BBC Sports Personality Of The Year / Eliot Pollak / 23 November 2009 /

Britain's unexpected F1 hero is hot favourite to lift the SPOTY trophy but can another world champion pull off an upset?

A recent Radio Times poll regarding which television catchphrase was the most popular with the British public, ended up producing few surprises. Dale Winton's majestic 'Bring on the wall,' polled well but number one place however was reserved for Michael Barrymore's 'What is a hot spot not? A good spot.' - appropriate really given the type of hot spots Barrymore's extra-curricular antics subsequently led him in to. In his case, a hot spot certainly was never a good spot.

Scouring the list however, there is no mention of my own favourite TV catchphrase, eight words that have been said every year around mid-December since Logie Baird legged it down the patent office - "It's been another great year for British sport." And so it shall pass on December 13, 2009, a gurning Gary Lineker will utter those eight words, and cut to a Coldplay-backed montage featuring that boxer, whatshername the runner from the summer, and Jenson Button. Here we go again kids, it's the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show - an annual confirmation that Bobby Charlton is indeed still alive

This year of course, there is a grain of truth in the catchphrase, so the SPOTY betting market is particularly intriguing. Jenson may be the hot favourite at [1.74] but the tussle is more complex than a typical nailed-on favourite market.

Only once in the last decade has the winner been from a sport that hasn't appeared on terrestrial television (Joe Calzaghe back in 2007.) The reason is fairly simple - the only people who actually watch SPOTY are those without satellite, and hence have a Sunday night choice between that or Heartbeat.

This is amplified in 2009, as the afternoon Sky football offering is the tasty clash between Liverpool and Arsenal, meaning satellite viewers may have watched their fill of sport for the day already. This will be bad news for Andrew Strauss ([17.0]) and David Haye ([7.8]), as although both of their triumphs certainly captured the imagination of the nation, neither were on terrestrial television.

All of which leaves Jessica Ennis ([6.8]) as Button's main rival, and the stats make for interesting reading. F1 has not provided a winner since Damon Hill in 1996, with even St Lewis of Hamilton only able to grab the runners-up berth, despite his huge popularity. By contrast, two female athletes have stood proudly with the trophy in this decade alone (Radcliffe and Holmes,) so Ennis could well be in with a shout.

There is admittedly one killer stat in Button's favour. The only two previous SPOTY occasions that female athletes went head-to-head against F1 drivers (1986, Nigel Mansell vs Fatima Whitbread and 1994, Damon Hill vs Sally Gunnell,) horse-power triumphed over horse-faces.

Ennis is undoubtedly, how can I put it, less aesthetically challenged than either Whitbread or Gunnell, and in today's image-is-everything world, that may be enough to see her shatter the above precedent. Button is the favourite, but Ennis is undoubtedly the value.

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