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A stunning performance by Team GB in the 2008 Beijing Olympics undoubtedly went a long way towards securing last year’s Sports Personality Of The Year award for Sir Chris Hoy. But the public support for a cyclist, albeit an exceptional one, also indicated a change of attitude towards less mainstream sports, which goes a long way towards explaining the sustained interest in Jessica Ennis to win this year’s award. Britain’s first-ever winner of the heptathlon gold medal at the World Athletic Championships, the 23-year-old continues to endear herself to the nation, no doubt helped by a bubbly personality and looks that, while not quite in the Denise Lewis class, are still eminently pleasing on the eye. It’s the gritty determination to succeed which is her most attractive quality, however, and it’s no surprise that ‘Tadpole’, as she’s known on the track, has leap-frogged the likes of Ashes heroes Andrew Strauss (18-1 with totesport) and former winner Andrew Flintoff (66-1 with betfred and 888sport) in the betting for next month’s accolade, betfred and Stan James‘ 4-1 being the best price now available. The market would suggest that Ennis still has it all to do to collect more votes than current favourite Jenson Button – but does she? Let’s not forget that Lewis Hamilton was an overwhelming choice of the pundits to win last year’s Sports Personailty of The Year and Button’s credentials this time are almost identical. Indeed, one could argue, his triumph in the World Drivers’ Championship has been less spectacular than that of Hamilton 12 months previously. This year’s award ceremony is also been held in Sheffield, Ennis‘ home town, which must also count for something as must the fact that female athletes have an outstanding record when it comes to winning this award. From Dorothy Hyman and Mary Rand in the 1960s, Mary Peters, Fatima Whitbread, Liz McColgan, Paula Radcliffe and Kelly Holmes have all had their names engraved on the trophy. David Haye could well be star in waiting in boxing’s heavyweight division but his low-key acquisition of the WBA world title last week hardly set the pulse rating and bet365’s 7-1 is only the best of a pretty miserly set of odds from the layers that he’ll follow in the footsteps of Henry Cooper, Lennox Lewis and Joe Calzaghe at this stage of his career and it’s the multi-talented Jessica who’ll be getting my vote on the night.