Kane would be a worthy SPOTY winner... but the real star of 2018 is Lewis
IF England’s footballers walk away with the Team of the Year gong at tonight’s Sports Personality of the Year ceremony, it will be hugely deserved.
OK, so they didn’t quite go all the way at the World Cup in Russia, but, in reigniting our love affair with the national team, they still, in many ways, brought football home.
In his role as captain, Harry Kane was at the forefront of so much that was good about the summer and beyond.
He didn’t play as well as we know he can, yet still beat Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappe and Co to the Golden Boot.
Away from the pitch, he played a big part in reconnecting the team with its supporters and proved himself a fine role model for every youngster looking on.
No wonder he has been installed as favourite with most bookies to lift the SPOTY trophy.
But, if Kane does triumph, then we will be guilty of the biggest misuse of a public vote since Brexit.
Because there cannot be a more worthy recipient than Lewis Hamilton this year after his fifth Formula One drivers’ championship win drew him level with Juan Manuel Fangio and moved him second only behind seven- time champion Michael Schumacher.
Hamilton did just that in a Mercedes that was not in the same class as the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen, thus debunking the myth that the best car – rather than the best driver – always comes out on top.
His 11 race victories this year took his tally to a staggering 51 out of 100 Grands Prix and this time there were no strops, tantrums or meltdowns along the way.
We all know this award stopped being about personality alone – if at all – a long time ago.
But, at 33, Hamilton has shown new levels of maturity.
And isn’t it refreshing to see one of our sports stars feeling comfortable enough to call out the US President on Twitter, or use his position to highlight poverty in certain regions?
Shouldn’t we also be extremely proud that the only black racing driver in the highest series hails from our shores, this week of all weeks this year?
H a m i l t o n’s relationship with the British sporting public has long been an odd one, still driven, it s eems, by his decision to give HMRC the widest possible berth by moving to Switzerland.
But how many of us can say, hand on heart, we wouldn’t have done the same if we’d been in his position?
It’s one quandary I wouldn’t have minded having and it’s not as if he moved to some unseemly y backwater just to save a few quid, either. Then there’s the fact that much of Hamilton’s work is done outside the UK and not at a time which always suits armchair sports fans.
Yet surely neither of those issues should stop us recognising and celebrating his abilities a nd achievements in an F1 car.
Th e r e are str ik ing similarities be tween Hamilton’s relationship with his compatriots and the one Andy Murray endured before he won the 2012 Olympics and Wimbledon 2013, the point at which 99 per cent of the population then decided they loved him.
Both were petulant in their younger days y – and have been as they’ve y grown older – but, if the rest of us lived in the public eye, we’d probably have had a flaw or two highlighted by now as well.
Those, who know Hamilton well, will tell you how wrong the public’s perception is.
His support for Billy Monger, the young Formula Four driver who lost both legs in an accident at Donington Park last year, has been very generous and there is a good deal of charitable work that goes unpublicised as well.
Those same people will also tell you that a man who sometimes comes across as if he couldn’t care less what people think of him would have loved to have won this award before now.
They will add that, ironically, in a year when he perhaps has his best chance of doing so, he has given up hope of that happening.
Mind you, most of us had lost hope England would do much at a World Cup again and, as we’ll be reminded tonight, look what happened there.