Volleyball Championship, winning eight straight matches in Stavanger to take the most prestigious beach volleyball event outside the Olympic Games.

In the 2009 World Diving Championships held in Rome, talented young Briton Tom Daley, aged 15, won the individual 10 metre platform gold medal. Daley, who started diving at seven, made his name at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 where he became the youngest competitor to participate in a final.

In the 2008/09 season under Felix Magath, the former Bayern Munich manager, VFL Wolfsburg, a relatively small club from Lower Saxony, broke into the big time by winning their first Bundesliga title. During the season, Wolfsburg equalled the longest winning streak in a Bundesliga season with ten successive victories after the winter break.

Laureus World Sports Academy Member and double Formula One World Champion Mika Hakkinen said: “Jenson Button thoroughly deserved to win the World Championship. He has certainly had to wait a long time for this, having taken part in 169 Grand Prix. And to do it in a revamped team which nearly went out of business in the winter makes it even more remarkable. His early season form when he won six out of the first seven Grand Prix was breathtaking. I hope he will be nominated by the world’s media, but this is a very strong category this year, so there will be strong competition to see who the Academy chooses as its eventual winner.”