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Nominations are in:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/sports_personality/15895642.stm

Interesting nomination from the Manchester Evening News, for... Dimitar Berbatov!!!

Would love to go, any way of getting tickets apart from the ballot?

Is the Vieira nomination not stranger?
Berbatov was at least top scorer.

why's rebecca adlington on so many lists? have I missed something?

No, but that's probably the point

LOL - the MEN should have their name struck off the list for nominating next year. Glen Chapple?? No one cares who wins the County Championship lads. Paul Scholes? Were you sure you were nominating for this year?

The one who was unlucky not to get shortlisted was Chrissie Wellington - Ironman triathlon world title (whilst carrying an injury) plus two world records.

no cavendish on there list either
you would of thought the top 5 would be on everyones list and then a few wildcards

It's got to be Cavendish, hasn't it?

Darren Clarke fir sure I think....mainstream, top bloke, great story, sport on BBC  - not sure what price he us but think he's a shoe in.

nah, its cavendish this year, his profile has risen into the national level now. Clarke is a bit of a tool.

I'm still sick from forgetting to bet Cav at 12/1 before the world champs, last trading at 7/4 the last time i looked, puke smiley.

alistair brownlee should be on the list instead of the stupid cricket players

To be fair Cav was 8/1 for the World Champs. Much better to have backed him for that than take a chance with the public vote.
Hope he wins it though.

Mo Farah, athletes have a good record in this! His story is immense and he's such a nice bloke! If it was next year and he would have achieved similar then he would be even money.

Given the key work of "personality" it has to be Cav. Unfortunately as Ryan Giggs winning it proved you don't actually need to have what should be the basic prerequisite (i.e. a personality) to win the award, who knows who will get it.

Farah's definitely not a bad shout. Tremendous achievement to win a gold medal in a long distance event from him.

Britain's best male long-distance athlete ever, and his story just adds to his achievements.  If Bekele is not at 100% in London, then Farah could be a shoo-in for SPOTY as the Olympic champion.

why?

genuine popular bloke who went through a lot and then won the Open

clarke- I suspect that people who follow golf overestimate its appeal. reckon most people have no idea who he is

farah- probs a year early

cav looks a worthy fave to me

On these grounds, I think it's a shame Graeme Swann didn't get a nomination.

Top 10:

McIlroy 27 (nominated by all)
Clarke 26,
Farah 25,
Cavendish 23,
Cook 18,
Greene 17,
Strauss 15,
Murray 14,
Donald 11,
Khan 7

51 people received at least 1 nomination

Becky Adlington and the Triathlete Lady just missed out with 6 nominations

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/sport/s/1466336_storm-over-all-male-shortlist-for-bbc-sports-personality-of-the-year-award

McIlroy should get top 3 just for pulling Caroline Wozniacki.

Rory is on every list and fits the bill.  Do you cavendish supporters think the voting public will go for him? Misha B proving that most talented don't always get the great British vote.

Can't believe this thread has got to two pages without Tank posting that it's a disgrace Tim Tebow isn't on the list.

gary speed?

and no-one has posted about how disgusting it is that phil taylor's never won it

I'm sure the word 'personality' in SPOTY doesn't refer to this definition of the word:

 - The totality of qualities and traits, as of character or behavior, that are peculiar to a specific person.

but instead to this one:

-  The quality or condition of being a person.

Basically, it's synonymous with the word 'person'.

No rugby league players?! disgrace

Sam Tomkins was nominated in three lists.

Not sure of the general Blonde interest in this market, but when the market came out I had a good look at the nominees and, rightly or wrongly, thought that it should be a fairly open contest.

I actually think that the likes of Clarke and Farah should have a good chance of challenging for it; they both fit the mould of previous winners and are popular characters. Cavendish, of course, has had an outstanding year, but he's also a bit of a controversial character and is he really a more popular personality than someone like Clarke?

When the nominees were announced Cavendish was just over evens on Betfair and has since been backed in to the current price of 1.51/1.53.

I know people expect the Golf-vote to be split between Clarke, McIlroy and Donald, as well as the Northern Irish vote to be split, but does this really justify the tiny price? No way.

Of course public-vote-awards have the potential to be manipulated, but Calzaghe in 07 looks a worthy winner, and in 08 Hoy came from 3rd favourite to win and also looks a worthy winner in retrospect. Giggs, of course, came from absolutely nowhere to win in 09, which many saw as a dodgy result (betting patterms were investigated), but presumably Wales united behind him as well as Man U fans, and the people he beat (Button and Jessica Ennis) are not wildly popular personalities.

Last year Tony McCoy completely ran away with the contest, 'polling 41% of the votes from a staggering 293,152 telephone calls'. His competition was not strong, Phil Taylor would have certainly been a worthy winner, but was always going to struggle to attract enough votes from the wider public and there was no real reason as to why Ennis, who finished 3rd again, would attract more votes than the previous year.

The sheer amount of votes on McCoy from last year worries me. I think he was a worthy and popular winner, but that is a crazy amount of calls.

Is anyone more informed than me about organised betting on markets such as SPOTY? Or does anyone have any idea what the BBC might do to counteract competition manipulation?

they effectively disqualified the fishing dude when he won the vote

yeah..bob nudd and alan scotthorne both been in a position to win spoty as the angling times ran campaigns for votes . they promised to run a 5 minute feature on match fishing and that seemed to appease the  fishing fraternity

One of the reasons for AP winning by so much last year was that there was a big campaign within racing to get people to vote for him, which has quite a bit of clout when you consider that racing gets a pretty solid 1m people watching it on terrestrial TV every Saturday.

yeah angling was and probably still is the biggest sport in terms of participating numbers. There's nowt as queer as folk, as the voting Xfactor public goes to show.

Yeah, i remember reading about that, they discarded all ballots cast (oi oi) on forms printed by the Angling Times in the end.

I guess that if they were stupid enough to place 1000 votes from the same line (stop it) then votes would be easy to discard, but as there is approaching half a million matched in the Betfair market already, with millions to follow on the night, I would imagine anyone trying to fix the vote would be a bit more shrewd than that.

A good point; I guess there will be similar campaigns amongst Cycling fans for Cavendish, but that certainly wouldn't explain his huge drop in price. People are backing him at any available price, which suggests to me that they, at least, consider him a sure thing. Rushes like this have definately been wrong before... fairly sure Adlington traded in the 1.6's in 2007, so if he CAN be beaten there has to be value in laying Cav at 1.5... On merit alone Cavendish should be one of the favourites, but if I was sure that there will be no funny business with the betting involved I would lay for a large amount.

There was a similar push in darts for Phil Taylor, and the actual numbers of votes cast in SPOTY is not that many, so odds on favs can get turned over pretty easily.

However, for all we know there's a big pro-Cav campaign in some cycling magazine or website.

It's a disgrace that Tim Tebow isn't on the list.

(been busy, sorry Andrew)

Cavendish is 1.44/1.45 now...

I am not going to be in the UK for SPOTY this year so i will pass on the best route to profits.  Get on Betfair and every time they feature a prominent candidate wait for his price to drop and then lay it.  Then back it back for a profit10-15 minutes later.  I have never lost on the event doing this.

didn't realise this was tonight. no surprises I see

Cav pissed it - amazed to see Andy Murray in the top half.

Mark Cavendish 169,152 (49.47%)
Darren Clarke 42,188 (12.34%)
Mo Farah 29,780 (8.71%)
Luke Donald 23,854 (6.98%)
Andy Murray 18,754 (5.48%)
Andrew Strauss 17,994 (5.26%)
Alastair Cook 13,038 (3.81%)
Rory McIlroy 11,915 (3.48%)
Dai Greene 9,022 (2.64%)
Amir Khan 6,262 (1.83%)

Possibly the best 4/9 shot ever on final figures he was a 1/100 shot