BEN STOKES will have to overcome a number of historical trends to win Sports Personality of the Year – with Lewis Hamilton statistically the favourite.
New research by bwin has analysed how the 47 previous awards panned out – taking into account winners’ age, gender, sport and birthplace.
The results are not good reading for overwhelming 2019 favourite Stokes, who is as low as 1/8 to win with some bookies.
When all elements are considered, Hamilton is rated as the statistical likelihood to claim the trophy ahead of Dina Asher-Smith, Katarina Johnson-Thompson and then Stokes.
His heroic knocks in both the World Cup final and third Ashes test marked a superb summer for the England cricket team.
However the trend is for individual sporting feats to be better recognised in SPOTY than those as part of a team.
Each of the previous nine winners have come from such sports, be it Hamilton five years ago or cyclists Geraint Thomas and Bradley Wiggins.
That factor may hurt Stokes, Raheem Sterling and Welsh rugby star Alun Wyn Jones while athletes Asher-Smith and Johnson-Thompson will hope to emulate Mo Farah’s 2017 winner.
And yet the female sprinter and heptathlete could suffer from an unfortunate gender bias that has contributed to no woman winning the gong since Zara Tindall in 2006.
Overall, women take home fewer than one in five SPOTY trophies since its 1972 inception.
That said, athletics is the most popular sport for voters having scooped 18 awards with Formula 1 in second among this year’s nominees, on seven.
And Hamilton could benefit from voters’ short memories – only three of the past 20 victors achieved their key moments before July.
The six contenders will go head to head on Sunday, December 15 with polls opened during the Aberdeen ceremony.
