Badminton player Lin Dan and Winter Olympic champion Wang Meng won the best male and female Athlete of the Year honors at the 2010 CCTV (China Central Television) sports personality awarding ceremony here on Sunday.
The annual CCTV Sports Awards, recognized as the Chinese version of the Laureus World Sports Awards, is taken as the premier honors on the Chinese sporting calendar.
All of the titles came from the votes cast by 120 sports specialists.
Wang Meng, China's speed-skating winter Olympic champion expresses gratitudes after being awarded the Best Female Athlete of 2010 CCTV (China Central Television) Sports Elites of the year in Beijing, China, Jan. 16, 2011.
Lin Dan beat out other four nominees, including Chinese superstar hurdler Liu Xiang, gymnast Chen Yibing, to claim the honor of the Best Male Athlete.
The 27-year-old Lin, also called "Super Dan", took home two Asiad golds in Guangzhou, finishing his season as the first badminton player in the world to have swept all the major international badminton titles.
As Lin was absent from the awarding ceremony in preparing for the upcoming Malaysia Open, his coach Li Yongbo received the award instead.
"It is the first sports personality award in 10 years for our badminton team. I believe that the one standing on the top podium of the London Olympics will still be Lin," said Li.
Wang Meng won the Best Female of the Year award ahead of her teammate Zhou Yang, tennis player Li Na, table tennis player Guo Yan and swimmer Zhao Jing.
The 25-year-old skater collected three golds at the Vancouver Winter OLympics, leading the Chinese team to win all the four golds from the women's short track speed-skating events. She was the first Chinese athlete to successfully defend a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
Figure skating champion of the Vancouver Winter Olympics Shen Xue/Zhao Hongbo became the repeat winner of the Best Pair award. The comeback star couple won China's first ever Olympic figure skating gold medal in Vancouver.
Li Yan, coach of Wang Meng, was named the Best Coach of the Year after leading the women figure skating team to manage the gold-sweep feat at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.
The honors also gave more attention to teams with breakthrough at big international sports events, seeing China's speed-skating team outweigh the dream teams of badminton and table tennis for the Best Team award.
China's figure-skating winter Olympic champions Shen Xue (R) and Zhao Hongbo express gratitudes after being awarded Best Pairs of 2010 CCTV (China Central Television) Sports Elites of the year in Beijing, China, Jan. 16, 2011.
The Rookie of the Year was awarded to 19-year-old swimmer Sun Yang, who grabbed two gold medals and two silver medals at the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games. He bettered the Asian record in the men's 1,500m freestyle by more than 10 seconds, setting the world's best result of the year 2010.
The Best non-Olympic Athlete award went to Hou Yifan, the youngest female world chess champion in the history.
The 16-year-old Hou won the women's chess World Championship in Turkey in December and China's first chess gold at the Guangzhou Asiad.