Triple World and Olympic champion, Usain Bolt, was on Tuesday named Track and Field News' Male Athlete of the Year for the second year running.

The lanky sprinter from Trelawny also set records off the track, securing all 32 first-place votes, just as he did last year.

Before Bolt only two athletes had previously secured 100 per cent of the first-place votes in the Athlete of the Year Award; Kenya's distance running legend Henry Rono in 1978, and 400-metre world record holder Michael Johnson in 1996.

Bolt is the only athlete to do so two years in a row.

Long distance champion, Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia, finished second in the voting, capturing 26 second-place votes. Tyson Gay was third, while LeShawn Merritt was fourth.

Bolt followed up on his amazing year in Beijing in 2006 with even better individual performances in 2009. He was unbeaten on the track while running incredible times in atrocious weather.

The most memorable example of his prowess of running fast under all conditions was when he clocked an amazing 19.57 seconds over the 200 metres at the Brussells Grand Prix in cold, driving rain. He also ran a fast 9.81 seconds in the 100 metres, in less-than-ideal conditions in Zurich.

Smashing records

His best, however, was during the 12th IAAF World Athletic Cham-pionships in Berlin, Germany, in August when he shattered his own world record of 9.69 in the 100 metres, blazing his way to 9.58 ahead of Tyson Gay in 9.71 and Asafa Powell in 9.84.

He would return only days later to obliterate his own 200-metre record, scorching the track in 19.19 seconds - an astonishing .11 seconds faster than the 19.30 that he ran to break Michael Johnson's 12-year-old record of 19.32.

Jamaican-born 400-metre world champion, Sanya Richards, won the vote for Female Athlete of the Year, winning 16 first-place votes to finish ahead of Croatia's high jump star Blanca Vlasic and New Zealand's shot put world champion Valrie Villi.