Sports Personality of the Year

The BBC awards the Sports Personality of the Year award tonight, an award which weighs up a year’s sporting achievements, and judges one of them the greatest of the lot. As a result, it is probably best viewed as due recognition to whoever wins it, but not a rejection on those who don’t. Far too much is achieved by too many sportspeople in a year to say that one is necessarily greater, and there is a natural bias towards participants in individual sports, as they are not reliant on a teammate. However, so long as one does not take the outcome too seriously, it is a good conversation point, and a welcome celebration of British sport.

2007 winner, Joe Calzaghe

What has slightly detracted from the evening for me in recent years is that the award used to be the climax of a programme entitled “The Sports Review of the Year”, which did exactly what the title suggested, reviewing the year’s events and handing out the award at the end. In the last ten years though, the entire programme has been focused on the award, and has been renamed “Sport Personality of the Year”. In the age of celebrity, it is clearly not enough that the award is the climax of the evening, and the one point guaranteed to be discussed the next day, it now has to have top billing as well, just in case the public forgets. The award has over 50 years of prestige, and has been won by some of the biggest names in sport, and this not so subtle shift in focus seems a little tacky, a little desperate. Perhaps that’s just my reaction, but let me know what you think.

2008 winner Chris Hoy, and runner-up Lewis Hamilton

On the plus side, the innovation in recent years of allowing the public in, and taking the show on the road has been a great idea, and has done far more to engage the public than any amount of rebranding.

Ultimately, this is still a prestigious award, and one of the more distinctive and iconic trophies in sport, and as I mentioned previously, how nice to see something that celebrates the positives in British sport, amongst all the hysteria and sniping that goes on the rest of the year.