Sports Personality of the year

I thought that too, seemed a bit unfair in many ways.  However as a cyclist I am very glad Hoy won, he was actually very deserving of the "personality" bit of the award which has sometimes been lacking in recent years.  British cycling has been transformed in recent years to a position of total dominance thanks to a lot of lottery money and a complete reveiw of every single aspect of the programme.

I am quite glad (and surprised) that Lewis did not win...make no mistake the guy is a legend and his time will come for SPOTY, but having been lucky enough to meet several Olympians recently, I was just staggered at the commitment the guys have to put in. Compare and contrast...would I like to have a tax free multi squillion pound salary, a penthouse in Monaco, a Pussycat Doll on my arm and be part of the multi event show that is F1?  Hmmm, let me think about that.  Would I like to get up at 5am every morning, have only a modest income from funding, break the ice out of the bottom of my rowing skiff, spend hours in the gym every day, look forward to only every 5th weekend off, all for a one shot event that comes round every 4 years all for the chance of one gold medal? Erm, no, and hats off to anyone who has that extreme level of commitment.

I do wonder if sailing would have done better if Ben was sailing an MPS or similar as his Olympic boat...you cannot fail to be impressed by the speed, power an acceleration of Hoy or Hamilton on their repective racetracks...but unless you are a sailor, Finn racing will never look exciting I'm afraid...

That's some winning margin for Chris Hoy!

Three of the votes for Ben were mine.

Thats the point I make on these debates about Olympic eqipment.

The cyclists are racing state of the art bikes; just imagine if Hoy et al were still riding bikes designed in 1949 ... it would be absurd but sailing is still showcasing relics ... well most of the events are ...

It didn't help either that all the shots of Ben seemed to have been slowed down, presumably for artistic effect, but it didn't really demonstrate the effort and workrate that Ben puts in. I thought they might have shown the medal race, preferably upwind, where even a non-sailor could appreciate how hard he is working as he carves the boat over the waves, miles in front of the other competitors. Slowed down, it just looked like he was bobbing about going nowhere fast.