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news
BBC SPOTY trophy (picture credit BBC)Cyclists dominate BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist - but Tour champ Chris Froome is missing
Cyclists dominate the shortlist for this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award – but the red hot favourite is tennis star Andy Murray, who finishes a hugely successful 2016 as world number one.
Missing from the 16-name shortlist is Tour de France champion Chris Froome, with all four of the cyclists nominated winning gold in the Rio Olympic or Paralympic Games this summer.
Laura Kenny, who helped Team GB retain the team pursuit and also successfully defended her Omnium title, is seen by the bookies as the most likely rider to challenge for a top three spot.
Her husband Jason Kenny, who this summer joined Sir Chris Hoy as Great Britain’s most successful ever Olympian with six gold and one silver medal each, is the other member of the Team GB cycling squad to make the list.
> Book review - The Inside Track: Laura Trott and Jason Kenny
Paralympic GB’s cyclists also have two representatives – Kadeena Cox, who achieved the rare double of winning gold in two sports in Rio, taking the T38 400m on the athletics track and gold in the C4-5 para-cycling time trial, and Dame Sarah Storey who with three golds in Rio became Great Britain’s most successful Paralympian of the modern era. In Rio, she also took bronze behind Cox.
> Kadeena Cox wins track gold - just 24 hours after athletics bronze
Storey rode a Boardman bike in Rio, as did another nominee on the list – Alastair Brownlee, who won triathlon gold for the second Olympic Games in a row.
Along with Trott, Mo Farah, who retained his 5,000 and 10,000 metre titles in dramatic circumstances in Brazil, is seen as most likely to challenge Murray.
However the tennis player, another back-to-back Olympic champion and who also won Wimbledon for the second time is a red-hot favourite to win Sports Personality for an unprecedented third time, after topping the list in 2013 and 2015.
Other competitors from Rio appearing on the list are boxer Nicola Adams, equestrians Sophie Christiansen and Nick Skelton, swimmer Adam Peaty, Team GB hockey captain Kate Richardson-Walsh and the gymnast, Max Whitlock.
Away from the Olympics and Paralympics, the list is rounded off by footballers Gareth Bale and Jamie Vardy, plus golf’s US Masters champion, Danny Willett.
On the last two occasions Sports Personality of the Year fell in a summer Olympics year, the award went to a cyclist – Hoy after he won three gold medals at Beijing in 2008, and Sir Bradley Wiggins, winner of the Tour de France and the time trial at London 2012.
The only other cyclists to have won the award is Tom Simpson in 1965 and Mark Cavendish in 2011, the years in which each won the road world championships.
Despite a third Tour de France victory in four years, and bronze in the time trial at Rio, there’s no place on the shortlist for Froome. Last year, after winning his second yellow jersey, he placed seventh with 3.86 per cent of the vote.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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23 comments
I cannot conceive of anything that matters less than SPOTY. It baffles me why anyone thinks sportspeople need an extra reward for having won in the past year, when winning is its own reward, they get shiny trinkets and crowds of people worshipping them on the day of their victories, and since professionalization they are handsomely paid as well. Yet this time of year is packed with award ceremonies for sportspeople, in every country whose inhabitants aren't starving to death, and quite possibly some where they are. But then, that is the species we are: reward winners for being winners, denigrate losers for being losers, ignore everyone in between.
Froome has no personality, Murray has no personality.
More people watch Wimbleton than the tour in the UK.
End of rationale.
I like Chris Froome, but he isn't British, and doesn't have a personality.
I love watching Murray play tennis and I admire his skill and dedication but I do stop watching once the game is over. His post match interviews are not riveting TV.
Murray would be my choice for SPOTY.
Overseas personality?.... Froomey 100%
Murray all the way.
Never mind his magnificent tennis achievements, his interviews are a class apart!
If they keep having him back on Mock the Week; comedians know he is funny and a good sport. He is very dry. You're right, cyclists will split the vote, but why not Murray? It is possible to ride a bike and pick a bat from time to time, don't be parochial.
Surely Ali Brownlee stands a chance? The winner should have at least retained Rio gold to be considered (tick). He has never won it before, is from Yorkshire (local vote) and then the clip of him picking Jonny up to cross the finish line went viral... (raising his profile). That is before you get to how dominant he was in the Rio race and how dominant he is in his sport. Also has a claim to World #1 like Murray.
Tenous cycling link I know, but he gets my vote.
Four cyclists on the list to split the vote and one tennis player
I guess Andy Murray can start writing his speech now . . . . .
TdF isn't on the BBC, so doesn't count as far as the BBC sports personality of the year goes. Also, he's not seen as properly British by a lot of the populace - bit like Zola Budd back in the day. Add to that he seems a bit distant. That's probably why. Not that any of that really should matter.
How many interviews he has to give at the end of each match. Imagine you've being knocking your pan in for two hours plus, but you have a line of people to speak to. Come on the first brit to reach the rank of the world's best. Yes I'm Scottish.
Andy Murray, Mo Farrah and Chris Froome are the three top british sportsmen/women in my view with AM head and shoulders the top one. So if you give it to the top performer you might as well give it to Andy Murray for the next five years.
if you believe in spreading the title around then you should give it to the one who cannot win it in any other than an olympic year which is Mo Farrah. This might be his last chance and for him not to have won it at least once would be unforgivable.
Chris Froome should have won it last year but Andy Murray won the Davis cup at exactly the right moment to influence the voters.
Chris Froome's other problem is that the cyclist vote, as well as being fairly small, is split with Wiggins Cavendish and others. Up until now tennis has been a one man show and let's face it, he is a bit special. I can't think of any greater sporstsperson in our history, and that from a man who went to school with Sir Ian Botham.
I'm not knocking what he has achieved, but I personally can think of a few. But it is very subjective and the fact that I'm not a tennis fan probably sways my opinion.
I would definitely put Redgrave, Hoy & Thompson ahead, to name a few.
Really shows how subjective this is, but I strongly disagree, for the main reason you've implied: Murray's major claim is that he's knocked the actual best in the world off the official perch (temporarily?).
Compare that with genuine dominance from plenty of other Brits: Wiggins and Hoy within cycling, even, Joe Calzaghe, Daley Thompson, Steve Redgrave... and, even in this list, Brownlee arguably but step forward Mo Farah: 5K and 10K reigning double-double champion at Olympics AND Worlds. I don't know how many doubles that totals up to, but it's Bolt-like dominance of two very competitive distances.
Murray will win though. Wimbledon, innit.
Exactly. Every sports fan in the world will know who won Wimbledon this year. A lot of them will not be able to name the winner of the Tour de France or the 10,000m. Mo Farah didn't win athletics, Joe Calzaghe didn't win boxing, Steve Redgrave didn't win rowing. they all won a particular discipline within their sports.
I'm not saying they are not equally as hard to achieve but they don't have the same impact.
The Wimbledon title is one of the great prizes in sport and for the last 50 years has included great financial rewards but in 70 years we never came close to the mens prize we have won numerous atletics, boxing, horsey and watery titles.
For that same reason I believe Chris Froome is overdue a win but just not this year.
his only "major" claim,are you serious ? he appeared in 3 out 4 Grand Slam finals this year, won one of them, won Olympic Gold, won the ATP tour final, has only lost 9 matches all year and is world ranked #1, theres not been a Britsh tennis player had that kind of year since Fred Perry. Froome would have been on my shortlist but would have been unlikely to win. Murray is the stand out achiever this year by far.
Am I serious about 'only'? No, I never said 'only'. You did. You misread my post, even though it is on this page, and also in the words that you quoted. Are you serious?
With all those achievements you listed, it is my opinion that Murray's biggest one this year was to overcome Djokovic, who's looked like the Federer or Sampras of his day for the past few years - that's how good his season has been. But I'd still bet on Djokovic returning to the top of the tree next year, and my point is that there've been Brits who have dominated their events and sports, whereas I'd still have Murray's in his rival's shadow... for now...
Thought Cav might have made the list too, succesfull madison year with Wiggins including been World champions, completely writing his doubters off at the TDF with some great wins and of course his medal at the olympics.
An exceptional year in my eyes worthy of making the list.
As is Rachel Atherton (yes I know this is a road cycling website but still)
Unless you're into downhill or Red Bull channels then she's probably under the radar, despite being incredibly good at what she does. She'll get the 3 second highlights of the year slot.
As for Froome....I guess he'd have had to double up with the Vuelta or win gold to stand any chance this year. Always a hard choice when it's an Olympics year.
I hope Murray doesn't win it though as he's as exciting as something that's not exciting.
Couldn't agree more. I have a dread of them playing interviews with him on the radio when I'm driving in case I nod off and plough into into the central reservation in a ball of flames
.
... Which would surely be a sweet release, in the face of a Murray interview.
No?
Rather like Froome really. Unfortunately tennis has a bigger pull on the public. Its a funny old world.
I'd agree about Cav . Pipping Sagan would probably have done it for him.