UK Sports Our Quarterly Overview Of UK Sports
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nother year of great UK sports comes to an end and it has been the girls who have given us most to shout about. Our disappointments with the Men’s cricket, soccer and rugby union teams was overshadowed by the British sports women, many of whom we have featured in our earlier editions of ‘American in Britain’, so we will start with them. Sportswomen of the Year AWARDS 2014 There were so many great individual and team performances from our girls this year and it was always going to be difficult to chose the best. The six finalists for the individual Sportswoman of the Year were, in alphabetical order, Charlotte Dujardin, Fran Halsall, Laura Massaro, Jo Pavey, Joanna Rowsell and Lizzie Yarnold. The range of sports represented by these ladies was amazing; in the same order as 26
the nominees - equestrian dressage, swimming, squash, athletics, cycling and skeleton bobsleigh. Personally, your writer would have gone for Jo Pavey, the forty one year old mother of two who took the bronze medal in the Commonwealth Games 5,000 metres in a field dominated by Kenyan and Ethiopian runners, and then took gold in the European 10,000 metres, but Jo took third place in the awards. In second place was Lizzy Yarnold who took the gold medal in the Skeleton event at the Sochi Winter Olympics. Winning any event at the winter Olympics, or even getting any medal, is a rare event for Great Britain, and the skeleton event requires not just incredible skill but massive bravery. The winner was Charlotte Dujardin who won two Olympic gold medals, two European gold’s and two world championship gold's in equestrian dressage. It does seem a shame though that her horse, who probably did most of the work, hardly got a mention! Valegro must have gone through competition after competition without putting a foot (sorry, hoof) wrong. The finalists for the individual Disability Sportswoman of the Year were, in alphabetical order, Libby Clegg, Kelly Gallagher/Charlotte Evans, Stephanie Slater and Jordanne Whiley who represented athletics, impaired sight Super-G skiing, swimming and wheelchair tennis. The winner was Stephanie Slater who, at one time, was an up and coming able bodied swimmer, but an injury to her nervous system meant she could not raise her left arm above ninety degrees. But, swimming with one arm, Stephanie won eight swimming medals in the year, seven of them in seven days at the European championships. Nominees for the Young Sportswoman of the Year were Dina Asher-Smith, Claudia Fragapane, Morgan Lake and Siobhan-Marie O’Connor who represented athletics, gymnastics, athletics again and swimming. Each of these young athletes have amazing futures in their chosen sports. Dina Asher-Smith became world junior 100 metre champion, Morgan Lake took gold in both the heptathlon and high jump at the IAAF world junior championships and SiobhanMarie O’Connor won one gold, four silvers and a bronze at the Commonwealth Games, and all three are under nineteen! But the deserved winner was Claudia Fragapane who became the first British woman since 1930 to win four gold medals when competing at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. Watch out for all these girls at the Rio Olympics in 2016. The Sportswomen’s Team of the Year was really hard to call with the cricket and rugby teams, the Great Britain 4 x 100 metre athletics relay squad and the coxless pairs rowing duo all strong contenders. The cricket team had retained the Ashes playing in Australia for only the third time in eighty years, the 100 metre relay squad
won gold in the European championships and bronze at the Commonwealth Games, and twice broke the 34-year-old UK 4 x 100m record, and Helen Glover and Heather Stanning won the world championship coxless pairs following on from their London Olympics success. The deserved winners, though, were the women’s rugby team who became world champions. Runners up to New Zealand in the previous three world cup finals, the present team secured the title after a thrilling final against Canada. Two other awards deserve special mention. A Lifetime Achievement Award went to Louise Martin for her long and dedicated service to sports administration. Louise played a major role in bringing the Commonwealth Games to Glasgow, became honorary secretary of the Commonwealth Games Federation and acted as vice-chairman of the Glasgow organising committee. The Helen Rollason Award for Inspiration was won by Mel Woodwards, a lady who suffered physical and emotional abuse from a violent husband and, having left him, dedicated herself to forming the Somerset North Youth Football League. Now in its second season, the league has recently signed up its 1,100th player. Ms. Woodwards still has to deal with posttraumatic stress, but her commitment to her sporting venture has generated much happiness to all the kids who now enjoy and have the opportunity to play football in a well regulated youth football organisation. Formula One Our congratulations go to Lewis Hamilton who was crowned World Champion after the final F1 race of the season in Abu Dhabi. This was Hamilton’s second world title following his victory in 2008. Hamilton triumphed over his Mercedes team mate, Nico Rosberg, after a hard fought two horse race (well two car race) throughout the year. After a collision in the Belgian Grand Prix which left Rosberg leading the championship, the relationship between the two drivers appeared to be somewhat fractured but it also appeared to galvanise Hamilton. Hamilton won eleven of the nineteen F1 races and was a deserved champion. How many more championships will Hamilton win? He is the first British double champion since Sir Jackie Stewart in 1971 (who won a third in 1973), and only the fourth in history, and he did it with two different teams following in the footsteps of those great drivers Niki Lauda and Ayrton Senna. It must be remembered, however, that the drivers championship is not determined by the skill and courage of the drivers alone. Champions are made by the design technicians of the cars and in every season the champion driver will almost certainly have the fastest and most reliable car on the circuit. This season it