After a summer where athletics has captured hearts and headlines, and made so many fans fall back in love with it again, either Amy Hunt or Josh Kerr should win the award for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. The bookies’ odds suggest many others think the same way: Hunt is the even-money favourite, Kerr is second, with Harry Kane a stride or two back in third. Yet Kerr knows he cannot take anything for granted.
In 2023 the 28-year-old Scot won the world 1500m title in a clash for the ages against Jakob Ingebrigtsen. But then he fell foul of the BBC’s curious reluctance to pick two athletes from the same sport in its six-person shortlist. Instead the wheelchair tennis player Alfie Hewett, and Rory McIlroy, who won four of his five Ryder Cup matches that year, got the nod ahead of him.
It’s a massive award, and I would be truly honoured to be on that shortlist up against some of the best athletes of all time this year. I would love to go, but it’s not a given, that’s the reality.” Kerr is right to be cautious given that only twice since 2017 has the BBC veered off its informal policy. The first came in 2019 when the athletes Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson were selected.
Then it happened again when the footballers Hannah Hampton and Chloe Kelly got the nod. However, on both occasions, those selections helped to balance the male-female split. But in a year where Kane could win the Ballon D’Or, Matt Weston has won two Winter Olympic medals, Luke Littler has dominated darts, and McIlroy won the Masters again, it is not a given the BBC will necessarily go for both track and field stars.
Kerr’s claims are surely stronger than anyone given he obliterated a world mile record that had stood for 27 years, and backed it up by winning the world indoor, Commonwealth Games and Ultimate Championship. Late on Sunday night he accepted that amounted to pretty much the perfect season. And you know, that’s all I can give.
This, genuinely, has been the best year of my career.” Next year he wants to go for the world 1500m record, but he stressed it would not be easy. Few athletes have a bigger personality as she showed again at the weekend by speaking out against Sydney Sweeney sexualising sport, and about the difficulties of performing when on her period. There’s not going to be a single year that will be harder.
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