Chris Hoy is BBC Sports Personality of the Year!

Posted by Mark on December 15, 2008 under sport | Be the First to Comment

I used to love Formula One motor racing. I grew up watching every race with my father. But in the last seven or eight years I just haven’t bothered, unless I particlarly wanted a Sunday afternoon nap (guaranteed watching F1 racing these days). As a total petrolhead [and cyclist!] this is a tricky thing to swallow.

I remember passing through Monaco in a Mercedes [diesel, eugh!] hire car a handful of years back, on the way to Nice for my 30th birthday. As we passed Monaco I couldn’t resist doing a recce of the circuit that would be used for the F1 race. I had to beg the-now-Mrs-Phillips for a third bash at the circuit, and I distinctly remember the excitement of trundling around the crowded road for that third time.

For the last race of the F1 season I decided it was time to tune in and watch our boy Lewis Hamilton try, for a second time, to win the season. No one can deny what he’s achieved is spectacular – and having visited the McLaren factory [for an interview] last year, I can attest to what an incredible effort goes into that team, from apparently every angle.

But, given my various passions, I also could not – and did not – want for a more deserving BBC Sports Personality of the Year than Chris Hoy (ok, a tiny lie there – I think Nicole Cooke is the most deserving cycling champion out there today; I phoned up twice and voted for Hoy then her. EDIT: Matt Seaton has some good words on the topic). In every interview Hoy comes across as a great bloke – humble, intelligent and thoughtful; but at the same time not a marketing machine, as Hamilton is prone to come across as. I have hoped, for the latter part of this year, that Hoy actually gets it, and needlessly to say I was jumping with joy and shouting at the TV this evening when he won.

Is this a sign that the public is recognising cycling as a great sport? Is this a shift in mentality that might, might just, mean that soon riding on the streets won’t mean so much abuse and lackadaisical attention from car drivers? That the sports folks such as Hoy, Cooke, Wiggins, Cavendish, Pendleton, Pooley etc won’t have to slog their hearts out for little recognition – that they’re finally seen as the hard working sports personalities that they are? I do hope so.

Testament to that this evening was the team award going to the GB Olypmics Cycling Squad, and trainer of the year going to Dave Brailsford. And rightly so I think. You know cycling is a worthy – and hard – sport when footballers finish their professional days and take up cycling as a challenge to fulfill noble causes; Geoff Thomas and Alan Shearer.

Chris Hoy – and the rest of the GB Cycling Squad – a big hand to you folks, you totally deserve all the recognition you got this evening. Congratulations.