Hamilton in pole position for award?
We still have five months to go before this year's Sports Personality of the Year is unveiled, but some people have made their minds up already. The bookmakers Paddy Power are accepting bets on anyone except Lewis Hamilton, and a lot of the press and blog comment has moved from last year’s:
“They're all second-rate and nobody deserves to win”
To this year’s:
“It's all cut-and-dried now, so why bother to have a vote at all?”
Well, if a week is a long time in politics then five months is an eternity in sport. But there's no denying that Hamilton's extraordinary performance in F1 this year has made him the runaway favourite at this stage. In a way, this is going back to the pattern of Sports Personality that we've seen for most of this decade. In 2005 most people thought it would be a walkover for Andrew Flintoff, in 2004 it was difficult to see who could beat Kelly Holmes, and 2003 always looked like Jonny Wilkinson’s year.
But it's worth emphasising that not a single vote will be cast until the night of 9 December when the BBC's audiences will make their choice of who should win. And it's also fair to say that some of the people I've just mentioned actually faced a tougher battle than was expected. Ellen MacArthur got a lot of votes on the night in 2005 to move into a very strong second position behind Flintoff. I also saw a columnist writing that last year it had been blindingly obvious Zara Phillips would win, when actually Darren Clarke was the clear favourite among the pundits.
You don't have to go far on the web this year to find strong arguments for other people too. I saw a piece in the papers over the weekend that said Ricky Hatton believes he should be in contention, especially if there's a Mayweather fight later this year which he wins. And one of the sports columnists in the north west of England thinks he should be ahead of Hamilton already.
Meanwhile, there's a substantial lobby that believes Frankie Dettori should be in there for the final furlong too, with the competition even being debated in the Middle East.
That debate will continue and you can't rule out the unexpected. Could there be a British winner when the Open golf returns to Carnoustie? Is it really going to be a second year running in which no footballers make the final shortlist, or could heroics this autumn by any of the home nations’ stars mean both qualification for Euro 2008 and a place in the final ten? Or will someone step up - perhaps even Jonny himself - and dominate the Rugby World Cup to the point where they eclipse the likes of Hamilton and Hatton?
I'm very happy that this is one case where we don't control the outcome - you do. The nominations will be made, as last year, by media sports editors, and then it will be over to the public vote for the final choice.
