My campign for Andy to be BBC Sports Personality of the Year starts here
At the moment I am guessing that maybe an Olympic champiion or Lewis Hamilton, if he wins the Drivers Championship, may still be favourite.
Some may question the "personality" bit of it, but hey look at some of the past winners ! And, again, some may think we should wait for even greater glories.
However, Greg won it on the back of being US Open finalist and world ranked no 4, but with arguably lesser other achivements.
OK, Rebecca Adlington, may be a doulble Olympic Swimming Champion, whereas Andy is "only" ranked no.4. But swimmers have a multitude of events, covering different strokes and distances, so who knows how she really ranks as best overall swimmer. There is a similar isue with different cycling events.
Whereas tennis, with I would think a greater number of participants, has one world ranking. We do not have the World No 1 left and right handed players, or no 1 's over the best of one, three and five sets.
No, to achieve what Andy has already, particularly the step up this year, is a huge achievement.
I'd be surprised if he did win it - he may have a chance of a top 3 spot if he wins the Masters Cup though, but if he had won the US Open final, I think there's a good chance he could have won the trophy.
My current call would be Nicole Cooke - first person ever to win the Olympic Road Race and then the World Championship Roadf Race, as well as all of her other achievements throughout the season.
I'd be surprised if he did win it - he may have a chance of a top 3 spot if he wins the Masters Cup though, but if he had won the US Open final, I think there's a good chance he could have won the trophy.
My current call would be Nicole Cooke - first person ever to win the Olympic Road Race and then the World Championship Roadf Race, as well as all of her other achievements throughout the season.
Nicole did well...very well..but...
i would not go for Andy this year...even if I did....if Lewis Hamilton wins F1 then Im afraid the true Olympic hero in Chis Hoy will suffer...Hamilton will get it.
Andy has had a truly great year....and if Chris had not won 3 gold medals and Hamilton ended up 2nd then Mr Murray perhaps could have been favourite.
Let Andy get the gong when he wins a slam nexr year.
Of course the team of the year will be the next world cup winners, England.
I do actually think Nicole Cooke is a good shout, based on what she has achieved, but I'm pretty sure it ain't going to happen.
If Hamilton wins the World Driver's Championship, I could see the top 3 in order being :
Hamilton, Adlington, Hoy
I don't myself agree with very much about that at all, but that's my guess about the Great British public.
Actually, it''s a really good field compared to some years i.e. such as the the last 2 years :
2006 : Zara Phillips, the 3 day event World Champion ( and reigning European champion ). Great achievement, and I would never denigrate it as much as some with other agendas. But Pippa Funnell never seemed to come close. Unfortunately she missed the Olympics. If she had won there this year, my word, folk would have started treating her like royalty
2007 : Joe Calzaghe. I had to wrack my brains there ( I knew Hamilton had missed out ), and nearly resorted to Google, Great boxer. But in this case a variety of belts for exactly the same weight divisions, and Joe arguably has reigned long in one of the weaker ones. But last year he did get some probably overdue recognition and at the right time, in November won a big unification fight at the Milleniun Stadium.
Ricky Hatton would actually have won it if he had beaten Floyd Mayweather, even closer to the SPOTY awards. Though his achievements are lesser in my view, Hatton, to be fair does have more of a personality..
Partly for sexist reasons, Victoria Pendleton. Certainly the most attractive British cyclist of all time who would have won as many goals as Sir Chris had she had the events to ride in.
Andy won't win it until he's world no1 and has won a couple of Slams.
Rebecca Adlington gets my vote as the most unexpected double gold medallist and a pleasant young lady to boot.
I know what you mean about Victoria. Attractive, great personality, and multiple world champion.
However, the general public will just see one gold, and not be so aware of her multi discipline skills, and the fact that she was almost certainly deprived of more gold medals due to the limited female cycling program compared to the men.
I would of course love to see Andy as world no 1 and double Grand Slam champion, but in a non Olympic year, with less other achievements around he could easily win it with much less than that. Just one Grand Slam and I'd put a bet on him ( in fact if it is Wimbledon all bets are off ! ), less and it could still be possible.
I mean if this hadn't been an Olympic year, I doubt either Adlington or Hoy would have been in contention.
And even Greg managed to win the thing in the year he was US open finalist and World No. 4
Needing to hold onto 5th place, he couldn't do it and Vettel got past. When the crunch came he made a slight mistake, at that moment he had failed at the crunch.
Kubica confused things a bit, Lewis made a slight mistake and Vettel pounced, that is what Happened from where I was looking.
I love the attempt to by McLaren to try and write into history that Lewis let Vettel past, because they were confidant of catching Glock.
Sure dry tyres or not, Glock was more than 20 seconds ahead and not significantly slowing at that point, and it still didn't seem to be raining that hard at all when Vettel went past.
In the end Lweis only just did it with Glock's really really slow final lap.
Thanks go the rain just finally getting a bit harder in the final lap, plus Glock's seeming total inability to handle a car on dry tyres in such not too wet conditions.
Congratulations Lewis, but you got a bit lucky there, mate.