Rory McIlroy is the frontrunner to win this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, with the 2014 Open and US PGA champion among the 10 shortlisted names announced on Monday.
No golfer has won the award since Nick Faldo prevailed 25 years ago but McIlroy’s remarkable form in 2014 ranks him as favourite with the bookmakers above Lewis Hamilton and Gareth Bale.
Hamilton won the Formula One drivers’ championship for the second time in his career on Sunday, describing the victory as the “happiest moment of my life”, yet he is unlikely to become the first F1 champion since Damon Hill in 1996 to secure the public vote.
McIlroy won a first Open title at Hoylake before a second major of the year followed at Valhalla, and the 25-year-old recently ended the season as the European Tour’s No1 player.
Bale, Charlotte Dujardin, Carl Froch, Kelly Gallagher and guide, Charlotte Evans, Jo Pavey, Adam Peaty, Max Whitlock and Lizzy Yarnold make up the shortlist of contenders, with the winner to be announced on 14 December at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro Arena, one venue that staged this summer’s Commonwealth Games.
Andy Murray, who won the award last year, said: “It has been a sensational year for sport in Scotland with the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup among lots of other major events that have taken place there, and as a proud Scot it’s wonderful that we have been in the position to be able to host so many key events. Scotland did such a superb job of hosting the Commonwealths and the Ryder Cup, and I’m sure it will be no different for sports personality of the year. It’ll be a special night for the whole of Scotland and the UK, celebrating some of our best sportsmen and women.”
Bale has impressed for Real Madrid following his record move from Tottenham in September 2013, part of the side that won the European Cup last season and he scored a wonderful individual goal in the final of the Copa del Rey.
Pavey won gold for Great Britain over 10,000m at the European Championships in Zurich just 10 months after giving birth to a daughter. The 41-year-old had already secured a remarkable Commonwealth bronze for England over 5,000m.
There were impressive performances from Peaty and Whitlock in Glasgow, while Yarnold won Great Britain’s only gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Froch knocked out George Groves in May to retain the WBA and IBF super-middleweight titles, Gallagher and her guide won Britain’s first ever Winter Paralympic gold in Sochi, and Dujardin secured two golds at the World Equestrian Games in France.
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