Sports Personality of the Year

First topic message reminder :

On tv right now. I'm not even watching as the Spurs/Chelsea game looks quite tasty.

Can't help but feel that golf has been stitched up somewhat with 3 nominees that will split the golf vote. Any votes likely to go to golf will be for the sentimental aspect of DC's win at The Open, or young Rory because of his epic fail at ANGC followed by victory in the US Open

In reality Luke would be the only fair golf winner but that's never going to happen. Cavendish is hot favourite and TBH I can't see another winner when considering the general public voting patterns.

Andy Murray may get the Scottish vote but no one else - England Cricket will get the team award. Amir Khan could get a lot of votes from the Asian voting public

My picks would be Luke to win but he'll probably come last of the golfers, and Cavendish will win it

Farah achieved just as much as Cav or Luke. Cav never won the yellow jersey which is the ultimate accolade and Donald didn't win a major.
Farah didn't win an Olympics but won global gold and silver, unprecedented for a Brit male distance runner. Plus he was brilliant all season with European records.
He broke new ground on British athletics and IMO his achievements have been underplayed massively.
He'd have got my vote but Cav is a good winner and conspiracy theories are just boring.

super_realist wrote:Sorry SMithers, I think you are looking into it far too deeply and with far too much suspicion.

In reality there were only two people who ought to have been up there in terms of achievement.

They were Donald and Cavendish. However despite what you think, golf simply isn't that popular amongst anyone other than golfers, is seen as fuddy and duddy, boring and for fat rich men. WHich for many it is.

Is Cycling any more popular. Who really knows, but I think that people rate Cavdish's achievement as higher because it's a real athletic pursuit.
Donalds year, as superb as it was didn't have the elusive major, which is what they (and I stress they, and not golf fans) see as the real measure of success. Had Donald won a major. I think the result might have been different
McIlroy and Clarke of course one majors, but in their eyes that's all they did.

As for it being 49% of the vote, well I don't think you can compare two years because the sportsmen on offer change as do the sports. People might not vote in a year when people they like or don't like appear or not.

Would the French consider 6 stage wins and a World Sprint Championship as a better achievement than Hoy's 3 Track Golds. Undoubtedly they would, and it shows how little you know about Cycling in the global perspective if you don't see that.

Is Cycling any less popular than Cricket, Boxing or Athletics? I'm not so sure.
In any event, it's not about how popular Cycling is, it's about people acknowledging what he's done.

Yes, S_R but it wasn't the 'France Télévisions' Sports Personality of The Year Award was it! It's not the fact that Cavendish won: well done and good luck to him; it's the margin of victory that surprised me.

Competitive Cycling is a minority sport in the UK both in terms of participation, media coverage and sports that the general public show an interest in. Notwithstanding this, I am impressed how the cycling fraternity manged to woo such a landslide victory. In fact cycling now leads golf by 3 wins to 2 with golf being equal to that other 'notable' royal pastime - no not horse racing ...... Eventing.

By gum these grapes are sour - marvelous.

Diggers, To be fair to Cavendish, he never intended to go for the Yellow Jersey. That would be like Usain Bolt trying to win the 800 metres. Just never going to happen. He did however win a "major" in the World Sprint Championships.

Yads, I only mentioned the French because someone said they thought the French would consider Hoy's 3 Golds to be worth more than Cav's 2012. They wouldn't.

Horse racing is a minority sport (AP MCCoy), and he had already won Champion Jockey about 13 times before 2010.
Three Day eventing or whatever Zara Philips did is a minority sport. Track Cycling is a minority sport but Hoy won.
GIggs won 2 years ago, but had had one of his worst years of his career.
Rowing is a minority sport.

There have been awards in SPOTY which are a lot more dubious than Cavendish's win.
Margin of win is irrelevant, as you can't compare two years with one another. Sports represented/Individuals/Voters all change over time, especially when a Footballer isn't in the mix.

SPOTY is awarded to the sportsperson "whose actions have most captured the public's imagination"
The other 9 just didn't produce enough interest.

Voting numbers were massively down on last year. The show is undoubtedly going down hill, very wooden. contrived, terribly scripted and poorly presented, so perhaps the demographic of people watching it is changing. There are a thousand reasons as to why Cav got such a high % of the vote before you grasp at the straws of conspiracy.

super_realist wrote:

There have been awards in SPOTY which are a lot more dubious than Cavendish's win.
Margin of win is irrelevant, as you can't compare two years with one another. Sports represented/Individuals/Voters all change over time, especially when a Footballer isn't in the mix.

SPOTY is awarded to the sportsperson "whose actions have most captured the public's imagination"
The other 9 just didn't produce enough interest.

Can't disagree with the above S_R and I certainly don't decry Cavendishs' win; but surely even you must be surprised at the amount of 'public imagination' (as I alluded to in an earlier post) was captured.

Interestingly, I've read that the nominees each year are selected by a committee of the last six winners; I can't wait to see who'll be on the list next year

No,I wasn't really surprised, given that I don't have access to the previous 10 or so awards voting stats I don't really know the distribution of the votes were or what the pattern is.
The way the votes are cast has changed many times over the years, sometimes it's been open for weeks, others there's been online voting, others it's only been open during the show. A comparison would be a very difficult thing to normalise, so drawing a conclusion based on the figures of one year to the next when circumstances change is not all that clever, enlightening or a reliable comparison.
It may also have been a different viewership due to it being on Thursday instead of Sunday and due to Spurs/Chelsea being on.
Voting was dramatically downon 2010, so unless someone is a statistician and expert on demographics I don't think we can say that there is anything "unusual" in the voting distribution. It may well appear different, but as circumstances change from year to year in the sports showcased,the people up for award and when it's on no one can say with any certainty what a "normal" distribution ought to be from one year to the next, not unless you personally know everyone who voted.

I heard that nominees are made by a broad selection of Journo's/Editors, never heard anything about previous winners, though it may be true.

The curious thing is that it came to light in the "scandal " of no women finalists was that Editors of Nuts and Zoo were in there. Perhaps they clamoured their highly educated readership to vote for Cavendish in some grandiose vote rigging scam, after all, after tits and arse, cycling is their favourite thing.

Apologies, I misread...... in fact the 6 past winners decide in the event of tied nominees.

On checking I read that a panel of thirty sports journalists each submit a list of ten contenders. From these contenders a shortlist of ten nominees is determined—currently, in the event of a tie at the end of the nomination process, a panel of six former award winners determines the nominee by a Borda count. The shortlist is announced at the beginning of December, and the winner is determined on the night of the ceremony by a public telephone vote.

Not quite sure what sports the Editors of Nuts and Zoo are into though, although I would say that cycling is somewhat more revealing than golf for both sexes

Cav is clearly the best Sprinter SR, but sprinters aren't held in the same esteem as overall classification winners. To be honest the worlds isn't really that massive a deal in cycling either, more of a nice to have. To be honest the Milan San Remo is probably a bigger achievement on his CV.
Anyway my point isn't to downplay Cav or Luke but merely to say I think that Farah did at least as much as they did on terms of simple achievement.

I agree Diggers, also Dai Greene was also a fairly notable achievement, but Farah and Greene are in my opinion not as well known as Cavendish, so despite all three of them being World Champion the public votes perhaps subconsciously on who is the best known to them.

It's a bit like asking the general public to name a golfer. Most non golfers will probably pick Woods, who whilst being very well known, is no longer the best golfer in the world.
Cycling is also fairly trendy these days, and you can't have helped to notice how popular road bikes are these days. I think there is a general awareness of it's finest exponents. Not sure there is for Farah or Greene.

Greene did great but he kind of ran his best in one race, Farah dominated all season.
But yeah Cav captured the moment. At the end of the day it's a simple popularity contest...and I can't stand it.

I agree, for all that I've argued in it's defence these past few days I found it a very uncomfortable watch.

I couldn't understand why hasbeen Michael Owen was shown at least 10 times. What was he doing in the front row? Surely current sports stars in form should be at the forefront?

Jake Humphrey should have stuck to Blue Peter and the interviews, haka and clips were an utter embarassment.

It really has gone downhill and goes on for too long. The last one I really found an inspiration was Steve Redgrave in 2000. His speech was brilliant and there was no doubt he deserved it. I'd be surprised if he didn't poll well over 50%.

What I would think would improve it and separate individual performances from truly great years like Donald and Cavendish would be an award for "Performance of the Year", then you could add the likes of Clarke and McIlroy to that and leave the truly worthy contenders for the big prize.