AP
Asafa Powell is in line for Performance of the Year after setting a world record of 7.74 seconds in the 100 metres at the Rieti Grand Prix meet in Italy.

Anthony Foster, Freelance Writer

MONTE CARLO, Monaco:

HAVING NARROWLY missed out on being short-listed for his second straight IAAF Male Athlete of the Year, Jamaica's Asafa Powell looks set to walk away with the Performance of the Year title.

The World Athletics Gala, which will be hosted at the Salle des Etoiles of the Sporting Club d'Eté, today, could see Powell, who ran 9.74 seconds to break his own world 100m record of 9.77 seconds, taking the Performance of the Year title for the run which came a week after the World Championships.

Eritrea's reigning World Cross Country champion Zersenay Tadese, who scored the biggest upset of the year by dethroning Kenenisa Bekele at the World Cross Country Championships and winning by 23 seconds; American Jeremy Wariner who ran 43.45 to win the World title by more than half a second with a time bettered only by two men in history, are the other male athletes listed alongside Powell.

Russian Yelena Isinbayeva, who leapt 4.93m for her 20th pole vault world record and ultimately five centimetres higher than any other woman in 2007; Janeth Jepkosgei of Kenya, who ran 1: 56.04 to win the 800m in Osaka, and Blanka Vlasic of Croatia, who cleared 2.07m in the high jump in August - to equal to the third-highest jump ever outdoors, are the female nominees for Performance of the Year.

Chinese hurdles champion

Chinese most successful athlete, World and Olympic sprint hurdles champion, Liu Xiang, who has fallen sick and will not be able to travel to Monaco, American Tyson Gay, who won the World Championships sprint double, and Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie , who broke the marathon world record, are the three short-listed for the men's top prize, Male Athlete of the Year.

In the running for the women's top award, are Meseret Defar of Ethiopia, Carolina KlŸft of Sweden and Vlasic.

Several world-class athletes from the past and the present will converge on the Salle des Etoiles in the principality to celebrate yet another great year of athletics.