McCoy earns his stripes in my SPOTY picks

SPOTY winners
SPOTY: Tony McCoy
Second: Phil Taylor Third: Jessica Ennis
Overseas: Rafael Nadal
Coach: Colin Montgomerie
Team: Europe Ryder Cup players
Young: Tom Daley
Lifetime Achievement: David Beckham
Helen Rollason Award: Sir Frank Williams
Unsung Hero: Lance Haggith

My Sports Personality of the Year picks
SPOTY: Tony McCoy
Overseas SPOTY: Rafael Nadal
Coach SPOTY: Andy Flower
Team SPOTY: Europe Ryder Cup players
Young SPOTY: Conor Coady (footballer)
Lifetime Achievement: David Beckham (pre-selected by BBC)
*Other awards include the Helen Rollason award, given for outstanding achievement in the face of adversity, and the Unsung Hero award.

SPOTY main award
TONY MCCOY still heads the betting for tonight's prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year award - and rightly so after his Grand National win on Don't Push It in April.

McCoy memorably won the world's greatest steeplechase at the 15th attempt proving persistence pays off.

"If you get enough goes at something and you keep going, once you're in there you've always got a chance," McCoy said once he had calmed down.

For his victory led to a wonderful but unusual outpouring of joy from a jockey who has been head and shoulders above his contemporaries for years.

The Northern Irishman has been Champion Jockey in every season since 1995-6 but the famous Aintree race had somehow eluded him and it was starting to look as if he might never win it.

This year, another chance looked set to pass by McCoy with Black Apalachi ahead and Don't Push it back in the field.

But a strong finish overhauled Black Apalachi's advantage and gave the 36-year-old the finest of his 3,000+ wins.

Of course, McCoy faces tough competition for the award which will be presented at the Birmingham NEC in front of 13,000 people.

In an excellent year for Northern Irish sport, perhaps McCoy's biggest competition comes from his compatriot Graeme McDowell.

McDowell hit the winning putt at Celtic Manor as Europe regained the Ryder Cup by the slimmest of margins in a fascinating finale in Newport.

But applying the coup de grace to Europe's victory was far from McDowell's only achievement in 2010.

The Portrush man also won his first major, the 2010 US Open at Pebble Beach by one shot from Frenchman Gregory Havret.

Big names such as Ernie Els, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were all just a couple of shots behind throughout the final round.

But McDowell held them all off to add to complete a great year in which he also won the Welsh Open, again at Celtic Manor, and the Andalucia Masters.

The main problem for McDowell is that the golf vote will be split between himself and Lee Westwood whose brilliant consistency landed him the coveted world number one spot.

Westwood also played a major part in Europe's Ryder Cup win, usually going out first and setting the tone by taking 2.5 points from his four matches.

Even in his singles' match which he lost, Westwood seemed to give the Europe middle-order some momentum by leading until a late collapse.

Unfortunately, nearly but not quite enough seems to be the way for the Worksop man who has agonisingly finished third and second in his last two Open Championships, meaning he is still without a major.

But the feeling is that Westwood's time will come soon. After all, you do not become world number one for nothing.

World number one is where Phil Taylor has been for years in darts. The Power's 7-3 victory over Simon Whitlock with an average of 104.38, no less, was his 15th world championship.

Such a record has often provoked a clamour for Taylor to be bestowed with the SPOTY honour but it seems unlikely that the Stoke man has the fanbase to pull this one off.

Taylor may attract votes as some sort of working-class hero but, given that Zara Phillips won this award in 2006, the programme's demographic seems more far-reaching than that.

That won't bother Taylor too much. After all, he is currently playing at the Alexandra Palace, looking for a 16th world championship at the age of 50.

If Taylor is coming towards the end of his career, the next candidate - Tom Daley - has only just begun.

Diver Daley, at 16, had already become a world champion in 2009 and he added double Commonwealth gold this year against a tough field.

Plymouth-born Daley has a good record in this competition too, having won Young SPOTY in 2007 and 2009.

He was also named in the top ten of the main award last year for his world championship win.

Daley has again been nominated in both awards this year and yet, given his competition, he may be unlucky enough not to win either.

However, what seems certain is that he will be the poster boy for British hopes in the London 2012 Olympics.

Meanwhile, the pin-up girl is likely to be Jessica Ennis who continued her golden streak in the heptathlon this year, setting a personal best of 6,823 points at the European Championships.

Sheffield-born Ennis, who finished third in last year's SPOTY, also won the World Indoor Championships with a competition-record points total to add to her World Championship win in Berlin in 2009.

Of course, the big prize for 24-year-old Ennis remains the Olympics and Denise Lewis' British points record of 6,831 which she just fell short of this year.

Among the other candidates, Amy Williams is already an Olympic champion having brought home Great Britain's only medal from the Winter Games in Vancouver.

Skeleton athlete Williams became the first individual British gold medalist in 30 years since Robin Cousins won gold in figure skating in 1980 when she got down the Whistler track in the best aggregate time over four runs.

She also set the track record of 53.68 in her third run to set up her victory which came by 56 seconds over German pair Kerstin Szymkowiak and Anja Huber.

Manxman Mark Cavendish is another speed merchant to make the final cut after he won another five stages in the 2010 Tour de France to take his career total to an amazing 15 in three years.

The 25-year-old also backed up his stage wins with a green jersey in another of the classic tours, La Vuelta a Espana for the most overall points.

Cavendish looks as if he could dominate sprinting in cycling for years - he certainly seems to have the desire to win over and over again.

Another man with great self-belief is Notts and England spinner Graeme Swann, a late bloomer if ever there was one.

Since his Test debut in December 2008 at the age of 29, Swann has become a major pillar of this largely successful England team.

Under the captaincy of Andrew Strauss, England won their first major ICC World Cup in the Twenty20 version of the sport this year.

The team also enjoyed Test series wins over Bangladesh and Pakistan, and they made a fine start to their Ashes defence with victory in Adelaide before being pegged back in Perth.

Swann has added a new dimension to England's bowling attack, providing the team with a genuine world class spinner.

His 124 Test wickets at an average of 27.62 speaks volumes, as does his ability to pick up five-wicket hauls - no fewer than 10 in just 27 matches.

The final candidate is WBA world heavyweight champion David Haye who defended his belt successfully against John Ruiz and Audley Harrison this year.

Unfortunately, the spectacle of the Haye-Harrison fight left much to be desired and Haye was barely tested, winning in three rounds.

Haye's big year is 2011 in which he plans to fight both of the Klitchko brothers - only by beating them will he cement his place on the pantheon of great British boxing heavyweights.

Overseas SPOTY
IN American Pie, Don McLean wrote: "And while the King was looking down, the Jester stole his thorny crown..." and this year saw the long-awaited changing of the guard in tennis.

Rafael Nadal won three of the four majors in 2010 to complete his own career Grand Slam.

While Roger Federer crashed out of Wimbledon at the quarter final stage, Nadal powered to a 6-3 7-5 6-4 - having won his fifth French Open in six years a month earlier.

And at the US open, Federer again went out before the final, losing Novak Djokovic in the semis, opening the door for Nadal.

The Spaniard won 6-4 5-7 6-4 6-2 against the Serb to become the first player ever to win majors on clay, grass and hardcourt in a single season.

Federer is now 29 while Mallorca-born Nadal is just 24 - and, with him having overcome his knee trouble, it is frightening to think how much more he might win.

Nevertheless, Nadal is likely to face tough competition tonight from New Zealand fly-half Daniel Carter and Sri Lankan spin king Mutiah Muralitharan.

All Black Carter won the Tri Nations for the sixth time and he also helped NZ complete a clean sweep in the Autumn internationals.

While in Britain, Carter hit a penalty against Wales to overhaul Jonny Wilkinson and become the leading Test point scorer with 1,188 points.

That record includes 29 tries, 208 conversion, 207 penalties and two drop goals at an average of 15 point a game, highest average for players with more than 500 Test points.

Meanwhile, Murali was also a record breaker before his retirement this year, becoming the first bowler to take 800 Test wickets, all at an average of 22.72.

Better still, he achieved his feat in typical fairytale style with his final delivery in Test cricket, dismissing Pragjan Ojha of India to complete a 10-wicket win.

Murali's career record was indeed second to none - only Shane Warne, on 708 wickets, came anywhere near to matching this spinning genius.

Coach SPOTY
UNLIKE the 2005 Ashes victory which came at the end of a long unbeaten run, the 2009 win has seemed to breed further success for the England cricketers and their coach Andy Flower.

England are unbeaten in all of their Test series since the fifth Test win at the Oval regained the Ashes, drawing in South Africa, beating Bangladesh twice and Pakistan.

In limited overs cricket, England have overseen a big upturn in form, with five successive series wins over South Africa, Bangladesh twice, Pakistan and Australia. The team also tasted success in the Twenty20 World Cup.

Much credit for this must go to the coach who seems to have instilled a great spirit in the camp and a professionalism which has seen the team's fielding improve massively.

Team SPOTY
THE two golfers, McDowell and Westwood, may cancel each other out in the main award but Europe's Ryder Cup players should be a shoo-in for the Team of the Year.

Trailing 6-4 after the first two sessions of fourballs and foursomes, Europe produced a scintillating run of form to win the third session by 5.5 to 0.5.

The trail of victories began on Saturday evening and finished on Sunday afternoon as the competition was forced into a Monday finish for the first time ever in rainy Wales.

Luke Donald, Ian Poulter and Miguel Angel Jiminez all won their Singles matches while Rory McIlroy and Eduaordo Molinari earned halves.

But, at 13.5-13.5, it was all down to McDowell to keep his cool. That he did, winning on the 17th green after his opponent Hunter Mahan conceded a five-foot putt.

The victory sparked celebrations reminiscent of a football pitch invasion as fans flooded onto the green in a scene which will go down in Ryder Cup history.

Europe had won its sixth Ryder Cup out of the last eight - with four wins in the last five - but only by the slimmest of margins. This was a classic.

Young SPOTY
IN a year in which the England senior team failed badly at the World Cup in South Africa, English football actually won its first major international trophy for 17 years.

England beat Spain 2-1 in the final of the Under-17 European Championships in Liechtenstein and Liverpool's Conor Coady was vital to the success.

Described as a Steven Gerrard-type box-to-box midfielder - with the crew-cut hairstyle to match - Coady was instrumental as skipper in bringing back the trophy in May.

Let us hope in years to come, he will do better than Gerrard on the senior international stage as well.

Lifetime Achievement award
THE BBC has made a shocking decision which smacks of pandering to the masses by giving the Lifetime Achievement award to David Beckham.

To his credit, Beckham won everything there was to win in the club game, and he also hauled the national team out of sticky situations on several occasions.

Off the pitch, Beckham deserves credit for his charitable work, raising awareness for UNICEF and the Unite against Aids campaign.

He has also featured in memorable sketches for Comic Relief and played a big part in helping Great Britain win the bid for the London 2012 Olympics.

But, aged 35, his name sits uncomfortably at the moment alongside other Manchester United greats who have picked up this award - Sir Alex Ferguson, George Best and Sir Bobby Charlton.

The reason being that I would imagine Beckham has much more yet to give in his post-playing career.

When Alexander the Great was 33, he broke down and cried as there were no more lands to conquer. David Beckham is not Alexander the Great.

Haye beats Harrison with embarrassing ease

DAVID HAYE stopped Audley Harrison in the third round at the MEN Arena to retain the WBA heavyweight title with ease.

This all-British bout had been built up massively over the last few weeks but it ended up being embarrassingly one-sided as Haye utterly dominated.

Bermondsey-born Haye won by technical knockout in the third as the fight belatedly opened up.

There was barely a punch thrown in either of the first two rounds which ended in a chorus of boos from the Manchester crowd.

Even Puerto Rican referee Luis Pabon urged a step up in the quality but the opening minute of the third round looked set to go the way of the first two.

Then, all of a sudden, Haye delivered a firm right-hander and followed it up with a left-right combination to floor Harrison.

Harrison, who threw just one punch all the way through, got up from the canvas on an eight count but, just seconds later, the fight was over after the ref called it to a halt.

The result was a considerable embarrassment for former Olympic champion Harrison who spent most of the last week talking up his chances.

Harrison, at 18st 1lb, weighed in three stone heavier than Haye and had a reach advantage of eight inches in the first all-British world heavyweight clash since Lennox Lewis beat Frank Bruno in 1993.

But, since winning his first 19 professional fights against hand-picked opponents in the wake of his Sydney Games success, Harrison has just eight wins and now five losses in the last five years.

His poor record showed as he attempted to stifle the fight early on before eventually being overwhelmed after one minute and 53 seconds of the third round.

Even 30-year-old victor Haye would have struggled to take full pleasure from this. But, to spout an old cliche, he could only beat the opponent in front of him.

Haye promised in September that the fight would be "as one-sided as a gang rape" and he was proved correct in his assessment of a derisory challenger.

It seems inevitable now that Haye will face the Klitschko brothers over the next 12 months with his manager stating the Londoner intends to retire next year.

Older brother Vitali, 39, is the WBC belt holder while 34-year-old Wladimir is the IBO/WBF champion.

Beating both men would make Haye the undisputed heavyweight champion and the anticipated bouts would go a long way to restoring the division back to its former glory.

After tonight's farce of a fight, it certainly needs some lifting.

SPOTY winners and predos

ACTUAL WINNERS
Sports Personality of the Year: Ryan Giggs
Runners up: Jenson Button (second), Jessica Ennis (third)

Young Sports Personality of the Year: Tom Daley
Runners up: Heather Watson, Jodie Williams

Overseas Sports Personality of the Year: Usain Bolt
Runner up: Roger Federer

Team of the Year: England men's cricket team
Coach of the Year: Fabio Capello, England football coach
Lifetime Achievement Award: Seve Ballesteros
Unsung Hero Award: Doreen Adcock, Milton Keynes swimming tutor
Helen Rollason Award: Major Phil Packer
Special Award: Eddie Izzard


MY SPOTY PICKS
Sports Personality of the Year: Jenson Button
Runners up: Jessica Ennis, Andrew Strauss

JENSON BUTTON should emulate new McLaren team mate Lewis Hamilton by winning Sports Personality of the Year after he made it two British Formula One world champions in successive years.

Button's blistering start to the season saw him win six of the first seven races for Brawn GP who were formed from the ashes of the defunct Honda team just weeks before the start of the season.

Indeed, it is these circumstances, with Button going from being unsure of having an F1 seat to leading from start to finish, which made his world crown all the more remarkable.

The Sports Personality of the Year award is almost always a source of great debate - and this year's choice was no different.

Button faces stiff competition from heptathlete Jessica Ennis and triple jumper Phillips Idowu after Team GB's successful World Championships in Berlin.

Like Button, Ennis led from start to finish. She set a personal best score of 6,731 points to win gold and compensate somewhat for the cruel blow when she missed the Beijing Olympics through injury.

Idowu achieved what he had threatened to do for some time and a personal best of 17.73m ensured he went one better than his Olympic silver medal in Beijing.

Three other world champions are on the shortlist - gymnast Beth Tweddle, heavyweight boxer David Haye and 15-year-old diver Tom Daley.

Tweddle, who was third in the 2006 edition of SPOTY, overcame the disappointment of failing in her signature event, the bars, to win gold for a fantastic floor routine at London's O2 Arena.

Haye gave away nearly one foot in height and seven stone in weight but his points victory over Nikolay Valuev in Nuremburg made him Britain's first heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis retired in 2003.

There is more on Tom Daley's achievements below.

England cricket captain Andrew Strauss led from the front, finishing the highest run scorer in the Ashes series as the hosts beat Australia 2-1 for the second time in four years.

Meanwhile, Mark Cavendish also had a summer that he is unlikely to forget after his six stage wins in the gruelling Tour de France, including the finale on the Champs-Elysses.

The remaining two candidates are tennis player Andy Murray, who reached a career-high world ranking as number two, and PFA Player of the Year Ryan Giggs, who won a record 11th Premier League title with Manchester United.

But, for me, it is Button who should take the prestigious BBC prize.

Not just for his brilliant start after months of uncertainty but also for the way he kept his cool as his lead was cut in the second part of the season.

His attacking performance in the penultimate Grand Prix in Brazil, when he went from 14th on the grid to finish fifth, was a champagne moment to cap a thrilling season.


Young Sports Personality of the Year: Tom Daley
Runners up: Heather Watson, Jodie Williams

THE CAREER of teenage diver Tom Daley hit incredible heights this year when he became Britain's youngest ever world champion in Rome.

The 15-year-old from Plymouth was the talk of the championships after he produced a brilliant final dive to take gold in the 10m platform final.

Daley, who won Young SPOTY in 2007, has made the shortlist for this and the main award in 2009.

But, while the main award may be beyond him, he fully deserves a second Young SPOTY prize in three years for his even greater feats in the last twelve months.

Not that Daley has been the only teenager turning in world class performances this year.

17-year-old Heather Watson won the US Open girls tournament with a dominant straight-sets win over Russian Yana Buchina.

Watson's win indicates further that the future of British tennis may not be as bleak as some fear after Laura Robson's Wimbledon girls crown in 2008.

Meanwhile, Jodie Williams, 16, became the first girl to win both the 100m and 200m titles at the IAAF World Championships.

Williams' 100m time of 11.39 seconds was the fastest time by a British female at that point in 2009 and she already represents a real medal hope for the London 2012 Olympics.


Overseas Sports Personality of the Year: Usain Bolt
JAMAICAN sprint king Usain Bolt may have won Overseas SPOTY in 2008 but, in typical Bolt style, he was even better in 2009.

When Bolt eased his way to breaking the 100m world record in the 2008 Beijing Olympics final, it was clear that his time of 9.69 seconds could be reduced considerably further.

Bolt waited for the big occasion to come around again before smashing that time and setting 9.58 seconds as the new record at the World Championships in Berlin.

The Jamaican also broke the world record in the 200m for the second year running.

After narrowly beating Michael Johnson's 1996 time of 19.32 by two-hundredths of a second in the Olympics, Bolt reduced the record to 19.19 in Berlin.

Quite simply, there is no man who can live with his pace on this planet.


Coach of the Year: Ross Brawn
ROSS BRAWN is a team director rather than a coach but he merits some recognition for his role in Button's F1 world crown and his glittering career generally.

Extremely clever but always self-deprecating, Brawn was the quiet tactical genius behind seven-time champion Michael Schumacher as technical director at Benetton and Ferrari.

After Honda's demise, Brawn took it upon himself to rebuild the team from scratch, reluctantly putting his own name on it.

But for a natural born winner, just getting the car on the track was never going to be enough and his team built a car with a rear diffuser which blew the field away and led Button to glory.


Team of the Year: Ireland national rugby union
IRELAND's rugby team overcame years of misery and painful near misses to land the Six Nations title, their first win in the competition since 1985.

Better still, they beat all-comers to achieve their first Grand Slam success for 61 years - and they did so in the most dramatic style.

The Irish began with a 30-21 win over France at Croke Park before a routine 38-9 beating of Italy in Rome on the following week.

In the third match, Ireland held on to win 14-13 at Croke Park against England after a late Delon Armitage try set up a grand-stand finish.

And in the fourth match, Ireland completed a 22-15 win over Scotland at Murrayfield.

The final match was in Cardiff against Wales, the 2008 Grand Slam winners. Ireland were a point behind with two minutes left.

The 15-14 deficit would still be enough to give them the title but it meant they would fail to get the Triple Crown or the Grand Slam.

Then, a drop goal by Ronan O'Gara and a penalty miss by Stephen Jones ensured that the Irish would win the lot.

Better still, Ireland drew with Australia and beat world champions South Africa in the autumn internationals to end 2009 unbeaten.

Other teams to enjoy successful sporting years included both the men and women's England cricket teams.

While the men's Ashes success was widely publicised, the women won both the 20-overs and 50-overs World Cups, and retained the Ashes with a draw in a one-off Test.

In domestic cricket, Durham won a second successive county championship while, in football, Manchester United won an 11th Premier League title.

Then, of course, there is Brawn GP who built a champion Formula One car from scratch despite having just weeks to do it in.

It is a sign of the times, however, that many of those workers were made redundant at the start of the season. The recession resulted in widespread cost-cutting in F1.


Lifetime Achievement Award: Seve Ballesteros
SPANISH golfer Seve Ballesteros won five major titles in his playing career - three Open Championships and two Masters titles.

Ballesteros announced himself on the world stage when finishing second in the Open as a 19-year-old in 1976.

He won the Open three years later before two further victories in 1984 and 1988. His two US Masters successes were in 1980 and 1983.

His performance as a team player was also undeniable and he helped Europe to Ryder Cup wins in 1985, 1987, 1989 and 1995 as a player, and 1997 as a non-playing captain.

More recently, last autumn, the golf world was saddened to hear Ballesteros was gravely ill with a cancerous brain tumour.

Ballesteros had the tumour removed and responded well to chemotherapy. He set up the Seve Ballesteros Foundation to help those fighting cancer with money used to research the causes of brain tumours.


Sports Personality of the Year will be shown on BBC One at 1900 GMT.
Note: Two further awards, the Unsung Hero and Helen Rollason Awards, will also be announced during the show.