17 December 2015

Three’s a charm as Athletics dominates BBC SPOTY nominations

Once again athletics will be the focus of the BBC Sports Personality Awards this weekend as the sport can boast multiple nominations for the prestigious annual award.

Jessica Ennis Hill, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford have all had stellar 2015 performances, dominating their event at world level and winning the crucial gold medals at the World Championships in Beijing in August.

For Ennis-Hill, her involvement in the world championships wasn’t even confirmed until a few weeks before the event before staging the "mother of all comebacks" winning her second world heptathlon gold just over a year after the birth of her son Reggie.

It was the first time since 2012 she had competed at a major championships in the event and the level at which she returned is a testament to the hard work put in by the athlete, her coach Toni Minichiello and the support team around her.

Meanwhile, Mo Farah became the first man to achieve the ‘triple double’ – winning in both 5000m and 10,000 at three global championships (London 2012, Moscow 2013 and Beijing 2015). It was also his seventh world title overall having won the 5000m gold in Daegu in 2011

In spite of numerous worrying moments in both finals where Farah appeared to be tripped or impeded, his physical and mental strength won through as he took the historic wins.

And if you like your SPOTY winner to achieve historic landmarks, then look no further than Greg Rutherford who completed a grand slam of major athletics championship titles when he won gold in Beijing this summer.

Rutherford, now holds Olympic, World European and Commonwealth Titles within the same Olympic cycle and is looking towards Rio to continue his amazing run of long jump dominance. Only Daley Thompson, Linford Christie, Sally Gunnell and Jonathan Edwards before Rutherford have ever held all four titles at the same time.

Keep an eye on twitter and facebook this weekend for all you need to know for voting for athletics!