Sports Personality of the Year Betting - BBC SPOTY
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year award is a long standing awards ceremony that takes place every December. The inaugural award was handed over in 1954 and it has been hosted every year since then. The popularity of the Sports Personality of the Year Award is that the public gets to vote on the outcome. A short list is created and then that is when the public can cast their votes on who they think has produced the greatest excellence in sporting achievement over the given calendar year.
The Awards is only for a British subject or someone who resides and produces most of their sporting activities in the United Kingdom. This is a wonderful celebration at the end of the year, because it gives a good look back at the sporting action over the past twelve months and reminds every one of greatness. Along with the main award for the Sports Personality of the Year over the years, there have been other awards added to the overall ceremony.
There are regional awards as well and a BBC Sports Unsung Hero Award which is given to people who give freely to allow others to participate in sport. Other awards handed out include the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year, the BBC Sports Personality Team of the Year Award, coach awards and young sports personality awards. There is a Special Achievement Award which celebrates anyone who has contributed to charity work through sport, such as Comedian Eddie Izzard running 43 marathons in 51 days to raise money for Sport Relief back in 2009.
So in total, the BBC Sports Personality of the Award show allows people to celebrate all that is good about sport and it can serve as a wonderful inspiration as well. Going back to the actual Sports Personality of the Year Award the actual description for the award is the sportsperson “whose actions have most captured the public’s imagination”.
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Former Winners
It is not an award that has been won on multiple occasions by very many people at all. F1 Drivers Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell both won it twice along with boxing legend Henry Cooper. Tennis star Andy Murray created a bit of history in the award as he became the first ever sports personality to win it in back to back years as he was the recipient of the 2016 title after his 2015 triumph. His first award happened back in 2013 to celebrate his first ever Grand Slam tennis title.
Throughout the years of the Award though, the most dominant sport which has produced the most winners has been Athletics. Why could that be? Well, it is probably the one sporting arena where true individual talent gets centre stage and that same can be said of Tennis and Formula One and that is why personalities from those individual disciplines have also done well throughout history.
It’s not quite the same in team events like cricket and football to be able to produce the same degree of individual accolades. Can one person really be responsible for the entries of a team’s title win for example? Even with that having been said more often than not a winner of a given year’s award is usually someone who has achieved a title of some sort in the calendar year (but not always and it’s not a prerequisite).
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2018 Review
Welsh Cyclist Geraint Thomas walked away with the Sports Personality of the Year Award. That was on the back of his burst from nowhere to win the Tour de France. The build-up had been about Chris Froome really with his teammate Thomas expected to play a supporting role. However, right from the get-go, it was Thomas who took control.
He became the first Welshman (and the third Briton) to win one of the Grand Tour races. He went into the Sports Personality of the Year 2018 as the red-hot favourite and delivered. Coming in second place was F1 Driver Lewis Hamilton who had claimed his fifth World Drivers’ Championship. He was only the third driver ever to pull that off.
England and Tottenham striker Harry Kane took third place. The reason for that was that it was a World Cup year and Kane, with his six goals at the tournament, helped England reach the semi-finals. He was the Golden Boot winner at the event and even though ultimately the Three Lions couldn’t win the tournament, Kane gained plenty of recognition.
The other names on the six-person shortlist for the 2018 Sports Personality of the Year was athlete Dina Asher-Smith who took a hat-trick of European titles, Olympic skeleton athlete Lizzy Yarnold who successfully defended her Olympic title in the sport and cricketer James Anderson, who became the most prolific pace bowler in Test history.
England’s historic netball gold won the Greatest Sporting Moment of the Year while golfer Francesco Molinari won the World Sport Star of the Year after winning all of his Ryder Cup matches, being victories in the Open Championship, winning on the PGA tour for the first time in his career and calling the European Tour Race to Dubai crown. Team of the Year went to England’s Netball gold medal winners.
2019 Preview
The 2019 Sports Personality of the Year Awards will take place on December 15th in Aberdeen. In late November the BBC announced the six-person shortlist for the awards. Immediately the bookmakers made England cricketer Ben Stokes as the heavy odds-on favourites to claim the award.
Stokes had a stunning summer and was at the heart of the action in the World Cup Final. He batted to keep England in the final and at the end of the match had fallen just one run short of winning the match after opponents New Zealand had looked in full control. Stokes was then back for the deciding Super Over, playing a dramatic part in getting England their first World Cup title.
Another astounding batting performance from the all-rounder happened during the Ashes series later in the year at Headingley. With England staring in the face of defeat in Leeds, Ben Stokes was joined at the crease by 11th man Jack Leach. England needed 73 runs to win the match and keep the series alive. In one of the most remarkable showings of belligerent batting in the face of adversity, Stokes picked off the runs to win the match for England.
Two big personalities from the world of athletics are on the list. Dina Asher-Smith, who was second in the 2018 SPOTY is back after becoming the first British woman to win a gold medal in a sprint event at the World Championship. She also took two silver medals away from her efforts in Doha in what was a massive step forward in the youngster’s career. Katarina Johnston-Thompson grabbed huge headlines with her heptathlon gold, beating the previous British record set by Jessica Ennis-Hill.
Lewis Hamilton claimed his sixth Drivers World Championship crown in F1 in 2019 and is rightly back on the shortlist. He is now only one behind the all-time record held by Michael Schumacher. It was Hamilton’s third successive Championship title as well. Manchester City and England star Raheem Sterling was integral to Man City’s domestic treble last season and he was the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year.
Welsh Rugby star Alun Wyn Jones, who was crowned the player of the Six Nations 2019, also makes the list. He would become only the second-ever rugby player to win the award (following England’s Jonny Wilkinson) if he wins this year’s award ceremony. Wyn Jones helped Wales win the Six Nations by completing a Grand Slam and helped his country reach the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup.
