| |
NOMINEE |
THE SKINNY |
| Overrated |
Anna Kournikova |
Another year passes without a single tournament title for the overpaid, overpublicized tennis vixen. |
| Underrated |
U.S. Olympic volleyball team |
The callow team arrived in Sydney with the meager goal of just avoiding embarrassment but instead ended up beating China in pool play and making it to the bronze-medal match. |
| Annoying |
Richard Williams |
Venus and Serena's dad ended another year of bizarre and unseemly acts by declaring that his daughters deserve "appearance fees" for their part in drawing crowds to tournaments. |
| Breakthrough |
Lorie Kane |
After four and a half years and nine second-place finishes, the 35-year-old Canadian finally won her first LPGA title at the Michelob Light Classic in August and then went on a tear, winning two more events before season's end. |
| Uplifting |
Fatima Gerashi |
By plunging into the water for Heat 1 of the women's 50-meter freestyle in Sydney, the 12-year-old Bahraini became the first female athlete from an Arabian Gulf country to compete in an Olympic Games. |
| MVP |
Venus Williams |
After taking a six-month sabbatical from tennis, she returned to the game afire, capturing Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the women's singles and doubles Olympic gold medals, all the while putting up a 35-match winning streak. |
| Storyline to follow in 2001 |
The survival of the Women's United Soccer Association |
The league has a lot of the world's best players signed up and has big TV forces like Time Warner Cable and Comcast behind it. But will that be enough to keep it afloat in a professional sports marketplace that has been, historically speaking, cruel to start-up leagues, particularly those involving women? |
