Stuart Bathgate: Hoy more than fits bill for the personality award

THIS is not a foregone conclusion. Lewis Hamilton is a strong favourite to be named BBC Sports Personality of the Year on Sunday week, but if the award is really decided, as we are assured it is, by popular vote, Chris Hoy still has every chance.

Hamilton, Hoy and Rebecca Adlington are the three front-runners from the short list of ten which was announced by the BBC on Monday. Seven of the ten, Hoy and Adlington among them, won gold at the Olympic Games in Beijing; Hamilton became the youngest ever Formula 1 world champion; Andy Murray rose to No 4 in the world tennis rankings; and Joe Calzaghe, last year's winner, extended his record in the ring to 46 victories and no defeats.

Calzaghe's triumph last year was a good illustration of how everything may be in the melting pot until the last minute. Hamilton, who had been unable to clinch the world title in the last Grand Prix of the season, was again the frontrunner, with boxer Ricky Hatton also attracting strong support.

Had Hatton beaten Floyd Mayweather the night before the programme, he might just have clinched the award. But the Mancunian's defeat meant that, of the leading three, only Calzaghe had won a major title, and that appeared to make the difference.

There are no lucky losers this year, with the possible exception of Andy Murray, who won five ATP titles but lost the match that mattered most, the US Open final against Roger Federer. Murray will be in Grand Slam finals again, and if and when he wins one he will be a strong contender for the year-ending BBC award. This year, though, he will do no more than make up the numbers.

So, too, will Hoy's cycling team-mates Nicole Cooke, Rebecca Romero and Bradley Wiggins. A campaign within the cycling community for a unified Hoy vote has received a lot of support, and as a result those three will be marginalised in the final tally.

Calzaghe has held on to his world title, and Ohuruogu confirmed her status as the most competitive 400-metre runner on the circuit, adding Olympic gold to her world crown of 2007. Both are undeniably world-class competitors, but in the public imagination neither has matched the impact made by the achievements of the top three contenders.

And, no matter the title of the award, and the jibes about the dullness of various winners going back as far as Nigel Mansell's first win in 1986, it is decided on achievement, not on any notion of who is the biggest or brightest personality.

"I take the award as being for the sportsman or woman of the year, and personality is just a neater way of saying that," Roger Mosey, the director of BBC Sport, said on the company's website recently. "That's what it's been called since 1954."

A mass vote does not produce an objective verdict, but by and large down the decades the title has gone to someone who has enjoyed substantial success in their chosen sport. Of course, factors such as popularity and public image come into it, but there has rarely if ever been a case where the winner seemed wholly undeserving.

Zara Phillips, for example, won in 2006 thanks in part to a deferential, pro-royal vote, but she did at least become the three-day eventing world champion that year. Golfer Darren Clarke and gymnast Beth Tweddle, second and third respectively, could not claim they had done anything more worthy of viewers' votes.

From this distance, however, the early years do contain some baffling results. In 1963, for instance, Jim Clark won his first Formula 1 world title – becoming, like Hamilton this year, the youngest world champion to date – but he only finished third behind his fellow-Scot Bobby McGregor and the winner, Dorothy Hyman.

A sprinter from Yorkshire, Hyman had won Commonwealth Games and European Championship gold, as well as silver at the Rome Olympics. But none of those titles was won in 1963, meaning her award, at the very least, lacked topicality.

The probable explanation for it is that, since year one, when Chris Chataway pipped Roger Bannister, athletics has had far and away the most victories. Track and field has 17 winners, with Formula 1 and boxing some way behind on six and five.

Of course, athletics is one of the sports with which the BBC is most closely associated, but then so is rugby union, which has only produced one winner – Jonny Wilkinson in 2003. And, while Formula One will be back on the BBC next season, Mosey insisted no preference would be given to Hamilton because of that.

"We have no bias ourselves towards F1 because of regaining the rights," he said. "It's the public who choose the winner."

A section of the public have adopted Adlington, who won two swimming golds in Beijing, as the stop-Hamilton candidate. She is down to earth, and unlike the driver she still lives in this country, so has a girl-next- door appeal for much of middle England.

But does her achievement really outstrip that of Hoy? Certainly not. The Scot won one more gold medal, and showed greater versatility within his sport, adding sprint and keirin titles to the kilo gold he had won in Athens four years earlier.

What is more, if we are to take personalities into account, Hoy is just as down to earth and approachable as Adlington. His ability to keep his feet on the ground was illustrated when, in response to a question which asked how Chris Hoy assessed Chris Hoy, he gave one of the quotes of the Olympics.

"When Chris Hoy starts talking about Chris Hoy in the third person, that's when Chris Hoy disappears up his own arse," he said.

Hoy is not about to disappear anywhere. He will be in Liverpool for the awards ceremony, and he deserves to end the evening by being named Sports Personality of the Year 2008.

• CHRIS HOY

Odds: 5/1

Gold in the team sprint, individual sprint and the keirin earned Hoy the title of most successful Scottish Olympian ever. Also became only the second Briton ever to win three gold medals in one games.

CHRISTINE OHURUOGU

Odds: 150/1

The 400m runner added the Olympic title to the world championship she had won a year earlier. It was the only gold medal Britain won on the track, and the first ever Olympic 400m won by a British woman.

REBECCA ROMERO

Odds: 150/1

A rowing silver medallist in 2004, Romero took gold on the cycling track in Beijing, winning the individual pursuit, making her only the second woman ever to medal in two different Olympic sports.

• BEN AINSLIE

Odds: 100/1

Gold in the Finn class made it three Olympic titles in a row for the sailor, who also won silver in Atlanta at the age of 19. Last month, he was named World Sailor of the Year for a record third time.

NICOLE COOKE

Odds: 150/1

A perfectly-timed finish in the road race gave the Welsh woman cycling gold – Great Britain's first of the Beijing Olympics. Then added the world title to her achievements.

BRADLEY WIGGINS

Odds: 150/1

The cyclist won gold in both the individual and team pursuits in Beijing and in doing so became the first person to successfully defend their individual pursuit title at Olympic level.

• REBECCA ADLINGTON

Odds: 11/4

The teenager from Mansfield won gold in the 400m and 800m freestyle, becoming the most successful British swimmer at an Olympics in 100 years. Also broke the oldest world record in the 800m.

ANDY MURRAY

Odds: 50/1

The Scot reached his first Grand Slam final at the US Open, and is ranked fourth in the world. A brilliant fightback against Richard Gasquet at Wimbledon endeared him to the wider British public.

LEWIS HAMILTON

Odds: 1/2 fav

After just failing to win the Formula 1 world title last season, Hamilton got it right this time, pipping Felipe Massa to the championship on the final corner of the last Grand Prix of a dramatic season.

JOE CALZAGHE

Odds: 66/1

Last year's winner further enhanced his status as one of British boxing's greats by extending his unbeaten record to 46 fights with wins over Bernard Hopkins in April and Roy Jones Jr in November.

BACKGROUND

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year award was devised by the BBC producer Paul Fox in 1954, and continues to be one of the most prestigious all-sport awards in British sport.


Long-distance runner Christopher Chataway, who set a world record for the 5,000 metres, was the first winner. Swimmer Ian Black became the first Scot to pick up the trophy in 1958 after he collected gold medals in three events at the European Championships. At the age of 17, Black was, and remains, the youngest winner.

The only sportsmen to win the award twice are the boxer Henry Cooper and the Formula 1 drivers Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill.

In recent years, ten candidates for the award are determined by a vote taken among a range of newspapers and sports magazines.

Each selected publication, The Scotsman included, is asked to collate its own list of ten candidates, which are published on the BBC website. Each name counted as one vote towards the final shortlist.

A public vote by phone will decide the winner during the show on BBC 1, which is being broadcast on Sunday 14 December from the Liverpool Echo Arena.