Topic Title

Well, what did you make of that then?

As the credits rolled Claire said:
"Well that about sums up 2006!
They're brought up to ride horses; its like giving me a prize for eating nachos..."

Well Nicole was never going to win a popular vote but I would have thought the BBC in the spirit of impartiality would have allocated equal time to the 10 contenders to showcase their acheivements. As far as I could see all the other contenders got several minutes of footage plus an interview on the main stage. Nicole got 45 seconds of an interview with some embarassing questions - have you scrapped your knee?!!? No mention of her winning the womens Tour de France which would at least have been recognised by the non cycling public.

Incidently a policy group called sportsthinktank.com devised a way of judging the award based mainly on sporting factors, such as the strength of worldwide competition in a sport, and the number of people in Britain who compete in it internationally. Under their system Cooke comes top, followed by Tweddle and Calzaghe.

I suppose if cycling wants to win next year the answer is to get more royalty riding bikes. Apparently Prince Charles has bought 2 bikes in an effort to become more carbon neutral!

But with those ears, Steve, he's going to be hopeless into a headwind.

Just putting Nicole Cook to one side for a moment....

We always watch this programme as we care about all sport, and yet even when there is a worthy winner (Redgrave, Flintoff etc) the end feeling is one of let-down, of anti-climax, of not having done the efforts and achievements justice.

And of course it wasn't just NC who got a poor deal on the night; Andy Murray got even less coverage and following Monty Panasaar's interview there were a whole 30s left to vote.

There were then some pretty bizzare winners among lots of categories; St Helens over the Rider Cup team, Theo Walcott.... I suppose it says much about those that vote.

Apparently it was won with about 200,000 votes. Now if we believe the story that 1,000,000 plus fans lined the route of the Tour En Angleterre in 1994 then there are plenty enough bikies who care about the sport. If we believe that a cycling winner of this sort of thing would be good for the sport then surely we could somehow "get the voters out".

But don't look at me I never vote in these things

The BBC maybe had another agenda !

Pro cyclists have nt had their best year - in fact I'd go as fare as saying its been a PR disater. Unfortunatlety the cheaters have spoilt it, for all the honest professionals amongst the rank.

Do you think we will every see a cyclist win it? Even if a Brit won a major tour !

But then cycling as a sport has hardly done itself any favours this year and whats the Sports Personality of the year about anyway - is it about sporting achievement or personality? Most watching would wonder who NC is? She can hardly be a personality if shes never been on the telly before but should win hands down on achievement.
Even Sportiv / Disposable Wealth for the over 30's Weekly (the weekly bike rag that used to take an interest in cycling as a sport) hardly gives her much credit or mention preferring to concentrate on 6 pages of drugs news, what the staffers rode at the weekend & the most expensive tackle they could borrow to review (I feel another thread coming on) but do you see where I'm coming from?

But then cycling as a sport has hardly done itself any favours this year and whats the Sports Personality of the year about anyway - is it about sporting achievement or personality? Most watching would wonder who NC is? She can hardly be a personality if shes never been on the telly before but should win hands down on achievement.
Even Sportiv / Disposable Wealth for the over 30's Weekly (the weekly bike rag that used to take an interest in cycling as a sport) hardly gives her much credit or mention preferring to concentrate on 6 pages of drugs news, what the staffers rode at the weekend & the most expensive tackle they could borrow to review (I feel another thread coming on) but do you see where I'm coming from?