Source: Daily_Mail
Martin Samuel: Giggs is the only star to pass my test of genius
The idea of having a Sports Personality of the Year is daft to begin with. The press care about personality but sport doesn't. Sport only cares whether the protagonist is fast, fit, strong, accurate, determined, cunning and motivated: persona, not so much. A real sports personality of the year would be Eddie Izzard, because he ran 43 marathons in 51 days for charity and he's got the best jokes. [LNB]Izzard isn't even on the short list, though, so we are left to make the usual impossible value judgments between athletes from entirely different disciplines, present for a variety of reasons. Some are team players, some are individuals. Some have reached the pinnacle of achievement, others are barely halfway along that journey. Some have won all there is to win, others have not yet secured the biggest prize. It is impossible to compare this activity in any objective way, and that is before we are forced to factor in personality issues.[LNB] Still going strong: Ryan Giggs and (below) with the Premier League trophy for the first time in 1993[LNB]Define personality. Which aspect of Steve Davis's character charmed the voters in 1988? Mildly irritable seemed to work for HRH Princess Anne in 1971, but Colin Montgomerie has not won and his career has run a gamut of irritability, from slightly ticked off to positively steaming.[LNB]Tiger Woods, Overseas Sports Personality in 2000, now seems less of a joyless, one-dimensional figure than he did two weeks ago, but his new image is hardly going to appeal to the female voter (although if all the cocktail waitresses he hasn't slept with in the last five years would simply issue a statement, we could bring this matter to a speedy close). Personality is something of a minefield then.[LNB]So, no apologies for this being a subjective view of the BBC award. Anyway, it is a blind alley to debate seriously whether it is better to be world heavyweight boxing champion, world gymnastics champion or world drivers' champion. Is it harder to be the best heptathlete or the best triple jumper? And how should we evaluate the contribution of the captain of England's cricketers against the very singular career of a top cyclist or tennis player?[LNB]Easy. We shouldn't. The only way to accomplish separation is take one very personal element of the appraisal process, and make that the decider. So here it is: Ryan Giggs should be Sports Personality of the Year. And this is why.[LNB]On Saturday, I took two of my boys to watch West Ham United play Manchester United at Upton Park. Ostensibly, they were there as West Ham supporters, but there was another reason it was important to secure tickets for this particular game. I wanted them to see Ryan Giggs play while there was time.[LNB]Not on television, but in a stadium. I wanted, rather sentimentally, for them to be able to live the clich?f telling their children and maybe their grandchildren that they saw him, the way my father saw Tom Finney, Duncan Edwards and George Best, the way I remember seeing Bobby Moore.[LNB]So there is the criterion. You may find it a shallow one, but when I look down the list ofcandidates I read one name whose achievements, in 50 years time, will still stand above all. Giggs. There will be other heavyweights, other captains, other drivers, other athletes, but 19 years, and counting, on the wing for Manchester United is a feat that will not be surpassed.[LNB]Two European Cups, 11 league titles, four FA Cups, three League Cups, one UEFA Super Cup, one Intercontinental Cup, one Club World Cup, yet it would not matter if Giggs had won only half of it: just to have been there, to have held his place, as Sir Alex Ferguson built up and stripped down three, maybe four, great Manchester United teams would set him apart.[LNB]We no longer think of every season being his last, such is his remarkable will, but when, at the Club World Cup in Tokyo, Ferguson talked of certain senior players being phased out in the next year, nobody had any doubt that Giggs was among the names he had in mind.[LNB]Yet here he is, 12 months on, still ripping West Ham apart beside Paul Scholes - who it was also painfully delightful for the boys to watch - and showing no sign of inferiority to any of the bright young things who may have been considered his replacement.[LNB] More from Martin Samuel... MARTIN SAMUEL: What did you do when the ice was melting, Daddy?10/12/09 Martin Samuel: David Beckham must rule our World Cup bid for 201806/12/09 MARTIN SAMUEL: Good news, what can possibly go wrong for England?05/12/09 MARTIN SAMUEL: Lazy coppers are the real social menace04/12/09 EXCLUSIVE: Karren Brady on why England MUST host 2018 World Cup01/12/09 MARTIN SAMUEL: Jose Mourinho facing big trouble in little Inter01/12/09 Martin Samuel: Sorry Arsene, your Arsenal boys are just roadkill29/11/09 MARTIN SAMUEL: Manchester City gloom is down to lack of firepower29/11/09 VIEW FULL ARCHIVE Jack Collison, the West Ham midfield player and fellow Wales international, was so in awe of Giggs he might as well have brought his autograph book.[LNB]Maybe that is part of his secret. Giggs is old enough now to have been a schoolboy idol to the majority of his opponents. Who would have the heart to put the boot in on their hero? Not that West Ham got close enough even to try.[LNB]There are people on the Sports Personality short list who may get to where Giggs is, certainly Andy Murray if he can win Wimbledon. Olympic gold medallists on home soil in 2012 would also burn brightly in the memory, as will David Haye if he continues to outfox men twice his size in the boxing ring.[LNB]Yet these are people with a 'to do' list. If it all ended for Giggs tomorrow, if he awoke and decided 19 years was enough, he would retire instantly to our mental hall of fame.[LNB]Yes, there will always be trophies to win, milestones to reach - no team have won four straight league titles, for instance, as Manchester United are hoping to do this season - yet, a World Cup appearance aside, it is not as if there is anything Giggs is missing.[LNB]Were Murray to be crowned the leading British sportsman for the year 2009, how would we reward him if he won a Grand Slam in 2010?[LNB]Not that the plan for Sunday night is to sit with the finger permanently poised over the redial button. This is a public vote and anyone who lived through the 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons would have despaired of his fellow citizens long ago.[LNB]To jog your memory, numbers 75 and 86 were Irish (Bob Geldof and Bono), number 51 was fictional (King Arthur), Princess Diana came third, ahead of Darwin, Shakespeare and Newton, while Michael Crawford was 17th, which must have come as a bit of a blow to descendants of the chap in 20th, Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin.[LNB]Other highlights: David Beckham ahead of Boudica, Boy George beating Sir Edward Elgar and Robbie Williams four places in front of Chaucer. And no place in the top 100 - and this is a list that found room for Freddie Mercury, Julie Andrews and the late Queen Mother, remember - for JMW Turner, who was not only our finest painter, but bequeathed his entire collection of finished works to the nation. And we think we've got it bad because Jedward got through.[LNB]So it would be nice if Giggs won, but we are not holding our breath. At least we saw him play; and the rest is just showbiz, really.[LNB] Unsung beauty of the Olympics we don't care aboutWe do not care about the winter Olympics; or at least we think we don't. That is the irony. All those faceless Scandinavians and those ludicrous events, like the luge. 'Is there any sport where you move less than that?' asked Billy Connolly. 'The first time I saw it I thought I was watching an Eskimo funeral.'[LNB]Figure of fun: Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards[LNB]A lot of the winter sports are wasted on us, too. Great Britain had never won a medal on snow until 2002 in Salt Lake City, when Alain Baxter took bronze in the men's slalom, and was promptly stripped of his prize for testing positive for a banned substance.[LNB]There are thrilling major events, such as ice hockey, that rarely see a British competitor and others that regard us as little more than light relief. Eddie Edwards was to ski-jumping what Eric Moussambani was to swimming; Great Britain's eagle to Equatorial Guinea's eel.[LNB]And yet everybody remembers Eddie, even to this day. There was a big interview with him in a Sunday newspaper this week, more than 20 years after the Italian press crowned him the sport's first ski-dropper at the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary. A film about his life is in production, which will star Rupert Grint, who plays Ron in the Harry Potter films, and Edwards will be on your television screens over Christmas advertising Churchill insurance. [LNB]At the invitation of the British Columbia Tourist Board, he will carry the Olympic torch through Winnipeg on its way to Vancouver. He still earns roughly £30,000 annually talking about his experiences as a unique Olympian, and is currently on a cruise ship in the Caribbean working as a motivational speaker. Coming from a country that does not care for the winter Olympics, he seems to have done rather well.[LNB]As did Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, two more household names from a niche event.[LNB]Then there was John Curry and Robin Cousins, and Rhona Martin, captain of the gold medal-winning curlers in 2002. It is because British success in winter is so rare that it is precious.[LNB]Every four years sailors, rowers, cyclists, riders, even the odd athlete, bring back gold medals from a summer Games; but there were 18 years between Torvill and Dean's Bolero and Martin's stone of destiny and that makes for great box office.[LNB]So imagine if Britain's ice dancers, Sinead and John Kerr, repeated the success of Torvill and Dean (and they took bronze in the European Championships, so it is not impossible).[LNB]What's the angle? Well, they are brother and sister, they dance to Linkin Park and Johnny Cash, he works as an actor and she models for Alexander McQueen. I reckon the papers might find something.[LNB] Ice queen: Britain's women's team captain Eve Muirhead will bring glamour to curling at the Winter Games in February[LNB]This brings us to Eve Muirhead, skipper of Great Britain's women's curling team, who is Scottish, very talented and mentored by Martin, although there the similarity ends. Martin's charm, indeed the charm of her entire team, was its ordinariness. They were housewife superstars. [LNB]Martin says that when she returned to Edinburgh Airport after the gold medal win it was 1am, the car had packed up and she got home to a mountain of washing. She received a letter from a woman complaining that her winning stone had created such excitement she had jumped out of bed and landed on her cat, killing it.[LNB]Muirhead, by contrast, is rock and roll. Well, as rock and roll as curling gets beyond felicide. She is 19, blonde, photogenic, plays the bagpipes (look, I told you this was curling, if you want banging techno sets, I suggest you try the snowboarders) and is a two-handicap golfer. Were she to win a gold medal the public would go mad for her, the way they did for Britain's other Olympic heroes.[LNB]With Martin's team it was too easy to make old jokes about curling being housework on ice - all that sweeping, you see - and the sport never left its twee pigeonhole. So Martin's celebrity was fleeting, but Muirhead might change that. She has a look to put curling not just on the front and back pages, but in the style section, too. [LNB]Indeed, with a gold medal around her neck, she has the perfect profile to be another household name that, apparently, none of us will care about at all.[LNB] CONTACT MARTIN AT: m.samuel@dailymail.co.uk [LNB] Explore more:People:Boy George, Johnny Cash, Andy Murray, Julie Andrews, Rhona Martin, Tiger Woods, Billy Connolly, David Haye, Alex Ferguson, Christopher Dean, Jack Collison, Bob Geldof, Martin Samuel, Rupert Grint, David Beckham, Bobby Moore, Ryan Giggs, Eddie Izzard, Robbie Williams, Paul Scholes, George Best, Colin MontgomeriePlaces:Vancouver, Wales, United Kingdom, Equatorial Guinea, Upton Park, Caribbean
