Andy Murray looked so uncomfortable standing there with a rictus smile at the end .ironically just watched Wimbledon on bbc 3 ( the film ) with Paul Bettany as Peter Colt. Not so long ago we thought it fantasy for a british guy to win Wimbledon.so Murray really has transformed British tennis to be fair .well done to him and Alastair Brownlee and massively well done to Nick Skelton.

Murray was always going to win, shame he can't be arsed to turn up. And I know he's 'training' in Miami, funny they never go to train in somewhere less glamorous.

I'm glad Nick Skelton got into the top three, I'm old to remember Nick being the Pony Club pin up and daring to beat the like of David Broome and Harvey Smith. Plus watching his event ion the telly not expecting to win was the highlight of the Olympics for me. Purely personal but yes it was.

Shhh let the eternally ignorant revel in their righteous indignation. It's all they have.

Drink!

Considering that it's the Australian Open coming up soon, there wouldn't be much point doing cold weather training would there?

As for equestrian events.......................shouldn't it be the horses who get the medals - after all, they do all the work.

Of course, if England produced a world class sportsman like we have, they might have a better chance of winning the thing.

I remember this show when it used to be called Sports Review of the Year. It was an occasion. It was proper BBC stuff. Then they changed it to Sports personality and this awful SPOTY acronym started appearing. It became all about the main award. The shortlist of athletes got bigger and bigger. Most of the people on the shortlist obviously have no chance of winning.

It had some dignity when it was filmed in a BBC studio. Now it's just a big overblown, overlong, tedious arena show. Why have they got singers? I thought it was supposed to be about sport.

Perhaps Andy Murray should be retired from the shortlist now, he's won it three times, and this was an Olympic year when "Team GB", (I hate that, why not just call it the British team?) won lots of gold medals. Not that I'm saying he isn't a deserving winner, he is, but it's boring. I'd have voted for Nick Skelton if I were the sort of person that votes in these sort of things, but I'm not.

Was out last night so missed the show. Does not make sense to go back and link to my original post, but see others have summed it up. To me was amazed he got #4 but a long way behind Skelton.

Easy to see why the public don't warn to him.
Is Somalian.
Lives and trains in the US.
His coach has been caught up in a drugs scandal but nothing proved against Mo.
I believe he missed 2 out of competition drug tests, one more and he would have been banned.
Publicity around being a tax exile, but that also applied to previous winners like the F1 drivers including Hamilton.
But more critically it's a personality contest and Mo just doesn't come across well on TV.
Murray under guidance I am sure from his management company now comes across much better than the grumpy personality when he started, helped more today being married with a child.

Where I am more surprised is Sophie Christiansem (dressage) beating Laura Kenny to be top female in the vote. It shows the horse fraternity turned out to vote as with Skelton. I was sure Laura would beat here as seems to get much more publicity, and recent TV appearances and wedding should have helped.

There's always one isnt there.

Chortle

Surely only in Britain could we label someone won has won 3 Slams, 2 Olympic Golds, almost single-handedly won the Davis Cup, current No. 1 all during a period with many all-time greats playing as having no personality!

Your ignorance of equestrian events and horses in general is frankly staggering. I'd love to see you get on a horse ANY horse and get it to move. That would be hilarious.

There are equally hot and humid places to train and acclimatise rather than Miami. Similarly would it harm his preparation for an event over two weeks away to give Birmingham a visit to be able to accept such an award? It's not the first time he couldn't be arsed to turn up. His attitude has always been suspect and this constant snub of this event does little to endear him to many people. I have seen how much he has worked to overcome the seemingly sullen git of a few years ago, but once again accepting an award from another location is starting to seem like an insult to both the event AND those who support him and voted for him.

Clearly you need to take some time out. Perhaps an hour or so. Just so you can look through these forums and find out what the smiley means.

Once you've done that..................try and get out more.

Wouldn't say he constantly snubs it. He was there to pick it up last time he won it.

To be fair to the guy that came in 3rd place he shouldn't have been there in the first place. Equestrian is about as much a sport as lasagne is.

Murray is an "Olympic person", and he's popular with the other athletes. And it's two years in a row, and a third time overall. Have you actually watched at all?


It's remarkable it took this long for someone to make this 'joke', but two things:

1. Everyone has a personality, and the successful athletes will be hard-working, prepared to put themselves on the line, and bundles of guts and tenacity. Personality is not just about vacuous giggling and cracking jokes.

2. There are two definitions of personality, one being a "celebrity or famous person," so are you saying Murray isn't famous?

The award is not for the best stand-up comic who owns a pair of shorts.


This time of year he is training for the Australian Open, which is very hot, so he needs to train somewhere hot. It's also a suitable location for training for the US Open, the location of one of the main tennis tournaments, near tennis academies and a university with an excellent sports science programme so he can get various assessments done, which is where his former hitting partner went to uni. And there are other top tennis players to practice with. Oh, and his current coach, Lendl, lives in Florida, so he can stay in his own home while they train.

I'll admit, it seems a bit more strange with Mo, because his next race is months away, but I have no issue with him training somewhere nice, If there isn't anywhere suitable close to home and you have to travel away from home, why should you pick somewhere horrible?

OK - so he has to train somewhere to warm to gradually acclimatise for the Australian Open. Should he choose an English speaking country he feels comfortable in which is a third of the way towards his destination which is reknown for it's superb training facilities or should he choose somewhere less comfortable where he can't focus as well?
Perhaps the reason he is number 1 in the world and has won SPOTY 3 times is because he puts his sport first. I voted for Ali Brownlee but pretty much everyone on the shortlist would have been a deserving winner so happy for AM to win it.
I really don't think us mere mortals have any clue what goes into getting to the level of these athletes.

To be fair to Murray, he might not have a great personality but anyone who saw his appearances on Mock the Week will know he's quite happy to have his leg pulled, self deprecating about his weaknesses which endeared me to him.

Yep agree with that, I find it unrecognisable from the Sports Review of the Year of old and the programme these days seems obsessed with the main award with very little actual footage from the year. Even though they used to get slagged off, personally I found the days of games in the studio with Des Lynam (such as a penalty-shoot-out one year) more fun and relevant to a sports programme than seeing Robbie Williams singing.

If you can't say something without a smiley don't bother.

I've got to admit I love a sporting montage, and would rather see that than a studio celebrity shoot-out, but there didn't seem any proper rhythm to them. Some were date related, so we got stuff happening in January, then February etc, but then there were montages with clips of the Olympics and Paralympics spread throughout the evening, but generally made up of very, very short clips of 'moments' rather than telling a story. It really was a case of blink and you'll miss it, or if you follow a particular sport or athlete not in the nominations list, you'd have clips spread across a number of montages.

Last year, they dedicated sections to the best performing athletes from particular sports, or groups of sports, so there was more cohesion. I love that the BBC try to include as many sports as possible, including para-sport, but most were short-changed.

There's something you don't see very often..........................a scouser with no sense of humour.

How the hell did Usain Bolt not win the Overseas award?

Nothing against Simone Biles but Usain should have been a dead-cert surely?

The only thing I can think is that he's won it 3 times before and they have a cap on 3 wins or something?

It feels far too long now....

I was bored by 8pm, the fawning was cringe to watch

I was glad they did something in remembrance of Muhammed Ali but was disappointed they didn't do something similar for Johan Cruyff. Arguably the greatest European footballer of all time and all he got was a 1 second clip of his turn.

I guess they didn't have time for a longer tribute what with Robbie Williams having to promote his new single...

Ali transcended sport. His life touched so many other things going on during his time. He's a much, MUCH bigger icon than Cruyff ever was or ever will be.

I like Cruyff, but he can't compare to Ali on a global scale.

Yes I agree with that, Ali was incomparable and I wasn't trying to say that Cruyff was on a par with him. He was still one of the greatest ever footballers though so would have liked to have seen a short montage for him in place of some of the other dross they found time for over the 2.5 hours.