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Honorary Mentions: Vince Joyce, Ewan McCarthy.
As the only veteran in our poll we have already highlighted Vince, for his efforts at the World Masters in Canada, where he earned a Silver Medal.
Ewan McCarthy finally made it onto the British World Championships team after two years of being the “nearly man”. Once in Japan he ran an excellent WOC-debut, with a top 20 in the sprint and top 30 in the finals, an excellent set of results and experience to build on next year.

Winner:
In his own words, before this year he went to “lots of big competitions and never did very well”, code for being good at selection races and then not able to perform on the big day. This year something changed for him. It started in February when he won a Classic WRE in Portugal. A 3rd place at the JK got him into the World Cup team, where he made his first breakthrough, with a top 20 result in the Classic on Winterfold. Undoubtedly the low-point in his year will be not getting selected for WOC. Some said the selectors got it wrong, but he knew the truth: he messed up the selection races. However, he bounced back just weeks later with a top 15 result at the World Games. A few training camps later and he was ready for the World Cup Finals in Italy. With aims for another top 20 result he astonished himself with a 9th place in the middle distance, and then astonished everyone by taking a silver medal in the tricky sprint race.

Matt Crane, the NopeSport.com Forum Users Male of the Year.