Sprawling, cheesy, gimmicky, full of toe-curlingly embarrassing interviews — but still the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, dammit, lifts the spirits in a way few other events in the sporting calendar manage. Sunday night. Pull up a chair. Grab a drink. It only needs that theme tune to strike up for me to break out in goosebumps.
What is it about the old SPOTY? Well, there’s the dramatically lit auditorium full to bursting with the sporting great and good, all in their finery, this time up in Sheffield. It’s also something to do with the link to a halcyon BBC past, when Peter Dimmock did his establishment thing in front of the mic and even some of the athletes — men like Christopher Chataway, first ever winner in 1954 — looked as if they were just having a bit of fun before entering the upper echelons of government.
These days you can virtually buy the League title, but you’ll never be able to buy the public affection that is the only thing that’ll get you the BBC award. The winners have all stood there — from Tom Simpson to Princess Anne, from David Steele to David Beckham — knowing that, whatever the purists think, they’ve won a place in people’s hearts.
I like a year like this one when there hasn’t been an Olympics or World Cup. People outside the big sports tend to get more of a look-in. Of course Jenson Button is odds-on to win, partly because it would right the perceived wrong of Lewis Hamilton missing out last year, partly because he’s a likeable bloke, but mainly I suspect because Formula 1 was back on the BBC this year. I still wonder about a sport in which Button can come from nowhere and Hamilton can go so far backwards in the space of a few months when their abilities can’t have changed that much, but let’s not rain on anyone’s starting grid.
There were slight issues around last year’s award going to triple-Olympic-gold-medal-winning bike man Chris Hoy. Fine fellow and all that, with a lovely mother, but I didn’t like the way the ‘cycling community’ was mobilised to block-vote for him when he wasn’t even the worthiest two-wheeler on the list. That accolade was truly Nicole Cooke’s. And anyway, if it was all about the Olympics, then Mansfield’s shoe queen and maid of the pool Rebecca Adlington was worthier than both.
There’s another cyclist this time around — that beast of the bunch finish Mark Cavendish, who followed up his four stage wins in the 2008 Tour de France with an incredible six this year. But cyclists two years running? We may all have gone green but it ain’t going to happen. More likely we’ll go evergreen and big up Ryan Giggs, a shining rebuke to those who sneer at the might and methods of Manchester United, and an embodiment of a golden age that stretches right back to the early 1990s. The complete pro and an exceptional talent. Football a tawdry game? Not when Giggs is around.
The winner should be Andrew Strauss, but it seems we’ve almost forgotten that we regained the Ashes this year — that shadow of 2005 stretches very long — and the cause of our best skipper for ages isn’t helped by his deeds being confined to Sky. Andy Murray? He’s got to win a Grand Slam first. Super-athlete Jessica Ennis? Well, she’s lovely, funny, charming and looks quite stunning in a pair of shorts, but I bet you don’t know quite what her best events are. I had to look it up — she’s great at running, less so at chucking. But if the BBC doesn’t fill the screen as often as possible with this gorgeous heptathlete, then you can call me Sea The Stars. Now that’s who really is the Sports Personality of the Year.
Roger Alton is editor of the Independent.
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