Wiggo?
Bradley Wiggins’ share of the Sports Personality of the Year vote didn’t quite match Mark Cavendish’s when he won the award last but then Mark didn’t have Olympic gold medal winners to compete with.
But even with all those medals flying about there was no reason to vote for the other 11 ahead of the greatest sporting moment by a British athlete not only this year but most years. And that was even before becoming for a short time – before Sir Chris Hoy regained his title – the most successful Olympian of the country.
What the others had done had been done before. As said before the likes of Farah did nothing out of the ordinary as I posted a bit back…
…the 5k and 10k have been run 23 times in the Olympics and the double has now been done by 6 athletes at 7 games, so a third of the time, not exactly unique is it. Toxic Web
Ennis has one medal now so less than the likes of Laura Trott who didn’t even make the short-list. Murray it’s the first Grand Slam for a long time but not the first Brit. So on and so on.
Wiggins not only achieved something no British rider has ever done he achieved something no other cyclist has done before he even got to the Tour de France and then the Olympic time trial – winning the Paris–Nice, Tour de Romandie and Critérium du Dauphiné.
Then he adds one of the toughest events in sports history and tops it off with yet another Olympic gold medal.
And most importantly of all he actually has a personality. As shown when he was standing on the podium at the end of the Tour and again when being interviewed by Susan
Barker and commenting about Gary Lineker’s make up fist up on the SPotY show. Do wonder how many votes that won him on the night. The BBC did their best to get their favourite’s to beat Wiggo with that first billing, get him on first and hope people have forgotten about him by the time voting lines open, just after the bits about Farah and Ennis.
Dave Brailsford rightly won coach of the year. Said what he was going to do – win the Tour with a clean British rider within 5 years, did it in three – and then winning all those medals at the Olympics after the officials in charge did enough to stop Britain repeating the triumphs of 2008. Funny as well that Brailsford took the shortest route possible up onto the stage. Marginal gains.
With nothing on next year on the scale of an Olympics, World Cup or Ryder Cup, if Wiggo retains his yellow jersey or Froome takes it off him can cycling make it three SPotYs in a row?