SPOTY
BRADLEY WIGGINS hailed his "greatest sporting achievement" after he won the 59th BBC Sports Personality of the Year award at the ExCel Arena in London on Sunday night.
Wiggins - or Wiggo as he has been nicknamed - beat heptathlete star Jessica Ennis and tennis ace Andy Murray in the most prestigious staging of the awards ceremony in its history.
The 32-year-old cyclist won the toughest SPOTY choice ever having been the first Briton in history to win the Tour de France before he took Olympic time trial gold on the streets of London.
And, while Wiggins' win was well deserved, this was frankly such an outstanding year for British sport that any of the 12 contenders would have won the prize in any other year.
After all, double Olympic champion Laura Trott did not even make the cut - in sharp contrast to some of the winners in earlier, rather more inauspicious years.
Personally, my preference was for the main award to go to Mo Farah for providing prime-time must-watch viewing on successive Saturday nights in his 5,000m and 10,000m triumphs in the Olympic Stadium.
But, Mo-Bots and Wiggo sideburns aside, all of the contenders for the main award had an amazing backstory or a unique selling point.
Runner-up Jessica Ennis, for instance, was an athlete under pressure like no other this summer. As the great American sprinter Michael Johnson pointed out in an excellent video, she was the accepted "Face of the Games", and was expected to win.
Thankfully, Sheffield-born Ennis is a steely character and she opened her account by running 12.54s in the 100m hurdles, a time that would have won gold in the individual event in 2008.
Overall, Ennis stormed to gold with victories in three of the seven disciplines over two days, and the golden girl of British sport summed up perfectly just how well these Olympics were going.
It was no surprise, meanwhile, that Andy Murray took third place in the voting. Remarkably, Britain had been craving a male Grand Slam champion for 77 years and, this year, the man from Dunblane finally delivered.
First, though, Murray had to suffer more heartache as he broke down in tears after Roger Federer had beaten him in four sets in the Wimbledon final.
But, if anything, that setback - his fourth Grand Slam final defeat - only spurred Murray on more and he gained revenge over Federer in the Olympics final, again at Wimbledon, winning in straight sets in one of his most complete performances ever.
That same day, Murray partnered Laura Robson as an unseeded pair in the mixed doubles final. But, despite a gallant effort in which they took the first set, Murray-Robson ultimately had to settle for silver against their opponents, the number one seeds from Belarus.
Murray was not finished yet. There was one last Grand Slam of the year to go: the US Open at Flushing Meadows in New York.
There, Murray excelled again, beating Serbian world number one Novak Djokovic in an epic see-saw battle to fulfil his destiny.
Britain's wait for a Grand Slam champion was over - as was Murray's own wait for a Grand Slam. It was as if the Olympics had never finished.
Murray's fellow Scot, Katherine Grainger, had endured a similar sporting tale. If Murray, until this year, had been the nearly-man, then rower Grainger had been the ultimate nearly-woman with three successive Olympic silvers in Sydney, Beijing and Athens.
This was a "home" Games, though, and the feeling was that if Grainger could not win Olympic gold at Eton Dorney, then she never would.
In the end, her superb partnership with Anna Watkins held firm. On the way to the final, the pair broke the double sculls world record, and then - importantly - in the final, they crossed the line first.
One man who has never struggled with doing that is another Scot on the shortlist, Sir Chris Hoy, who won the main award in 2008 after winning three gold medals in Beijing.
In London, Hoy added another two golds to his collection to take his total to six golds (and one silver).
And the comeback on the last bend of the Keirin race effectively made him Britain's most decorated Olympian in history, ahead of Sir Steve Redgrave. It is a remarkable career achievement.
Similarly, Paralympians Sarah Storey and David Weir can reflect on an amazing year with four gold medals each.
Storey - who won five golds as a swimmer in the 1992 and 1996 Paralympic Games - has now added six golds to her tally as a cyclist in Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
Meanwhile, Weir is now the recognised as the most versatile wheelchair athlete of all time after winning in London over four different distances ranging from 800m to the marathon.
But, for all of Weir and Storey's success, it was quickly established that it was Ellie Simmonds who would be "The Face" of the Paralympic Games.
Just like Ennis before her, Simmonds delivered brilliantly under pressure, winning two golds, a silver and a bronze in the pool, setting world records in the 200m and 400m S6 freestyle.
Incredibly, Simmonds has just turned 18, and so - without trying to tempt fate - you would expect many more shiny honours will head her way in the years to come.
At the opposite end of the age scale is 35-year-old Ben Ainslie, who made his Olympics debut at Atlanta in 1996, taking silver at the age of 19.
Since then, Ainslie has only ever known victory and he won his fourth successive gold at Weymouth to become the most decorated sailor in Olympic history.
It was not all plain sailing, however. In the early stages of the competition, Ainslie struggled to keep up with Danish rival Jonas Høgh-Christensen - and matters only got worse when Ainslie was forced into making a penalty turn in race two.
It turned out to be the worst thing that Høgh-Christensen could have done as an angry Ainslie simply became even more determined to win the Battle of the Bay in front of unprecedented crowds for an Olympic sailing event.
The support was also magnificent at the ExCel where Nicola Adams was another British Olympian making history as the first woman in history to win an Olympic boxing gold medal.
Adams easily defeated Chinese world number one in the final of the flyweight bout - but it was probably her beaming smile and her effervescent personality which people will most remember of the Leeds lass.
And so, that just left Rory McIlroy, an outsider in this selection as the only one of the 12 contenders not to have taken part at either the Olympic or Paralympic Games.
It is not hard to see why McIlroy was chosen, however. The 23-year-old has had another fantastic year out on the course, climbing to the world number one ranking, and winning his second major championship, the PGA, by eight strokes.
Then, just as the sporting summer seemed ready to be put to rest, the Northern Irishman was part of the greatest comeback of the year - by Europe in the Ryder Cup.
This was the sporting year which just kept on giving.
OTHER AWARDS
Unsurprisingly, though, it was the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games which dominated proceedings in all of the other awards as well.
Team GB and Paralympics GB took the Team of the Year award, even though - technically - the decision was against the original rules.
While it does indeed seem like somewhat of a cop-out, the feel-good atmosphere generated by all of the home athletes in London 2012 made it no surprise that the regulations were changed unanimously by the panel.
Having said that, though, the above could have just as appropriately applied to another great team at London 2012, the Games Makers.
The Coach of the Year was Dave Brailsford, a fitting honour for a man who has done so much for elite cycling in this country.
Brailsford has not only overseen the successes of the Team GB cyclists as performance director of British Cycling - but he has also led Team Sky as its general manager, and boldly made the claim that a Briton would win the Tour de France.
His statement was roundly mocked at the time, particularly in the French press - but it is the likes of Wiggins and Brailsford who have got more and more Britons on their bikes and produced this incredible emergence of two-wheeled talent.
The Overseas Sports Personality of the Year was Usain Bolt who takes the prize for the third time in the last five years.
London 2012 was the Olympics in which Bolt went from being a fast man to a self-proclaimed legend after he defended his 100m and 200m Olympic titles in the face of strong competition from his protege Yohan Blake.
Bolt and Blake then teamed up as part of Team Jamaica to storm to a world record 4x100m title, making it six Olympic golds for the Fastest Man on the Planet.
If it was not for Jamaica, the award would have surely gone to Alex Zanardi, and perhaps it still should have done. Former F1 man Zanardi lost both his legs in a Champ Car crash in 2001 but has still managed to sate his competitive instincts by taking up road cycling.
Not only that but the Italian has succeeded, winning gold in the T4-category road race and road time trial, and adding silver in the road race relay. I suppose it just came down to the fact that Bolt is (understandably) a bigger name.
At least I did entirely agree with the Young SPOTY prize going to 15-year-old Jarrow swimmer Josef Craig, Britain's youngest gold medal winner from either the Olympic or the Paralympic Games.
This is, no doubt, a bit parochial - but, rather than the excellent Simmonds, the wonderful Weir, or the supreme Storey, it was Craig smashing two seconds off his own world record in the 400m freestyle S7 final pool which was the highlight of those Games for me.
But it was not just the action which will prove unforgettable from this summer. Yes, actions usually speak louder than words but sometimes it can be the other way around as Lord Sebastian Coe proved in picking up his Lifetime Achievement award.
Lord Coe was simply a fantastic orator this summer and genuinely moved me and made me proud when he signed off the London 2012 Games as chairman with the words: "When our time came, Britain, we did it right."
The speech of the night on Sunday, though, went to Martine Wright, who won the Helen Rollason award as someone who has shown "outstanding achievement in the face of adversity".
Wright's story will forever be intertwined with London 2012. On 6 July 2005, when it was announced by IOC chairman Jacques Rogge that London would host the Olympics seven years later, Wright went out for a few drinks with her work colleagues in celebration.
The following day, running late and attempting to take a shorter route to her office, Wright was caught up in the 7/7 bombings which would kill 52 people.
Wright lost both her legs at Aldgate tube station, and was lucky not to lose her life. Ever since, she considered it her destiny to be part of the London 2012 Games.
That dream was not to go unfulfilled and she qualified as a Paralympics GB team member as a sitting volleyball player.
And there was surely not a dry eye in the house as Wright said: "Thank you all so much for an absolutely fantastic summer."
To which I say - no, thank you for being part of it, Martine.
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