Without a shadow of a doubt, the 2012 shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year is the strongest ever seen. Bradley Wiggins, Andy Murray, Mo Farah, Jess Ennis, Ben Ainslie would all be shoe-ins as winner for most years of the past two decades; add to those five Hoy, Grainger, Rutherford (not even nominated this year despite a coveted track and field gold), McIlroy, Storey, Adams and Weir, and you've got an absolutely outstanding list.
Consider this: in 1997 Greg Rusedski won SPOTY for reaching the US Open final; Andy Murray may yet come fourth even though he won the US Open (against a far stronger field than the class of '97), and won Olympic Gold and Silver, and reached the Wimbledon final. In 2010, Tony McCoy won and Phil "The Power" Taylor came second; in 2009 Ryan Giggs won presumably for the reason that he was quite old and received it as some sort of Lifetime Achievement award. Neither would be in with a chance this year.
This got me thinking. What would be a top 10 from the years 2000-2012 be? First of all we need some rules. Since SPOTY is awarded on the basis of a sportsperson's efforts over a single calendar year (Ryan Giggs notwithstanding), each candidate could only put forward their annus mirabilis, so for instance from Mark Cavendish's years of dominance in road cycling from 2008-2012, he could only put forwards one year, in his case 2011. This works for and against Olympians, depending on their sport. Due to the relative infrequency of the Olympics a gold medal is a huge achievement: Kelly Holmes, Chris Hoy and Mo Farah, who were able to compete for and win multiple golds in 2004, 2008 and 2012 respectively, are at an advantage against someone like Ben Ainslie, who has won four Olympic golds, but only one in any single year. You could make a case for the deciding factor being percentage of world-title chances converted, but that would throw up numerous sportsmen and women competing in sports outside the Big 5 (football, rugby, athletics, cycling, cricket) who won everything they could. It would be impossible to differentiate between these performances and would result in ten competitors tied for the number 1 spot. Are these unfair? Perhaps, but prioritising the sports with the most participation seems fair enough, and restricting it to one calendar year is in keeping with SPOTY's 12-month ethos.
There is also an inherent bias against team players. Such is the nature of team sports that outstanding individuals are harder to discern. It also throws up the question of whether a team sportsman (and it is only men I'm afraid who could come close on this list) should be favoured if his team wins, or whether his performance can be isolated and evaluated properly. This is really difficult to do. Take for instance Steven Gerrard, who came third in 2005 after Liverpool won the Champions League on that "barmy night in Istanbul". Some people think Gerrard was the hero; others think Didi Hamann was the actual orchestrator. How do we rank Gerrard? No idea. As such, only two team players have made the top ten.
Speaking of which, on with the countdown
10. Jess Ennis (2012)
The last spot on this list was contested tightly between Freddie Flintoff and Jess Ennis. Flintoff won it in 2005 for the remarkable Ashes win, a series in which he was England captain. It was a fantastic achievement: the first win for ages against a particularly strong Australia, which could count Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist and Michael Clarke amongst its numbers. But Jess Ennis has been favoured for three reasons: 1) Heptathlon gold means Ennis can be considered the best all-round sportswoman in the world, 2) Her 100m hurdles performance was so good she would have won gold in 2008 in that event, 3) She did it at our home games, 4) The pressure on her was incredible as not only our biggest, brightest track and field medal hope, but also as a severe hottie that meant her face was on billboards across the country.
9. Chris Hoy (2008)
Enough to win it in 2008, Hoy only makes ninth here. Hoy's achievements are clear cut: he won almost everything in 2008, taking two golds and a silver at the World Championships and three golds at the Beijing Olympics. While circumstances elevated Ennis above Flintoff, it is circumstances that prevent Hoy from getting a higher position. British track cycling was utterly dominant in 2008, with huge amounts of money and expertise available to the British squad, putting Hoy at a large advantage. We take track cycling so much more seriously than other nations, too. That said, Hoy's achievements are still colossal.
8. Andy Murray (2012)
The US Open title, Olympic Gold, Olympic Silver and Wimbledon finalist: with that haul Murray is indisputably our best ever tennis player. Murray's story is made that much more special by his seemingly eternal position as a nearly-man. If he got past Federer, there was Nadal, if he got past Nadal, there was Djokovic, one all-time great after another. Then he managed it, providing us with hours of excruciating drama across the year. Almost as much as the titles he won, it's his never-say-die attitude that is most enduring in the memory.
7. Mark Cavendish (2011)
2011 was Mark Cavendish's best year, the best road sprint-cyclist in history. Cav dominated, winning the green jersey at the Tour de France, taking five stages including the Champs-Elysee finale, and the World Road Race. The Green Jersey at the Tour is rarely won by riders that solely target stage wins - the intermediate sprints points available more than compensate for a rider that finishes 2nd, 3rd or 4th in a stage-ending sprint. Cavendish is rubbish at the intermediate sprints, particularly in the mountains, so he had to rely on stage wins to fill out his points total. He did this in style, rarely giving his opposition a chance. His World Road Race win was a culmination of four years of hard work by British cycling, who furnished Cavendish with one of the most formidable teams ever seen at the event. That said, it was far, far from a simple task, because every other team would be aware of Cavendish's invincibility in a bunch sprint. The team was able to neutralise opponents' attacks, setting Cav up to do what Cav does best.
5. Kelly Holmes (2004), Mo Farah (2012)
I've tied Holmes and Farah at fifth because their achievements are almost indistinguishable. Both double Olympic gold medalists both firsts for Britons, both on the track, both in (at least from this sprinter's point of view) distance running. Holmes won in the face of extreme personal problems - injury, depression - while Farah won in the face of extreme competition in The Africans, who as a continental force have since 1980 won Olympic gold in the 5000m and 10000m on every occasion bar two.
3. Wilkinson/Johnson (2003)
The inspirational captain or the talisman? No use differentiating between the two either: they can share a spot. Even ignoring the Six Nations Grand Slam and the #1 ranking, England's 2003 Rugby World Cup win was perhaps the country's greatest achievement since 1966, and provided us with the enduring image of Wilkinson's trademark penalty-kicking pose. Of course, the win was very much a team effort, and without the immense talents of Dallaglio, Greenwood, Robinson, Dawson, Cohen, Moody, Vickery and the lot, it would not have been possible. However, we can't pick all of them, so we'll follow SPOTY's lead, which nominated Wilkinson and Johnson, who took the top two spots in 2003. They may have made the number 2 spot (number 1 is set in stone), but there's that anti-team bias that I mentioned before. Wilkinson's kicking was unerring, but would not have been possible without the powerful forwards winning penalties and getting him into drop-goal positions. Likewise Johnson was one of our best players and an inspiration throughout, but hasn't quite done enough on an individual basis to go higher.
2. Bradley Wiggins (2012)
The Tour de France is the world's biggest race. It's the longest, the toughest and the most storied, with it's 99 editions containing epic feats of endurance, tragedy, death, scandal, and glory. It attracts the most spectators of any sporting event, with the 2000-odd kilometers of the route lined start to finish with spectators, who number in their millions. It had also, until this year, never been won by a Brit. It was the final sporting frontier. Wiggins won it, and won it well. This alone is not enough to rank him a lofty 2nd, however. Most Western-European countries can boast a winner (and, not incidentally, mountains); even Luxembourg has a winner of the Tour de France. Three in fact. What puts Wiggins ahead is his dominance of every race he entered, from the early season tours (Normandie, Paris-Nice, Criterium du Dauphine), to the Olympic time-trial win, via the Tour. Put into the tumultuous context of the sport, namely the Lance Armstrong drugs scandal, Wiggins has emerged as something of a saviour of cycling: a legitimately clean Tour de France winner. Wiggins in 2012 has heralded a new era of cycling, and swept the cheating, bullying, egotistical Lance Armstrong, and everything he represents, aside.
1. Paul Radcliffe (2003)
Paula Radcliffe didn't even win SPOTY in 2003. She was beaten by those rugby players above. She did win it in 2002, but that wasn't her best year. In 2003, she finished the London marathon in a time of 2:15:25. This is one of the single greatest feats by any sportsperson in history, male or female. It was a world record by a huge margin. The next best time by someone other than Paula Radcliffe is 2:18:47 by Catherina Ndereba, which was itself a fantastic run, taking a minute off the previous record. Radcliffe's world record is simply a staggering time; perhaps the nearest equivalent would be steroid-enhanced Florence Joyner-Griffith's 100m WR of 10.48s, which will likely never be beaten by a clean athlete. There isn't much more to add to this final entry: it was simply a run of brutal speed and endurance.
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