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.

Sigh uppercut.

The men's 100m is a discipline
The women's 100m is another discipline

That is my point.

A mistake was made which I acknowledged. Yet it makes no difference to my point regarding O. Pistorius and 'inspiration'; he will never win a singles final race against a field of able-bodied competitors, in his discipline. I do not find that inspiring. It is the reason why I watched next to nothing of the paralympics.

Ok uppercut. Lots of people feel differently.

Ahh, uppercut, but neither would 99.9% of abled bodied people either. Oscar would, and did beat a large percentage of his able bodied competitors bu getting to the semi finals.

Give SPOTYA to the British Olympic and Paralympic Teams, I say, to share en masse. Seb Coe can collect it for them.

That has no bearing on the fact he has a miniscule chance winning of olympic singles final in the able-bodied field, against other professional athletes. I watch the olympics to see who the best is, not because they're fitter than me.

Olympics schmolympics. Bradley Wiggins should get it, and not because of his gold medal.

The problem with SPOTY last year wasn't the award itself, or the process, it was the fact that in the absence of the Olympics or some special event mainstream coverage of female sports is sod-awful. We get Wimbledon and that's it, and since we haven't had a really good British woman tennis player for decades there's simply nobody the public can call to mind. The problem starts with TV programmers.

I think that a Male and Female SPOTY might be good for general female visibility in non-Olympic years.

And Team GB will presumably get Team of the Year (with Sky in second if there's any justice).

Oh and I wouldn't fancy Mo Farah's chances against David Weir.

but Uppercut, he did do better than most of the field of able bodied, professional athletes. The fact that he managed to come in the upper third of a field of the best that the world can produce despite having no legs below the knee joint is surely inspiring.

Not to me, as he does not represent the pinnacle of human achievement. If the day comes when people with artifical limbs can run faster than normal athletes it'll be a different matter.

Until then I'm not particularly interested.

Ahh, so as men are naturally stronger and faster than women, by your reckoning, women could never be the pinnacle of human achievement and therefore are not worthy of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award then?

I'm assuming you are either a man or haven't really thought this through yet.

Sounding like eugenics. Ugh.

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award is a pile of junk. I couldn't care less who wins it.

Jessica Ennis is going to win SPITY anyway.

Sorry, SPOTY.

So given that it was clear from the title that SPOTY was under discussion, you are on the thread because...?

This is the second (i thought, perfectly reasonable) thread I have started this week that has been hijacked by people with dodgy agendas. No idea what else to say about that!

If I don't care about something then I certainly don't go on a thread about it - why waste time posting on something you don't care about?

What a WUM.

I couldn't care who wins the current award, not that I don't care about the concept of an award. Simple enough.

Uppercut I suggest you start your own thread where you can discuss the very special award whose rules you have made up in your own head. We'll carry on chatting about SPOTY which is an award the BBC have been running for some time now and which has a clearly understood purpose.

It's ok lotta, it was a great OP!

Uppercut, why be so arrogant just because you have extra muscle tissue? I found the paralympians inspiring because of what they had to overcome to get where they are. I feel the same about the women Olympians and what they had to overcome, namely the discouraging bullshit that comes from people like you.

So what would you do if you were a woman? Just give up, sit back and cheer on the men cos you'll never be as good as them? Or maybe try your hardest, train as hard, etc, but just meekly accept that you'll never be get the recognition or rewards because you had the misfortune to be born with a fanjo?

Thank you Doctrine! There must be something in the water around here these days!