BBC Sports Personality Of The Year

[cdbearsfan]

It should still be Murray. Winning Wimbledon is an amazing achievement. It's only a sign of how brilliant he has been in the last few years that we've allowed ourselves to become blasé about it. He won a gold medal too, just for a bit of extra gloss.

[paul_e]

It should still be Murray. Winning Wimbledon is an amazing achievement. It's only a sign of how brilliant he has been in the last few years that we've allowed ourselves to become blasé about it. He won a gold medal too, just for a bit of extra gloss.

So basically if a tennis player wins wimbledon that's automatically a bigger achievement than anything else?  What would someone else have to achieve to be on a par given so few sports have such a prestigious event. Mo Farah, for example, has won 17 golds in the last 20 major competitions he's entered over a period of 6 years, just because those events don't get as much press attention doesn't mean that his winning sequence is anything less than stunning.  He's my choice because he's genuinely a world great and he deserves recognition for it.  I also like the political aspect of an immigrant winning it in a year where anti-immigration sentiment has been so high but that's a side benefit and wouldn't make me vote for him if he wasn't Britain's greatest ever athlete.

[JD]

It should still be Murray. Winning Wimbledon is an amazing achievement. It's only a sign of how brilliant he has been in the last few years that we've allowed ourselves to become blasé about it. He won a gold medal too, just for a bit of extra gloss.

So basically if a tennis player wins wimbledon that's automatically a bigger achievement than anything else?  What would someone else have to achieve to be on a par given so few sports have such a prestigious event. Mo Farah, for example, has won 17 golds in the last 20 major competitions he's entered over a period of 6 years, just because those events don't get as much press attention doesn't mean that his winning sequence is anything less than stunning.  He's my choice because he's genuinely a world great and he deserves recognition for it.  I also like the political aspect of an immigrant winning it in a year where anti-immigration sentiment has been so high but that's a side benefit and wouldn't make me vote for him if he wasn't Britain's greatest ever athlete.

Agree. Mo Farah is the best middle distance runner GB has ever seen and is on a par with the great Lasse Viren as the best middle distance runner of all time.

[cdbearsfan]

You're not voting on the last six years. It's a one year deal (with the exception of the bizarre lifetime achievement award for Giggs).

Wimbledon plus Gold Medal > Gold Medal x 2.

We've had hundreds of gold medallists but very few Wimbledon winners since World War Two, therefore a Wimbledon win is clearly the rarer achievement.

[LeeS]

You're not voting on the last six years. It's a one year deal (with the exception of the bizarre lifetime achievement award for Giggs).

Wimbledon plus Gold Medal > Gold Medal x 2.

We've had hundreds of gold medallists but very few Wimbledon winners since World War Two, therefore a Wimbledon win is clearly the rarer achievement.

Its not rare at all. Someone wins Wimbledon every single year. How often does anyone from anywhere do what Mo has done? Murray has been rewarded for winning it once already. And rewarded again for the Davis cup. This year will be an Olympian's year. I say Laura Trott. Or if Froome completes the utterly remarkable feat of winning TdF and Vuelta in the same year then it's his.

[paul_e]

You're not voting on the last six years. It's a one year deal (with the exception of the bizarre lifetime achievement award for Giggs).

Wimbledon plus Gold Medal > Gold Medal x 2.

We've had hundreds of gold medallists but very few Wimbledon winners since World War Two, therefore a Wimbledon win is clearly the rarer achievement.

What a nonsense argument.  If there was an equivalent of wimbledon in every sport then you might have a point but for most olympic sports the olympics is bigger and better than anything else.

Of course wimbledon is a rarer achievement you get 8 wimbledon singles champions in 4 years and you get 250-300 olympic golds in the same period but given you don't enter for all of those the rarity for an individual is far great in most sports (ignoring swimming).  Murray can win 4 wimbledons in that time, Mo can get 2 olympic medals, so a gold for him is twice as rare so your argument is wrong.

Moving on defending the 5k and 10k at back-to-back olympics has been done once before in history, by one of the most decorated distance runners of all time.  By comparison there are currently 4 active players that have won wimbledon and olympics in the same season.

I do get what you're saying about it being all about the current year but when you have so many people who h\ave had a brilliant year you have to look for things to set them apart.  Winning wimbledon as well as the lympics is enough for you, retaining the 5k and 10k in the olympics is enough for me.  For others demolishing the world record 3 times in 18 months in the 100m Breaststroke might be enough.

What I can't disagree with is your belief that winning wimbledon is in some way more worthy.  If you like Tennis then it is, or if you're scottish and you're trying to justify it being won by a scot then it might be (I'm not accusing you of anything here) but to a distance runner it's clearly not going to be.

[Brend'Watkins]

You're not voting on the last six years. It's a one year deal (with the exception of the bizarre lifetime achievement award for Giggs).

Wimbledon plus Gold Medal > Gold Medal x 2.

We've had hundreds of gold medallists but very few Wimbledon winners since World War Two, therefore a Wimbledon win is clearly the rarer achievement.

Its not rare at all. Someone wins Wimbledon every single year. How often does anyone from anywhere do what Mo has done? Murray has been rewarded for winning it once already. And rewarded again for the Davis cup. This year will be an Olympian's year. I say Laura Trott. Or if Froome completes the utterly remarkable feat of winning TdF and Vuelta in the same year then it's his.

BBC Sports Personality of the year is a big pile of back slapping wank.  That is all.

[Chico Hamilton III]

You're not voting on the last six years. It's a one year deal (with the exception of the bizarre lifetime achievement award for Giggs).

Wimbledon plus Gold Medal > Gold Medal x 2.

We've had hundreds of gold medallists but very few Wimbledon winners since World War Two, therefore a Wimbledon win is clearly the rarer achievement.

Its not rare at all. Someone wins Wimbledon every single year. How often does anyone from anywhere do what Mo has done? Murray has been rewarded for winning it once already. And rewarded again for the Davis cup. This year will be an Olympian's year. I say Laura Trott. Or if Froome completes the utterly remarkable feat of winning TdF and Vuelta in the same year then it's his.

BBC Sports Personality of the year is a big pile of back slapping wank.  That is all.

Ha ha, I think exactly the same but was too scared to say it because of the inevitable backlash on here from people who take things far too seriously. Tin hat on, Bren'd

[paul_e]

and yet you both felt the need to post on a topic about it.  If you don't want to talk about it just don't click on the topic, it's really that simple, I have hundreds of unread topics on this forum because I have no interest in the subject, I don't feel the ned to go on them and say what their talking about is a pile of wank and then preempt the inevitable backlash by criticising anyone who might be a bit annoyed by my post as taking things far too seriously.

I'm not taking anything too seriously but I do like the idea of something that celebrates the sporting successes of the nation.

[Chico Hamilton III]

And they're off........

[LeeS]

I love SPOTY and always have done. Never miss it. But it really is a big pile of back slapping wank.

[cdbearsfan]

You're not voting on the last six years. It's a one year deal (with the exception of the bizarre lifetime achievement award for Giggs).

Wimbledon plus Gold Medal > Gold Medal x 2.

We've had hundreds of gold medallists but very few Wimbledon winners since World War Two, therefore a Wimbledon win is clearly the rarer achievement.

Its not rare at all. Someone wins Wimbledon every single year. How often does anyone from anywhere do what Mo has done? Murray has been rewarded for winning it once already. And rewarded again for the Davis cup. This year will be an Olympian's year. I say Laura Trott. Or if Froome completes the utterly remarkable feat of winning TdF and Vuelta in the same year then it's his.

Murray is an Olympian. That's what the gold thing around his neck is. And yes, somebody does win Wimbledon every year.

Until Murray came along though, they were never ever British.

Mo won two Olympic golds. Rare, but we've had lots of people achieve that in a single Olympics. Off the top of my head at least three others did it this time.

As others have said though, it's not really worth arguing about, I was just enjoying the debate. I did allow myself to get pissed off when they decided to give it to Old Man Giggs though, thus providing the BBC with another excuse to spunk yet more licence-payers' money on promoting Brand Manchester.

[Chico Hamilton III]

I love SPOTY and always have done. Never miss it. But it really is a big pile of back slapping wank.

Does that mean you can comment on this thread or you can't ?

[Pat McMahon]

I love SPOTY and always have done. Never miss it. But it really is a big pile of back slapping wank.

I used to love it but realised many years ago that it was a crock of shit. Ryan Giggs in a year in which he hardly played, Michael Owen in 1998 - to quote Denise Lewis "One goal, one f@*$ing goal" and even one of the royals for not falling off a pony whilst opening a school fete.

I couldn't name a winner for any of the past ten years, though I used to enjoy some of the highlights footage.

FWIW, there would be any number of worthy winners this year  - Farah, Kenny, Trott, Murray to name but a few. So presumably it will go to Will Grigg.

[paul_e]

I love SPOTY and always have done. Never miss it. But it really is a big pile of back slapping wank.

Does that mean you can comment on this thread or you can't ?

Of course he can comment, he just can't act like people disagreeing with him need to lighten up.

I like talking about it now because for the last 10 years it's actually been worthy of a discussion and we've genuinely had options, that means that we're doing something right when it comes to sport and I'm hugely patriotic about sport (except for when dickheads tell me I should be supporting Chelsea/Man Utd/etc in the champions league).