The real McHoy

Like many others, I was watching Sports Personality of the Year (or SPotY, as the BBC likes to abbreviate it to) on television last night.

It’s the sort of wonderfully quaint concept only the British could come up with, isn’t it? Not an award for outright achievement, but one for the nation’s favourite ‘sports personality’, whatever that means. If you asked a hundred people for their definition, you would probably get a hundred different answers, although I suspect many would say something along the lines of “the winner needs to be at or near the top of their sport, but we have to like them too”.

By that definition, several of the short-listed ten nominees were out of the running before they even started: Rebecca Romero, Olympic medallist in two different sports, is a hard-as-nails competitor who exudes little warmth; Christine Ohuruogu is tainted by her ban for missing three drugs tests and a correspondingly defensive PR image; Andy Murray is still seen by some as the stroppy teenager of a couple of years ago (and he didn’t turn up anyway, a guaranteed vote-loser); little is known about Ben Ainslie, brilliant yachtsman though he is, because he only surfaces in Olympic years and competes in probably the world’s least telegenic sport. Even Lewis Hamilton, recently crowned Formula 1 champion and the pre-show bookies’ favourite, is resented by some for his millionaire’s lifestyle and tax exile status.

Chris Hoy, however, ticked all the boxes - achievement, popularity and personality - living up to his nickname 'the real McHoy'. Already a gold medallist in Athens, he added three more in Beijing, putting him behind only Sir Steve Redgrave among British Olympians. He greets the world with a smile and a humbleness which endears him to the public, and he has not been afraid to speak his mind on issues close to him and his sport articulately and intelligently, which immediately sets him apart from the bland, repetitive, PR-friendly proclamations of so many of his fellow sports stars.

There was something satisfyingly right about Hoy winning. Here is a man undeniably at the top of his game, but also an all-around nice guy to boot, one who remains unspoilt by the trapping of fame. And, nothing against Lewis Hamilton, but it was gratifying to see the spotlight turned onto a sportsman who, despite being one of the ‘elite’ athletes supported by lottery money, earns considerably less in a year than Hamilton or, say, Michael Owen does in a week.

While there have been some decidedly weak years in the past where the SPotY winner was, frankly, the best of a poor bunch - Damon Hill in 1994, Greg Rusedski in 1997, Zara Phillips in 2006 to name but three – Hoy triumphed over not just the Formula 1 world champion, but a swathe of Olympic and Paralympic gold medallists (including cyclist Darren Kenny and swimmer David Roberts, who each won four Paralympic golds), an undefeated boxing world champion (Joe Calzaghe), and Mark Cavendish, who didn’t even make the final ten despite winning four stages in the Tour de France and being the dominant sprinter in stage races throughout the year.

Many of the other award winners on the night (judged by an expert panel rather than the public) were spot on as well. Ellie Simmonds, double Paralympic swimming gold medallist at the age of 13, won the Young Sports Personality award. Bobby Charlton received a Lifetime Achievement award. Usain Bolt, the megawatt-smiling Jamaican, won Overseas Sports Personality.

However, in a year of many great achievements, cycling deservedly dominated the proceedings, winning the accolades of Team of the Year, Coach of the Year (performance director Dave Brailsford), and, of course, the main SPotY award for Hoy.

It was a great advertisement for a relatively minor and yet easily accessible sport where Britain has always had good talent, but lacked the funding and professional organisation which turns good athletes who think they might win into great ones who know they will win.

All in all, it was a good night recapping a truly great sporting year in which Britain more than punched its weight.

However, I do have a few small gripes.

Nowadays, SPotY is a tightly-produced, polished and glitzy two hour affair, full of those little music-backed video montages which the BBC does so well.

But where has the fun gone? And where are the little insights the event used to give us into our sporting heroes?

I’m old enough to remember when BBC Sports Review (as it was then called) was just that: a comprehensive documentary review of the sporting year, as opposed to a sporting Oscars. As recently as the early 90s, the show still had an off-the-cuff, almost slightly amateurish feel about it, and it was no worse for that. There was always some silly stunt – Nigel Mansell competing on a driving arcade game, a celebrity penalty shootout – to provide light relief. (I’m sorry, but having James Toseland play the piano (last year) or Zac Purchase on his saxophone (this year) just doesn’t compare.) And, despite having a scheduled running time of at least 14 hours, it always – always – overran, largely because you felt everyone involved was just enjoying themselves too much, and nobody had the heart to stop the party. Sadly, no more.

And don’t get me started on those little 60 second soundbite interviews which serve no other purpose than to provide the full stop to a carefully prepared narrative which has already been related to the viewer via one of the aforementioned video montages. Do I feel I know anything more about Ohuruogu, Ainslie or Rebecca Adlington as a result of watching their interviews? No. I appreciate there isn’t the time for anything more than that these days, but what a shame that is, when we will not see many of these stars in such a high-profile arena again until London 2012.

Speaking of which, you could be forgiven at times during the programme for thinking that the 2008 sporting calendar consisted solely of the Olympics. Sure, there is a broader agenda here, starting the build-up to the 2012 Games, but it was, for me, another missed opportunity to promote British sport in its wider context. Take cycling. On top of their Olympic and Paralympic success, the British team dominated the track world championships in Manchester every bit as much as in Beijing, Mark Cavendish firmly established himself as the fastest man on two wheels at the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and other races, and, in September, Nicole Cooke completed a unique double of Olympic and world championship gold in the women’s road race. And yet each of these was barely mentioned in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dispatches. Again, a shame. Where was the rallying call for Joe Public to get on his bike, or to support the Tour of Britain or the many hundreds of club events that happen the length and breadth of the UK throughout the year?

One final footnote on Cooke. She now seems destined to be forever labelled as ‘the one who started the Beijing gold rush’, rather than being recognised as a serial winner whose CV includes not only Olympic and Commonwealth gold, but a world title and wins in the women’s equivalents of both the Tour de France (twice) and the Giro d’Italia. It’s not all about the Olympics, folks – even if Cooke had finished out of the medals at the Olympics, she would still be one of our most successful road cyclists ever.

However, these are pretty minor grumbles at the end of a great event at the end of a great year. And just think, I haven’t even touched on the epic Federer/Nadal Wimbledon final, or the all-English Champions League final, or the monsoon drama of the season-ending Brazilian GP, or the inhumanly brilliant Michael Phelps. (OK, Phelps isn’t British but, like Bolt, there are some transcending moments in sport where nationality really doesn’t matter.)

Here’s hoping 2009 is anywhere near as good.

(P.S. How long until the BBC go the whole hog and rebrand SPotY as the ‘Sportys’? You just know it’s going to happen one day …)