Twelve athletics legends inducted into IAAF Hall of Fame

Monaco, Nov 11, 2014: The IAAF is delighted to announce the names of the 12 athletes who will compose this year’s induction into the IAAF Hall of Fame.

Inaugurated in 2012 as part of the IAAF’s centenary celebrations, the IAAF Hall of Fame welcomed 24 athletes in its first year, followed by 12 more athletes in 2013.

For the first 24 inductees, there was a set of strict minimum criteria of at least two Olympic or world titles plus at least one world record. This criteria was altered for 2013 and beyond to allow athletes whose achievements had an ‘extraordinary impact on our sport’ to be considered as well. All members must have been retired from the sport for a minimum of 10 years.

To keep the process as independent and as transparent as possible, the athletes considered for each induction are proposed by the IAAF Hall of Fame selection panel which consists of five athletics historians, all long-standing members of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians (ATFS) including its president. The panel is chaired by IAAF senior vice president Bob Hersh, who has himself been a member of the ATFS for more than 35 years.

The athletes joining the IAAF Hall of Fame this year will be inducted live on stage during the 2014 World Athletics Gala in Monaco on Friday 21 November.

The inductees are:
Valeriy Brumel
Glenn Davis
Heike Drechsler
Hicham El Guerrouj
Marita Koch
Robert Korzeniowski
Janis Lusis
Bob Mathias
Wilma Rudolph
Shirley Strickland de la Hunty
Lasse Viren
Cornelius Warmerdam

The biographies for the 12 Hall of Fame members ‘class of 2014’ are now available in the IAAF Hall of Fame section of the IAAF website. —- IAAF