Korean-American Olympic snowboard champion Chloe Kim is even more fancied in the Laureus Action Sportsperson of the Year Award.

The teenage gold medallist at the Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea last year is priced at $1.50 against Australian surfer Stephanie Gilmore and two more from Brazil: Maya Gabeira and Gabriel Medina.

Fellow Team USA snowboarder Shaun White and Austrian gold medal winner Anna Gasser also stand in between Kim and the award but she is heavy favourite with the oddsmakers.

Asia’s final hopes of winning an award at the star-studded event rest on the shoulders of Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat, Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu and US Tour Championship winning golfer Tiger Woods, who are all in the running for the Laureus World Comeback of the Year category.

Phogat is India’s first ever nominee but brings up the rear in the odds for a field headed by Dutch Paralympian and cancer survivor Bibian Mentel-Spee, priced at $1.50 to win.

Woods ($4.25) and Hanyu ($5) are second and third favourites respectively with US skier Lindsay Vonn and Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris also ahead of the wrestler at $17 to pull off a shock win.

Phogat, 24, got her nomination for battling back from injury to win gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Australia and the Asian Games in Indonesia last year. She dislocated her knee during the quarter-finals of the 2016 Olympic Games weightlifting in Rio.

Woods won a first ranking tournament for five years while Hanyu won his second Olympic gold after returning from a career threatening ligament injury, becoming the first man to win back to back figure skating titles in 66 years.

He did so on just three weeks of training before the Pyeongchang Games.

Critics had been vocal about the lack of non-European nominees on the shortlists when they were published in January but the bookmakers believe that despite the scarcity of Asian and African athletes across the board, there is still a strong chance that they will win the coveted awards.

There were many athletes that missed out in the voting process that asked members of the global sporting media to vote for their six choices from the original longlist of nominees.

These final six choices were then voted on by members of the Laureus Academy.

Japan’s table tennis prodigy Tomokazu Harimoto was among those in the early running for World Breakthrough of the Year alongside South Korean golfer Kim Sei-young, Indian sprinter Hima Das and the Korean United Canoe Team.

Indian cricketer Virat Kohli and China’s speed skater Wu Dajing were the only two Asians among the longlist for the World Sportsman of the Year award.

China’s rugby sevens team, India’s table tennis team and Japan’s MotoGP team were among the early runners for voters in the World Team of the Year award but none made the cut.

It was a similar story in the World Female Athlete of the Year where Chinese volleyball superstar Zhu Ting, Indian badminton ace PV Sindhu and Thai golfer Ariya Jutanugarn missed out on the shortlist.

In those main awards, US gymnast Simone Biles and Czech snow star Ester Ledecka are battling it out while Serbian tennis ace Novak Djokovic is expected to win the men’s title.

The France team that won the Fifa World Cup in Russia last summer are the favourites to lift the Team of the Year title.

China’s Xia Boyu is among the three nominees for Best Sporting Moment, a category that was not shortlisted by the judging panel.

The 69-year-old double amputee conquered Everest at his fifth attempt.