As expected, Tony McCoy won the prestigious BBC Sports personality of the Year Award with well over 40% of the votes cast. His crowning marked a personal triumph for him and for National Hunt horse racing, a sport not necessarily as well supported by the ‘Beeb’ as it possibly should be. It was also a triumph for the various campaigns that were launched to win McCoy the vote and for the media politics that went hand in hand with those campaigns; but is the award really valid?
There is no doubt that McCoy, who won his fifteenth champion jockey trophy this season as well as riding the winners of both Aintree Grand National and the Champion Hurdle, deserved an award of some description, his services to racing both in and out of the saddle are truly profound. He sets examples in professionalism that far outweighs the efforts of others in other sports and is a truly magnificent exponent of National Hunt riding. However, to win an award based purely on achievements made in the calendar year, then why should he win in 2010 and not all the preceding years that he has become champion jockey? What should happen for instance if he wins the jockey championship again next year, along with the Grand National, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Champion Hurdle and every other big race that takes place? Will he even get nominated?
That said, there is no taking anything away from the Ulsterman, sport by and large in Britain has not been at its highest level in 2010. The England soccer team had a miserable time of it in the World Cup and no single player from the any of the league’s excelled either in domestic or European competition. In Rugby Union, it was France that lifted the Six Nations and a French club who won the Heineken Cup, with no British player staking any particular claim for nomination for the BBC award. In tennis, Andy Murray, whilst up there with the best in the world has yet to win a Grand Slam event, although it is interesting to note that Greg Rusedski won this award in 1997 after reaching the final of the US Open. Interestingly, runner up in the BBC Award that year was none other than Tim Henman, who failed to reach any Grand Slam final and yet Murray has reached two already, the 2008 US Open and the Australian Open in 2010 but he has yet to be voted into the first three for this Sports Personality of the Year Award!
In cricket, England did win the 20/20 World Cup and bowler, Graeme Swann emerged during the year as the world’s best spinner. He at least was nominated but failed to make the first three, being beaten by Phil Taylor from the sporting world of darts, who was second and the lovely heptathlete, Jessica Ennis in third.
There were of course no Olympics this year, which rules out many of Britain’s finest athletes, and those from the more obscure sports such as rowing, eventing and Cycling, sports of course that have all spawned winners of the BBC top sports prize. Neither Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button could regain the Formula1 crown, which effectively kept them out the running, although it is noted that when Hamilton did win the world crown in the world’s fastest and probably most dangerous sport in 2008, he was beaten into second place by cyclist, Chris Hoy who just for good measure was also knighted!
All in all therefore it does look like McCoy has achieved more than any other sportsman or woman this year, although a thought should be spared for golfer, Graeme McDowell also from Northern Ireland who became the first Brit for 40 years to win the US Open golf championship. McDowell also won two other tour events in 2010 as well as sinking the winning Ryder Cup putt in October.
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