Maggot
The Cake of Liberty
Davis Cup.
Sports Personality of the Year 2015
- Thread starter Mr Retro
- Start date
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
That's what I said. He won nothing of major significance. There are four top tier competitions in Tennis every year. The Davis Cup isn't one of them.
Everybody else on that list, bar Bronze, won either the most important or the second most important thing in their sport. And Bronze, the other exception, was the best player on the best ever British team at the biggest event in her sport. Murray is one of the most famous people on the list and, in career terms, he may be one of the better athletes on the list, but he achieved less in his sport in the last 12 months than anyone else on the list by a mile.
1927
Funnier than he thinks he is.
Thank you for posting that, I thought I was the only person who held this view!Half-decent ref he may be, but I can't stand officials who make it all about them.
Just ref the game, nobody cares about your witty little bon mots
Ponyutd
Greebo likes this....r.i.p.
Nor is Fury, he's Irish.
And they are welcome to the bigoted wanker.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
It's the biggest team competition in tennis, by a long mile, and Murray was the key performer in it, by an even bigger mile. So it's not wholly unreasonable.
That said, they should win best team, and someone else, Ennis-Hill for me, should win the solo.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
The biggest team competition in an individual sport. The biggest sevens tournament in rugby. The biggest tandem race in cycling.
Dr. Furface
One small step for me
Murray's contribution to winning the Davis Cup was phenomenal this year obvs. But about 5 years ago we were almost in the bottom tier of the whole event. And without his commitment to it we'd probably still be there too.
Team event, yes. But Murray is the fucking team. Winner.
Team event, yes. But Murray is the fucking team. Winner.
what a great piece of writing. OT, but my girlfriend was reading Murukami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running in the summer, and read a few passages out - it was suffused with the exact same kind of 'robotic banality' Foster Wallace mentions. I'm wondering now if it was supposed to be a satire on sports autobiographies...
5t3IIa
Registered User
hash tag
Reaching out
It's Lizzie for me. She has a personality. She has done much for womens cycling generally which gets very little publicity.
Some of the names mentioned are never out of the press/adverts Etc. Unlike Lizzie who gets paid very little in comparison especially to her male counterparts and those in ther sports. She is current World, Commonwealth and National road race champion. Besides it's her birthday just before SPOTY!
Some of the names mentioned are never out of the press/adverts Etc. Unlike Lizzie who gets paid very little in comparison especially to her male counterparts and those in ther sports. She is current World, Commonwealth and National road race champion. Besides it's her birthday just before SPOTY!
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Tyson Fury said:
Klitschko is Ukranian, so I'm not clear on how or why he might consider Germany to be his 'back yard'.
The man is clearly an apalling fuckwit but I don't think he should be thrown out of SPOTY. I think he should be allowed to come dead last, in accordance with the fact that nobody really knows or cares who he is.
The heavyweight boxing champion of the world is definitely an obscure figure that few people give a fuck about.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Klitschko is Ukrainian, but he and his brother have been based in Germany since early in their careers and have a huge German following. Fury is wrong about most things, but he's perfectly correct that a fight in Germany is a "home" fixture for Klitschko. Particularly as scoring in Germany is notorious within the sport for favoring the home promoter's man. And it takes a lot to be notorious in that regard in boxing, one of the most corrupt sports in the world.
As for nobody knowing or caring who he is, the world heavyweight championship is one of three properly "mainstream" major sporting accomplishments on the list. ie lots of people have heard of various heavyweight champions, Tour de France winners or Formula 1 champions regardless of where they are from. That's not really true of random track and field world champions, gymnasts etc, whose fame is localised and bound up with national pride in Olympic medals. I don't think that the winner should be chosen on the basis of the mainstream appeal of the competition, mind you, as that would limit the potential winners to a handful of sports. And more importantly, given that women's sport is so generally underreported and undervalued, would essentially disbar women who aren't tennis players from winning.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
There's probably mileage in being the "anti-Fury" candidate in the public vote. Ennis-Hill (who Fury made straightforwardly sexist remarks about) or Rutherford (who has been the noisiest about his opposition to Fury's views) are probably best placed to pick up that vote.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
this spat will go down in the history books as the fury fury.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The marquee athletics events, such as the 100 metres, certainly have widespread recognition. A fair comparison of the heavyweight championship would be with the 100 metres rather than athletics in general. Sure, the world steeplechase champion's not going to be well-known outside their country, but then neither is the World Bantamweight boxing champion.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Yes, the men's 100 metres is a partial exception. But nobody on the list won Olympic gold in the 100 metres. The track and field athletes are a distance runner, a heptathlete and a long jumper. These fit squarely with gymnasts, swimmers, rowers, track cyclists etc as "Olympic famous" athletes. I'd agree though that the men's 100 metres Olympic gold winners belong in the same sort of category as heavyweight boxing champions, Wimbledon winners, Tour de France winners, Formula 1 champions etc in terms of "mainstream" international fame.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You can get well-known for dominating a less prominent event, though. Bubka, I'd say, fits that category.
And the distance runner has regularly won gold in two distances, against stiff competition. That counts. Lots of people have heard of the likes of Aouita.
tbh the 'problem' with the athletics WC is that it happens so often. Add that to the Olympics and you have potential gold medallists for the list almost every year.
And the distance runner has regularly won gold in two distances, against stiff competition. That counts. Lots of people have heard of the likes of Aouita.
tbh the 'problem' with the athletics WC is that it happens so often. Add that to the Olympics and you have potential gold medallists for the list almost every year.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Sure, Aouita is one of the most famous track and field athletes to not win the men's 100 metres. But his fame is of a different order of magnitude entirely to that of Mike Tyson, Lance Armstrong, Rafael Nadal, Michael Schumacher etc. Same goes for Bubka. Farah has the "Cathy Freeman" factor boosting his fame, ie the home athlete who was effectively the marketing face of an Olympic games, but outside Britain is also not close to the level of fame of those athletes.
This has nothing to do with the merits of any of these people as athletes relative to each other, it's just a function of the profile of their sports. Track and field just isn't a big deal to the general public outside of a few weeks every four years.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Britain's not alone in bigging up its Olympic champions, mind. tbh what really impresses me in athletics is world records. Aside from Jonathan Edwards, I'm not sure how many of those are held by Brits now. Ennis beating Jackie Joyner's WR, that would be a huge thing. Daley Thompson didn't just win medals, he also broke records.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Definitely not. It's exactly the same everywhere. Win Olympic gold and you become a living embodiment of national sporting prowess, which makes you famous in your own country.
Olympic medals in anything provide a roughly equal dose of national pride, so there's an equalising effect between sports of wildly different popularity levels. The positive side of that sort of Olympic effect is that medals won by women are valued as highly as medals won by men, so in sports which are centrally about the Olympics women get a much fairer deal than women do in major spectator sports other than tennis. (Why tennis sticks out as the only major spectator sport where the women are even close to as famous and well paid as the men is an interesting question).
littlebabyjesus said:
The problem with all time records is that so many were set by athletes who were doped to the moon, which makes beating them inherently a bit suspicious.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Well yes. This is all very sad, and at least some of the longest-standing records were certainly set by cheats.
Here's a sobering list: British track and field world record breakers over the years. Last one was Edwards in 1995. In the 20 years before that, a British athlete broke a world record on 32 separate occasions. In the 20 years since: zero.
(although if you extend it to road running, there is Paula Radcliffe)
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
And the rest were set by people who may or may not have been cheats in times that beat the times set by known cheats.
littlebabyjesus said:
Radcliffe's marathon record is a real anomaly. It was a freakish improvement on the previous record (3 mins 22 seconds) and more than 12 years later nobody has even come close to getting within 3 minutes of it.
QueenOfGoths
Fuck you Dave!
Tyson Fury is still a knob.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
That's unlikely to change, unless he suffers a catastrophic blow to the head or undertakes 30 years on intensive therapy.
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
Born and Raised in Manchester.
The British tend to appropriate alot of our sporting & acting talent, as one of ours said
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-when-i-m-lying-drunk-at-an-airport-the-press-call-me-irish-but-when-i-win-an-oscar-i-brenda-fricker-138-43-86.jpg[/quote]
So in this case, no you can't pawn Tyson Fury back to us as he was never Irish in the first place.
souljacker
innit
It's awful TV this thing. Just painful to watch.
