The BBC is in the news a lot this week, what with Donald Trump suing it for $10 billion over defamation claims, so it is the perfect time to stick the boot in once more.
This Thursday, the winner of 2025’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) will be announced. For the uninitiated, which is probably everyone not in the UK, the award is given to the best British sportsperson of the year, after a public vote on a shortlist; it has run every year since 1954. The “Personality” bit of the title is a bit of a misnomer; it doesn’t require the winner to be a great raconteur, just to be popular with the public. Five cyclists have won the award: Tom Simpson (1965), Chris Hoy (2008), Mark Cavendish (2011), Bradley Wiggins (2012) and Geraint Thomas (2018).
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
The shortlist for this year’s Sports Star of the Year was published last week, and, to my mind, came with a glaring omission. The lucky six are: footballer Mariona Caldentey, boxer Terence Crawford, pole vaulter Armand Duplantis, runner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, baseball player Shohei Ohtani and footballer Mohamed Salah.
Tadej Pogačar is missing from that list. The Slovenian, who has won 45 times in the last two seasons, 20 times in just 50 race days in 2025, has never been nominated for the title, in fact. It’s hard not to jump to superlatives when describing the 27-year-old, but Pogačar has forced people watching cycling to reframe how good someone can be; he is arguably the best male cyclist of all time, and his snubbing by the BBC SPOTY panel stands out.
“I actually think he should be more famous in mainstream sport,” his biographer, Andy McGrath, told me last month. “He’s never been on the short list for the BBC World Sports Star of the Year. He probably won’t be this year, which would be a travesty, if he isn’t. He should be up there with Carlos Alcaraz, and Max Verstappen, the big stars. He is kind of too big for cycling. I wonder if that’s a pro cycling problem, like is the sport still seen as too niche? Or is it still tainted by Lance Armstrong?”
It feels like a bit of a mug’s game to moan about the nominations for an award that I have no control over, so I won’t do more of it – it just seems weird that in cycling some are bored by Pogačar’s dominance, and yet he does not have cut-through outside of our sport.
It can’t be that cycling is completely too niche; after all, there have been four cycling overall winners in the last 18 years. However, perhaps it’s just British riders that are known by the wider public here, especially if they have done well at an Olympics, other global awards have been bestowed upon Pogačar, after all. He might be doing things like no rider has before, but there is just little name recognition – he shouldn’t take it too personally, either, considering Eddy Merckx never won the award, or Marianne Vos, or any other dominant cyclist other than Anquetil and Armstrong.
Perhaps there’s a positive to take here: it shows the potential that cycling has to market Pogačar, to grow its audience, to point out to the world that one of the greatest athletes ever is currently riding his bike, and this level won’t go on forever. Duplantis won last year, and could well win two in a row, as he vaults to ever new heights; it’s not quite the same as solo attack after solo attack to victory, as Pogačar does, though.
He’s my world sports star of the year, anyway. There’s something special about the world champion, who doesn’t just confine himself to Grand Tours and monotonously grinding down the opposition. He’s always on the attack, from Paris-Roubaix to Il Lombardia, and we will miss him when he’s gone, even if it is easy to bemoan his control over cycling.
This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
Explore More
