From 7pm this evening I will live blogging the BBC Sports personalities of the year as they are announced. However, after last years highs and trying to work out who would make the final 10 from the wealth of achievements this year it may be somewhat easier.
But who is likely to be in the list.
Well Wimbledon has a British gentlemen's singles champion so
Andy Murray is bound to be there.
Chris Froome won everything that last year's winner Bradley Wiggins did so expect him there too. Also from the world of cycling there is
Becky James who rose from being the understudy for Victoria Pendleton to winning the World Championships in the sprint and keirin.
AP McCoy has reached the landmark of 4000 national hunt winners and having been nominated numerous times in the past he is likely to feature again. There was success as the World Athletics Championships with
Mo Farah repeating his Olympic golden double and
Christine Ohuruogu setting the national record and one again showing she is a big stage competitor.
Sir Ben Ainslie may not have brought the America's Cup back to Great Britain but he instrumental in the turnaround that saw Oracle Team USA retain the trophy when he came onboard as tactician.
Max Whitlock was second in the all around European Gymnastics Championships and took silver in the Pommel at the worlds as well as being just off the podium in the all around missing out by 0.3 marks from a podium.
More to come from 7pm when we know who
is actually there.
19:01 The first names to be announced are:
Sir Ben Ainslie: Sir Ben left behind his Olympic Career last year as a nominee in the 2012 SPOTY awards. He was initially only part of Team Oracle USA as the skipper of the test boat to race against the holders to gain race craft in the speedy catamarans that swept across San Francisco Bay. But from race 6 with the holders having lost five of the first six races he was brought into the crew as the new tactician. They lost the next two but were more competitive and then won two which because of a 2 point penalty meant they were only on 1 to the challengers 6 before Team New Zealand took another two wins, leaving them on the cusp of victory. But then in one of the greatest comebacks in sporting history 8 successive wins saw the team that Ben was now part of win the series.
Ian Bell: The England Cricketer scored centuries in the second innings of the first Ashes Test in the Summer and in the first innings of the second test. This made him only the fourth English batsman to score hundreds in 3 consecutive Ashes tests. He missed out on one in the thrid test but got another in the fourth. He was top scorer of the series with 582 and 75 fours in that number with an average of 62.44. None of the Australians managed more than one century
Hannah Cockcroft: Despite a brilliant Paralympics in 2012 Hannah didn't make the 12 strong short list for last year's SPOTYs. But in the World Paralympian Championships in Lyon she retained her T34 100m and 200m titles (the ones she had won in London 2012) from the 2011 Worlds. She has now gone double gold at the last three major championships at these distances as well as the holding the 100m world record (which she took in the Olympic Stadium and bettered later in 2012).
Mo Farah: How can someone follow two memorable Saturday nights in the Olympic Stadium in London. Well if your name is Mo Farah you do it by becoming only the second many in history to hold both the Olympic and World Championship double of 5000m and 10,000m. One other thing he also did this year was take away the 28 year old British 1500m record while the holder Steve Cram was commentating and a previous fastest Brit Seb Coe was watching.
Chris Froome: This year was the year for Chris Froome to emerge from the shadows of his team mate and last year's SPOTY winner Bradley Wiggins. He followed Brad as the winner of the Critérium du Dauphiné, Tour de Romandie, Tour de France, he also won the Critérium International in the year to match the Paris-Nice title that Wiggins also won last year. But a poor performance in the World Championships where not a single British cyclist finished may have knocked some of the lustre of his glorious emergence from the shadows. However, the winner of the 100th Tour de France did so with more individual flare than his predecessor winning on the road and having to defend his first day in yellow on his own.
19:23 and the rest are:
Leigh Halfpenny: The Welsh Full Back scared a try in the opening game defeat to Ireland. But was named man of the match in the six nations tests against France and Italy and with 40% of the international panels vote was name man of the tournament. He went on to the British Lions Tour of Australia where he appeared in all three tests. He scored 49 of the Lions 79, a record for a series and his 21 points in the third test is a record for a single Lions test. He was again named player of the series, but isn't solely looking for SPOTY glory he is also on the shortlist of 5 for IRB international player of the year.
AP McCoy: The jockey from Moneyglass is a previous SPOTY winner, in 2010 the year that he finally won his first Grand National. But that is only one race on the way to the record that he broke earlier this month. On 7 November he was saddled up in his retainer JP McManus's colours on Mountain Tunes at Weatherby it may have only been a novices hurdle race, but when the famous green and yellow colours crossed the line their jockey became the first national hunt jockey to record 4000 wins.
Andy Murray: His tennis year started at the Australian Open by making his third consequtive Grand Slam final recording his first Grand Slam win over Roger Federer in the semi-finals. But he lost to Novak Djokovic in the final to ominously tie Stefan Edberg's record of being three time runner up on the open era. But he is on the list for what he did in the grass court season, he was out with injury for the French Open but came back to win his third title at Queen's but it was at Wimbledon that he ended 83 years of waiting for a home grown men's singles champion that probably makes him favourite for this years award.
Christine Ohuruogu:While Mo Farah may have taken a 28 year old British record Christine went one further in the World Championships. Last year she only managed silver in the Olympics while trying to defend her title. But she came out strong this year and breaking 50 seconds outside of major championships. The record finally came in the World Final and the 49.41s with a dip for the line was enough to give her a second World Championship title some six years after her previous one a feat never before emulated by a British woman.
Justin Rose: Becoming the third US Open champion golfer to be nominated for SPOTY in four years. He is the first English player to win a golf major since 1996. But golfers have not been able to stir the SPOTY voters enough to win since 1989.
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