The 2023 Princess of Asturias Awards will be presented on Friday. d’Encausse is among the winners in various categories. But the list highlights the absence of an award that seemed evident in the sports category, which is the Leo Messi Award. The Argentine star succeeded a year ago in Qatar in ratifying his personality as the best football player of all time, so it seemed clear that he would receive the Princess of Asturias Award. Obviously, Leo Messi’s absence does no harm to the recipient of the award, Eliud Kipchoge, a true athletics legend, who held the marathon world record until last month, when Kelvin Kiptum set it.
We shouldn’t forget that the awards were announced in May, so it looks like the women’s soccer team will be the winners of next year’s awards, in recognition of their outstanding performances at the Australian and New Zealand Football World Cups. In 2010, for example, the award went to the Spanish men’s team.
As announced on the official website of the Princess of Asturias Awards, the award in the Sports category is “dedicated to paths that, through the promotion, development and improvement of sports and through solidarity and commitment, have become an example of the possibilities that sport offers. Practice brings human benefit.” In addition to making history in Qatar and becoming the Biggest Sports Personality of the Year in 2023, Leo Messi leads an organization that does work of great importance.
For example, the Leo Messi Foundation promoted the creation of the SJD Children’s Cancer Center in Barcelona, at the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, the first specialized pediatric oncology center in Spain and the second in Europe. Therefore, the Argentine star more than meets the requirements of the award, but he has become forgotten.
Leo Messi is part of a large number of legendary athletes who still have not received the Princess of Asturias Award, which contradicts the fact that some have received it on two occasions, such as the Gasol brothers, Casillas or Xavi. Michael Jordan, for example, did not receive the award, nor did Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Mireya Belmont, and Gemma Mingwall, among many others.
In addition, the fact that Leo Messi did not go to receive the award cannot be an excuse for not awarding it to him. Firstly, because in May, when the award was decided, the Argentine had not yet signed with Inter Miami. Secondly, because winners like Martina Navratilova, Carl Lewis, Lance Armstrong or the Gasol brothers did not go to receive the award that day.
