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Nominated, apparently.
Button favourite though.....
Unfortunately he stands no chance as he is perceived to have finished miles behind the leader.
Still great he got nominated.
Button hands down favorite.
Why? Hamilton was nominated last year (wasn't he?), and Hoy beat him.
Agree that Cav won't win, with a cyclist last year, particularly as the public in general are less aware of Cav's achievements, but I don't think Button's a foregone conclusion!
These nominations came out about a week ago, slow on the uptake with this thread mind...
It's a good list for a change, any of those are deserving of the award.
Yeah but Hoy beat Hamilton cos he's massive and Hamilton is tiny. It probably subconsciously changed peoples opinions.
I hope that Button winning is not a foregone conclusion otherwise people won't vote for the other emminently more deserving candidates who weren't assisted by having the best technology to work with.
Assisted by car or not Button still had to finish,and beat his team mate.And in the latter part of the season Red Bull had consistently the better car......
Reckon he deserves it for sticking with the underperforming Honda and BAR for all the seasons before.
So Cavendish doesn't have a huge team of people behind* him helping out then!?
No top modern sportman or woman operates on their own. Technology and analysis is as much a part of athletics as it is F1.
*(or in front!)
Please forgive my ignorance, but what are cavendish' achievements this year?
Has he won a lot of races?
(Please note the term races not legs or stages).
Actually 'stage' wins count as race wins. Tour wins, which I guess is what you're thinking of as 'races', is seen as more of a league, Cav will never win the Tour De France, he's just not that type of rider.
And in the latter part of the season Red Bull had consistently the better car......
Yes, and Button didn't win, in fact Hamilton generally performed better! Button won 6 of the first 7, then didn't win again didn't he? Suggests the car to me...
So the tour de france is a league and not a race?
I thought it was a big race that was too long to do in one "sitting" so they split it up to give the dudes a bit of shuteye!
I genuinely didn't know that.
So does that make the individual race winners champions?
ie "champion of a certain french mountain/hill"?
njee20 - I know you do a lot of racing, so do you race on a 40lb Apollo then? Or is your use of the best equipment available different in some way?
Should Usain Bolt race in clogs? Should Olympic archers use twigs and a bit of string? etc., etc...
As I said above, all sports use technology to its limits not just F1, and (with the odd exception) Britain's cyclist have only come really good after loads of money and investment was thrown at the sport.
[i]Yes, and Button didn't win, in fact Hamilton generally performed better! Button won 6 of the first 7, then didn't win again didn't he? Suggests the car to me...[/i]
IIRC I think Alonso scored more points than Hamilton in the later part of the '08 season, so is Hamilton not worthy either? A championship is over an entire season not one race, or one section of a season. Button scored points in every race but one, which is a fine achievement by any standards.
Y[i]es, and Button didn't win, in fact Hamilton generally performed better! Button won 6 of the first 7, then didn't win again didn't he? Suggests the car to me... [/i]
Yes, Hamilton scored more points at the end of the season, and in the meantime, in a car that was probably not as good as the updated McLaren, and the Red Bull, Button was a good enough driver to a) make up places when he needed to, b) bring the home in a point scoring position, and c) not crash into a wall on the last lap of a race whilst in 2nd (or was it 3rd?) place.
Suggests it was the driver to me...
Cavendish's achievements this year:-
-6 Stage wins at the Tour de France
-Milan San Remo
-3 stages of Giro d'Italia and wore Maglia Rosa
-2 Stage wins at the Tour de Suisse
-Final stage of Tirreno Adriatico
-2 stages of Three Days of De Panne
-2 stages and the Sprint Jersey at the Amgen Tour of California
-2 stages of Tour of Qatar
-2 Stage Wins at Tour of Missouri
-Stage win at Tour of Ireland
-Winner of Sparkassen Classic
8th in the UCI world rankings, was 3rd at one point, but he dropped out of some later races due to illness.
2008
-Four stage wins in the Tour de France
-Two stage wins Giro d'Italia
-Three stage win Tour of Missouri
-Three stage wins in the Tour of Ireland
-Stage win in Ster Elektotoer
-1st place British Madison Championship
-World Madison Champion
-Two stage wins Three Days of De Panne
-1st place Schelderpijs
-1st place - Prologue Tour De Romandie
[i]perceived to have finished miles behind the leader[/i]
not perceived, it's FACT.
Cavendish definitely deserves it - winning 6 stages of the Tour is just phenomenal. Backhander, on the assumption your knowledge of road racing is limited, winning a stage in the Tour is generally considered as big an achievement as winning all but the biggest single day races. For all but the absolute top tier riders winning just one would be a career defining moment. Winning six in one edition of the Tour is quite an achievement. Then of course all his other fantastic results over the season as above.
You can't say Cavendish has achieved nothing! Its horses for courses with road races. If you put him in a head to head sprint with Contador, Cavendish would win all day long. Does this make Contador slow? its like comparing a downhill racer to a xc racer IMO.
Not a massive Cav fan though and would rather see Wiggins nominated
Should Usain Bolt race in clogs?
Why not. He'd still win.
I'd love to see Cav win this (in fact six SPOTY in a row would be more his style)
Cav genuinely HAS a personality- unlike on-message sportspeople elsewhere.
Anyone remember his first TDF where he was in tears after getting swamped in some of the final run ins? He really wears his heart on his sleeve, even if he sometimes makes a bit of a fudd of himself.
Aye, you can keep your Jenson Hamiltons or that Jambo trackie!
Cav's achievements are fantastic, no doubt about it, but I wouldn't vote for him even if the alternatives were Zara Phillips & Joey Barton.
It's Sports 'Personality', the clue is in the title, and he comes across as a whiny & arrogant (behaviour after crashing, comments about the Olympics etc).
True role models don't have tantrums when things go wrong.
The true test of some ones character is how they react to adversity, and he seems a bit mard to me.
Just my opinion, but that's honestly how I feel.
Aye, I agree with Rusty Spanner, it's 'personality' that's being voted for.
BUT, mardy is what a (winning) athlete is likely to be within seconds of finishing the immense ordeal that is a TdF stage, especially if they missed the opportunity that they and their team mates worked for.
It would be great to have another cyclist win the SPOTY. We would have arrived in the public's conciousness if it happened.
And I'd be called 'Chris Cavendish' or something equally innane when I walked into the office wearing my cycle gear on a monday morning.
Ben
Cav is already a cycling great. Take the TDF. Now, granted he has a strong team, but that aside, he has changed the way the race is ridden on sprint stages. The other teams know they can't win. I can't remember that happening for anyone else.
However, Button will win.
Cav could get green, Wiggo yellow, no matter. Pro cycling is not popular enough to win.
So, he's Sparkassen Classic champion.
I don't know anything about roadying but he is competing with some bonafide world champions at the peak of what they do. The same cannot be said for Cavendish, it would seem.
Nice for a cyclist to be there for sure but completely undeserving of the title.
[i]I don't know anything about roadying but he is competing with some bonafide world champions at the peak of what they do. The same cannot be said for Cavendish, it would seem[/i]
He's doing exactly the same as Button - regularly beating previous world champions at the peak of what they do.
And he has of course been world champion several times (on the track)
Andy, [b]this tear[/b] Button is the F1 world champion.
He has beaten previous world champions [b]often enough[/b] to take the title.
Haye (while also undeserving of the title) is a world champion
Tweddle is a world champion etc etc.
I cannot see how somebody who's done very well in a competition but ultimately lost (ie didn't win) could deserve the SPOTY award.
anyway it's BBC sports personality, lets see, how much have the BBC spent on TDF/non track coverage this year V F1 coverage?...it's a done deal already
It's Sports 'Personality', the clue is in the title, and he comes across as a whiny & arrogant (behaviour after crashing, comments about the Olympics etc).
He sure can be, but he comes across much better in other contexts. There's a video on the BBC of him and Wiggins filming something for SPOTY and he seems like a nice guy on there, when he hasn't just finished a stage and had a microphone shoved in his face.
[i]He has beaten previous world champions often enough to take the title.[/i]
he's clearly fortunate that his particular world championship is staged over many different races, rather than just 1.
Jesus, the F1 fans have really got their backs up haven't they!?
Muffin Man, I'm sorry, but drawing comparisons between equipment in cycling (or running) and F1 is retarded at best. For a start, all bikes have a weight limit of 6.8kg, which virtually all pro-tour bikes are dead on, so there's a nice level playing field.
If Usain Bolt changed his shoe sponsor he wouldn't now go to being last in races, even if he ran bare foot!
I'm not saying I don't enjoy F1, but you can't deny that it's the car that wins, the driver's simply there to keep it on the track, there's not exactly any 'bad' drivers among them!
Button won the world championship because he had the best car and the ability to hold it together when it mattered, I'll grant him that. Difficult to compare to Hamilton though, who didn't have the nice cushion from all the early victories and thus had to take risks.
Is it coincidence that Button's basically done **** all until this year, then wins 6 of 7 races? Did he spend a lot of time on his PS3 over winter getting good at racing games?
Muffin Man, I'm sorry, but drawing comparisons between equipment in cycling (or running) and F1 is retarded at best. For a start, all bikes have a weight limit of 6.8kg, which virtually all pro-tour bikes are dead on, so there's a nice level playing field.
F1 has weight limits too you know... But the analogy's not all that bad. Would Cavendish have won all his stages without a team capable of getting him to the end in the right place?
The point that there's more to virtually all sports than the figurehead individual's performance stands.
Yes, and Button didn't win, in fact Hamilton generally performed better! Button won 6 of the first 7, then didn't win again didn't he? Suggests the car to me...
Doesn't this post just show that Hamilton also needs a good car to do well?
Believe Button would be a worthy winner over the season, Cav's win at Milan -San Remo was incredible but he is not well known over here unlike Chris Hoy.
Jessica Ennis would get mine though.
Vote I mean;-)