Forget the Spectator Parliamentarian Awards, or the Oscars for that matter, it’s the annual Spectator Sports Awards that count. Indeed in Hollywood, the Oscars are known as the Spectator Sports Awards of the film industry. Our judges have been busier than Rachel Uchitel’s lawyers sorting out our shortlists, and now finally a roster of winners has emerged, representing the best and the brightest of this remarkable sporting year.
First up is a new category, the Plaxico Burress Award for Shooting Yourself in the Foot, named after the New York Giants wide receiver who took a gun into a Manhattan nightclub and accidentally put a bullet into his own leg: there were two hugely deserving candidates here. First, Nelson Piquet Jr, who deliberately crashed his car in a Formula 1 race last year and has been virtually unemployable ever since; but he was acting under orders from Flavio Briatore and so was ruled out. In the end there was no doubt about our winner: it was what the judges described as a ‘Black Swan event so random as to have proved unpredictable for even the most skilful Chennai betting ring’. The winner is the 11-year-old Liverpool fan whose giant beach ball escaped on to the pitch and helped deflect Darren Bent’s shot past goalkeeper Pepe Reina to give Sunderland a 1-0 win. Unfortunately Burress can’t present the award as he is in the slammer.
And so we move to the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Road Safety. We should not allow this year’s prize to be overshadowed by Briatore, who added a whole new level of excitement and intrigue to the Singapore Grand Prix. Though the news broke this year, the crash happened in 2008, and the former Renault boss and renowned bikini enthusiast is ineligible for this year’s award. That leaves just one possible winner: Elin Nordegren. Her husband Tiger Woods can be forever grateful that, after she found out the intensely private golfer had been playing off the wrong tee, Ms Nordegren happened to have a golf club to hand, allowing her to break a rear window of the car to rescue her husband after he carelessly drove into a tree, rather than using the driver’s door, which appeared to be undamaged. It is one of those instinctive rescues that quite literally defy explanation.
Woods himself will present our next gong, the Mumsnet Family Values Award. Mirka and Roger Federer proved that it only takes love, a full-time nanny, several hundred million Swiss francs and a private jet for the modern sporting couple to take family life in their stride. Wigan striker and repeatedly self-proclaimed millionaire Marlon King didn’t handle family affairs quite so well. When the father of three was told by his wife that he would soon be a father of four, he headed to a Soho bar, as you do, and groped and insulted a nearby 20-year-old girl before breaking her nose, splitting her lip and leaving her with a black eye. But the prize goes to John Terry’s dad Ted, for always bearing his son in mind no matter what else may be going on. In November, Ted had the presence of mind, while selling a News of the World reporter three grams of cocaine, to insist: ‘This is just between you and me — don’t tell them I’m John Terry’s dad.’ Mum’s the word, then, Ted.
On to the Gary Neville Peace on the Terraces Award, which goes to Emmanuel Adebayor. His sprint the length of the pitch at Eastlands to celebrate in front of the visiting Arsenal fans was the second most impressive 100m of the year, narrowly pipped by Usain Bolt’s 9.58-sec effort at the World Championships. Bolt himself was narrowly pipped to his own signature celebration, as Berlino, the event mascot, managed to lead the world’s fastest man in pointing to the world record time on the stadium clock and thereby appearing in every picture commemorating Bolt’s big moment. Berlino didn’t manage to sneak in and take the medal, however, so it’s only fitting that he takes home the Phil Brown Award for Modesty, a prize that puts on a pedestal those who usually retreat from the limelight.
The Warwickshire CC Medal for Drug Use goes this year not to a cricketer, for once, but to a tennis player, the legendary Andre Agassi, who confessed to widespread consumption of the drug crystal meth in the late 1990s, which in his case led to a frenzy of housework. When he failed a drug test, he said his drinks had been spiked by his flatmate, a slightly unimaginative excuse. So a special commendation to his fellow tennis star, France’s Richard Gasquet who, when testing positive for cocaine, said he had picked it up after kissing a dancer in a New York nightclub. Of course.
Finally, of course, we come to the blue riband award, the Diego Maradona Prize for Sportsmanship. An incredibly hard-fought category this year with strong performances from all corners of the sporting world. Honourable mentions first to Serena Williams, who overcame her natural shyness at the US Open to take the time to clear up beyond reasonable doubt whether the line judge, a diminutive Chinese American, wanted ‘the f—ing ball rammed down her f—ing throat’, or words to that effect. And of course to Thierry Henry, who took his life in his hands, so to speak, and ran the gauntlet of thousands of French fans celebrating their team’s qualification for the World Cup to reach the centre circle in Paris and console Ireland’s Richard Dunn with the hand of friendship. Well played, Thierry.
And who can forget Quins’ winger Tom Williams’s ‘wink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ moment of inspiration as he munched on a capsule of fake blood and sent several previously illustrious rugby careers on to the scrapheap, while securing his own return before the year was out. However, the shock winner here has to be the man who in 1986 gave his name to this prestigious prize, Maradona himself, the Argentina manager, who has secured himself a three-month ban from all football in the run-up to the World Cup for telling the representatives of the world’s media to ‘suck on this, and keep sucking’.
Roger Alton is editor of the Independent.
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