Sports Personality of the Year

A focus on sporting achievement

May 2025

2022 Beth Mead

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In 2022, England and Arsenal forward Beth Mead was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year, thereby becoming the first female footballer to win the prestigious award. Mead, then 27, topped the public poll ahead of cricketer Ben Stokes and curler Eve Muirhead, with snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan, gymnast Jessica Gadirova and athlete Jake Wightman also on the expertly-prepared shortlist. In her acceptance speech, she said, “I wouldn’t have done it without the girls. The team have backed me. Yes, I’ve won this accolade, I’ve scored a few goals, but I wouldn’t have done it without them.”

 

Internationally, Mead enjoyed a stellar season, recording a total of six goals and five assists at UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, which was enough to win the Golden Boot and to be named player of the tournament. Her goal tally included a hat-trick in a record-breaking 8-0 victory over Norway at the Brighton & Hove Albion Stadium, which took England into the last eight of the tournament as group winners. Of course, the Lionesses went on to beat Germany 2-1, after extra time, in the final at Wembley to win their first major trophy.

 

Mead was also instrumental in qualification for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which England achieved with a 100% record and without conceding a goal. Indeed, in the 2021/22 season as a whole, Mead scored 20 international goals, smashing the long-standing record previously held by Jimmy Greaves. Sadly, though, she suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury towards the end of a Women’s Super League match against Manchester United in November 2022, which effectively put paid to her particpation in the 2023 Women’s World Cup, in which the Lionesses were eventually beaten finalists.

 

Domestically, Mead scored 14 goals in 40 games for her club, Arsenal, in 2021/22, but despite her best efforts, the Gunners missed out on the Women’s Super League title to West London rivals Chelsea by a single point. Nevertheless, she was named Arsenal player of the season and BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year and finished runner-up in the Ballon d’Or Feminin behind Alexia Putellas.

2019 Ben Stokes

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In 2019, as widely anticipated, England cricketer Ben Stokes was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year, ahead of racing driver Lewis Hamilton and athlete Dina Asher-Smith. Also on the shortlist were footballer Raheem Sterling, heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson and rugby union player Alun Wyn Jones.

 

New Zealand-born Stokes, then 28, became the first cricketer to win the award since Andrew Flintoff in 2005. Accepting his award from the Princess Royal and former footballer Denis Law, Stokes said, “Two years ago [when he was arrested and tried for affray, but eventually found not guilty] was a tough time for me in my life and I’ve had so many people help me through that.” In particular, he singled out his agent, former England batsman Neil Fairbrother, whom he described as an “incredible man”.

 

Over the course of 11 ICC Cricket World Cup innings, Stokes scored 465 runs, at an average of 66.42. In the final, against New Zealand at Lord’s in July, he scored 84 not out off 98 balls, including five fours and two sixes, thereby lifting England from a perilous 86-4 to 241 all out. With the scores tied after 50 overs, for the first time in World Cup history, a ‘super over’ was required to determine the winner. Stokes contributed a further eight runs to a total of 15 in that super over and, with the scores tied again, England won the trophy on boundaries scored.

 

Further batting heroics followed a month later, in the third Ashes Test at Headingley. Skittled out for a paltry 67 in the first innings, England were set a target of 356 to win. Stokes contributed 135 not out, including a final-wicket stand of 76 with left-arm spinner Jack Leach (who contributed 1 not out off 17 balls), which earned comparison with the exploits of Ian Botham at the same venue back in 1981, giving England victory by one wicket. Australia won the fourth Test, thereby retaining the Ashes, but Stokes’ innings at Headlingley was widely recognised as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, in the history of Test cricket.

2014 & 2020 Sir Lewis Hamilton

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Sir Lewis Hamilton, who was knighted for services to motorsports in the 2021 New Year Honours, is one of the few sportspeople to have won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award more than once. He first did so in 2014 when, at the age of 29, he won the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship for the second time, thereby becoming the fourth Briton to win the world title more than once. On that occasion, Hamilton polled 34% of the public vote, comfortably ahead of golfer Rory McIlroy and athlete Jo Pavey. However, he did seem genuinely surprised to have won. Accepting the award from Kenny (now Sir Kenny) Dalglish, he said, “I want to say a huge thank you to all the people who called in, I really wasn’t expecting it.”

 

Fast forward half a dozen years, to 2020, and Hamilton was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year for a second time, following a record-breaking year. He won his fourth consecutive world drivers’ championship, making seven in all and thereby equalling the record previously set by Michael Schumacher. Victory in the Portuguese Grand Prix also took his career total to 92 Grand Prix wins, moving him ahead of Schumacher in the all-time list. In all, he won 11 of the 17 Grand Prixs contested during the delayed 2020 season and achieved three further podium finishers.

 

The then 35-year-old Mercedes driver had been the overwhelming favourite to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award and duly outpointed footballer Jordan Henderson and jockey Hollie Doyle in the public vote, with boxer Tyson Fury, cricketer Stuart Broad and snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan also on the shortlist. In winning the award for a second time, joined four previous multiple winners, namely Sir Henry Cooper, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Sir Andy Murray.

 

Collecting the reward remotely, at his home, Hamilton was quick to express his gratitude to the British public. He said, “It’s been a long journey together. I will continue to do my part to represent the country in the best way I can.”

2021 Emma Raducanu

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Thanks in no small part to victory in the US Open in Flushing Meadows, New York City, teenage tennis player Emma Raducanu was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2021. Raducanu, then 18, beat diver Tom Daley and swimmer Adama Peaty to the title, with footballer Raheem Sterling, boxer Tyson fury and paralympian Sarah Storey also shorlisted for the main award. Canadian-born Raducana became the first woman to win the award since Zara Tindall, née Phillips, in 2006 and the first tennis player to do so since Sir Andy Murray in 2016.

 

Despite playing in just the second Grand Slam event of her career, Emma Raducanu did not drop a set at Flushing Meadows, including during her three qualification matches, and eventually beat fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-3 in the final. In so doing, she became the first qualifier, male or female, to win a Grand Slam title in the Open Era (which officially began in 1968), the youngest Briton to win a Grand Slam title and the first British woman to win a Grand Slam singles title since Virginia Wade won at Wimbledon in 1977.

 

Speaking of Wimbledon, Raducanu was handed a wildcard into the 2021 Championships and enjoyed a dream debut in SW19, winning her first three matches in straight sets. In her fourth-round match against Ajla Tomljanović, she trailed 4-6, 0-3 before being forced to retire because of “difficulty breathing”. Nevertheless, Raducanu still became the youngest woman to reach the last 16 at Wimbledon during the Open Era.

 

Her performance was all the more remarkable for the fact that until Wimbledon she had not won a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour match. Indeed, she did not make her main draw debut until early June, again after receiving a wildcard, in the Nottingham Open, where she lost 6-3, 6-4 to Harriet Dart in the first round. In her acceptance speech for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, Radacanu said, “Thanks to all the fans and voters, this year has been insane. The energy this year playing at Wimbledon in front of my home crowd, that was something I’ve never felt before.”