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Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic was able to defeat Argentine Lionel Messi, the American soccer star for Inter Miami, in a special battle during 2023.
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Djokovic and American gymnast Simone Biles were chosen as the best athletes of 2023 by the French newspaper L’Equipe.
In 2023, the Serbian star will replace Lionel Messi, who won the Best Athlete of the Year award in 2022.
This is the second time, two years after the first, that Djokovic appears on the cover of the French newspaper on the occasion of the honor that began in 1975.
Novak has become close to Spaniard Rafael Nadal, who won this honor in 2010, 2013, 2017 and 2019.
In Biles’ case, she has already been named Female Athlete of the Year in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2023.
“I want to get better and better,” Novak said on the pages of L’Equipe at the end of a year marked by his seven titles, three of which were in the Grand Slam and the Masters.
In 2023, Djokovic beat French swimmer Leon Marchand by a wide margin in the L’Equipe vote, leaving Dutch driver Max Verstappen in third place.
Tennis comes at the top of the list for the third year in a row, as the winner in the last edition was Polish Iga Swiatek.
“I’m happy because I was a role model,” said Biles, who replaces Swiatek and was outvoted by Mikaela Shiffrin and swimmer Katie Ledecky.
She continued, “I have provided proof that our sport can rise to a higher level, and I have the impression that I have changed things.”
