Sports Personality of the Year - jaw-on-floor at this quote......

[Lottapianos]

..... in response to so many athletes having excelled this year and the dilemma of who should win the overall award.

'There could be a female personality of the year, which I don't think would detract from the main award.......' said James Hutchison, from sports prediction website Superbru (read in Metro)

The main award? THE MAIN AWARD?????

I had to read that quote about 10 times before I could believe it was real. Holy crap. I have kept the newspaper I read it in and I feel like taping the page on my fridge to remind myself every single day of just how unimportant women are to some people. How on earth must Jessica Ennis and Rebecca Adlington and Ellie Simmonds and Victoria Pendleton feel reading that sort of rot???

I'm not even a sports fan but this has made me scream. A lot.

[rosy71]

This was discussed one night when the Olympics was on. I think Denise Lewis suggested it and Gaby Logan didn't agree. I thought it was a bad idea myself because, altrhough the idea was to have both a male and a female personality, I could easily imagine the women's one becoming the secondary, lesser award. Obviously I thought right. I hope it doesn't happen.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Wow.

[grimbletart]

Crap idea obviously because then you would have "Sports Personality of the Year" and "Female sports personality of the year" i.e. the male is default.

[FermezLaBouche]

Painful. Gives so much more strength to the idea that men are the true sports competitors while women play at it.

[CailinDana]

[rosabud]

In light of the very many brilliant performances by the women this year, perhpas what they should have siad is - do we need a Male Sports Personality of the Year too just to make sure the men don't miss out?? (And I don't think that would detract from the main award by the way.........)

[vigglewiggle]

I agree with Rosabud the women led the way this year - particularly at the Olympics/Paralympics. So let the discussion be about a token "sportsman award" once the woman has been crowned overall Sports Personality of the Year!

[EugenesAxe]

I'm not usually Millie Tant about feminist issues but yes, this is a terrible thing to say.

Someone on 5Live said the success of so many of our sportspeople this year opens the way to a change of structure for the award. But that in my mind would be of the order 'Male SPotY', 'Female SPotY' - as well as the team award already given.

I think giving both a gender is the best you can do - only wankers (IMO) would still think of the Male award being the proper one.

[rosabud]

I think giving both a gender is the best you can do - only wankers (IMO) would still think of the Male award being the proper one.

Sadly, I think lots of people would think that way, thus the male Wimbledon winner is the REAL Wimbledon winner/ the male 100m race is the REAL Olympic blue ribbon event/ the male marathon is the REAL marathon etc etc

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Yep. Sport England tweeted the other day that "Britain had its first Grand Slam champion for 76 years." - plenty of characters left to add "male" or indeed to write "36 years" . Grr.

[LaVolcan]

Yep. Sport England tweeted the other day that "Britain had its first Grand Slam champion for 76 years." - plenty of characters left to add "male" or indeed to write "36 years" . Grr.

Yes, indeed. Wimbledon alone has had 4 female champions since 1936. Not to mention the other grand slams which have produced a total of 9 British winners with Angela Mortimer, Ann Jones and Virginia Wade winning more than one grand slam from 1936 onwards; with them doing particularly well at the French Open.

[Uppercut]

Andy Murray should get it because he's finally won something. Gold medals are all very well and good but they're ten-a-penny compared to slam titles.

rosabud
"Sadly, I think lots of people would think that way, thus the male Wimbledon winner is the REAL Wimbledon winner/ the male 100m race is the REAL Olympic blue ribbon event/ the male marathon is the REAL marathon etc etc "

R. Nadal vs S. Williams, U. Bolt vs F. Griffith-Joyner, M. Farrah vs T. Dibaba?

Guess who'd win.

[LurkingAndLearningLovesOrange]

[Speechless] :(

[seeker]

Uppercut- it's not about "who would win in a fight between....." it's about the most inspiring sports personality of the year. Or it should be.

[Uppercut]

I'm not going to apologize for physical reality, or pretend in doesn't matter. No doubt this wil result in a flurry of emails to MNHQ :rolleyes:

If there is a difference in talent my attitude is different. On that score some of the female gold-medal olympic boxers could give their male counterparts a sound beating. But if talent is equal then I'm going to regard the stronger and faster sportsperson as the superior athlete... because they are.

[seeker]

But this particular award is for an inspiring sports personality. Do you think no woman athlete could never win that because she would be beaten by an man offer 100 m?

[Uppercut]

"inspiring sports personality"... I'm inspired by winners, not liberal vomit.

[Uppercut]

I think the categories should be separated and named accordingly and treated equally by the BBC. People can then make up their own minds (shock horror!).

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Do you think a heavyweight boxer is automatically better than a lightweight boxer then?

[Uppercut]

Assuming skill is equal, yes; go down to your local boxing gym and try doing a few rounds with one of each.

I think you'll find it most enlightening.

[LurkingAndLearningLovesOrange]

I'm inspired by sportsmanship and hard work, not always the winners. Sometimes, but not always.

Uppercut: What does personality have to do with strength?

[Uppercut]

Nothing. I think the award is a load of bunk and should be changed to 'Best Sportsman/woman of the year'. I couldn't care less about their 'public' personality.

[seeker]

So almost by definition, you can't be inspired by a sports woman?

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

I would prefer that it isn't split by gender. Johnnie Peacock would beat Andy Murray in a race, for example - it's already judged on a wide range of criteria.