Young Sports Personality Of The Year

This is lifted direct from the Betfair Forum. It is a superb piece of work with a great, well researched argument. Well done that man:

SOSPAN 08 Dec 19:35

The Top 3 nominees have been announced and I can't for the life of me work out how Aussie Laura Robson is 2/7 fav. Not taking anything away from her achievement of winning Jr Wimbledon but lets face it Annabel Croft won that! Born in Australia to Australian parents, moved to Hong Kong at 6 then comes to Britain and is now being hailed as the next big thing. Did very well but has hardly had any notable publicity since wimbledon. The other candidates are Tom Daley (won it last year so easily dismissed) and Eleanor Simmonds. She's availiable at 5/2 and for me the prices should be reversed. Golden girl of the Paralympics. Two Gold medals and a world record (sound familiar to the main award?) Has a glowing personality and has been paraded plenty of times since. On top of that, she is only ever likely to win the award in an Olympic year (will be too old when 2012 comes around). The award is decided upon by a panel chaired by John Inverdale, who each have a vote for the winner via a secret ballot. Inverdale presented both Olympics and Wimbledon so is hard to predict. Other panel members are Jake Humphrey who was used a lot on Olympic presenting so could well favour Simmonds, Andy Martin, head of Olympic and Paralymic Developement for Youth Sports Trust(Simmonds almost definitely), Mike Atkinson, Dir. of comms and policy YST (probably vote same way when you consider 2 of the board members of YST are Duncan Goodhew, olympic smimming gold medal winner and Marc Wood, who won 12 swimming medals in the Paralympics), Henry Aikines-Aryeetey, former winner and promising sprinter who may well favour the Paralympic achievement, Kate Haywood, former winner and a fellow swimmer (Simmonds vote) and a rep from CBBC, BBC Switch and SPOTY, who have not been named. By my analysis at least 4 of the nine votes should almost definitely go Simmonds way so only needs another one of the other 5 votes available to ensure win. Hence a lot of value in the 5/2 with Sad brokes!! EDIT: Mr SOSPAN, you are very good! Thank you.