IFMA congratulates the new IWGA Athletes of the Year from Acrobatic Gymnastics. And we also sincerely thank the world Muaythai community for all your votes and support for the fantastic Svetlana Vinnikova. The competition ended with a new voting record across all sports. Well done Marina Chernova and Georgii Pataraia from Russia and to the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG).

IWGA President Jose Perurena said: ““It has been amazing to follow how sports fans all over the world have continued to support their candidates from Day 1. It warms my heart to see fans from 25 different sports activated and voting for their candidate to the end. Whether one of the top three or somewhere below, the fans have shown their support and love for their sport.”

For Muaythai Svetlana ended the contest with 20,657 votes. This is a huge achievement as it’s the highest number of votes recorded for Muaythai in this contest. Congratulations to Svetlana who is a two-time world champion at 63.5kg and won gold at The World Games 2017.

Sadly we had had to contend with computer hackers who at one point added fake votes to the Muaythai vote. Thankfully this was spotted by the IWGA IT team and they reported to the IFMA head office on this. The IWGA team wrote: “We have discovered an internet bot voting for Muaythai. We have taken the decision to remove the votes cast by the bot and allow Svetlana to continue in the race with the real votes.”

However, this does not take away from Svetlana’s success.

IFMA general secretary Stephan Fox said: ” We absolutely congratulate the new Athletes of the Year. Well done to Marina and Georgii from the great sport of Acrobatic Gymnastics. We are very proud of Svetlana, she was a great ambassador for Muaythai during an exciting month.

“She dealt with any problems with a true champion’s composure. We look forward to seeing her defend her World Title at the 2019 World Championships to be held in Bangkok.”

Mr Fox who also made support videos for Svetlana added: ” I would like to personally thank every IFMA national federation which assisted in this vote. I saw support from all over the world, from many of our current and past Muaythai champions. It was a great month for Muaythai.”

Read more about the IWGA Athlete of the Year contest here.

Follow Muaythai champion Svetlana Vinnikova on Instagram: @svetlanni