Good evening,

I enjoyed the SPOTY awards live from Birmingham very much, and I thought the BBC put on a magnificent spectacle.

The award caused a fair bit of controversy among some sports fans, since there were some great sportspeople who, if sporting achievement were the sole criteria for winning, would surely have prevailed on the night. However, it is what it is, and I think people should let it be. It is, perhaps, the one time in the year when a lot of people who aren't usually interested in sport focus on it for a while. And that cannot be such a bad thing.

The market was certainly an interesting one to follow, as people tried to judge the relative merits of sporting achievement and, for want of a better word, 'personality', in assessing who would win, and be placed.

Although I had watched the odds on Joe Calzaghe winning drop considerably over the course of a few weeks and months, and with good reason, given his achievements, I came to the final conclusion that he would come second behind Darren Clarke, and backed D.C., at some silly odds on prices. So I admit to being wrong there (Clarke was 2cnd, Calzaghe was 4th), and also to becoming somehow "blind" to the credentials of Zara Clarke as fitting the "ideal profile" of a SPOTY winner. D.C.'s public statements about not wanting to win on a sympathy vote, were possibly decisive, while his new love affair possibly affected his vote also. The running order and edits on the night also must have influenced the final vote. Some of the nominees had barely any airtime at all (Andrew Murray). Still, in my view, it was highly entertaining.

I was green on all nominees, after backing Calzaghe at 50.0, but much less so on Zara Phillips than most of the other nominees. In the end, after all the analysis, and stuff, my fund increased by £15. If D.C. had won it would have been £30, and if Calzaghe had won, £100.

The moral of the tale, which perhaps should be elevated to a SPOTY "law", is: ....

 if there is a member of the Royal family as a nominee for SPOTY, on no account underestimate their chance of winning, especially, and in particular, if they are riding a horse!

That is 2 out of 2 members of the royal family who have won SPOTY on the basis of performances on horseback. To my knowledge, 0 members of the royal family who have been in the running for the award on the back of a decent equestrian performance, have ever lost came worse than 1st!

So if I'm still around when another royal equestrian is in the running, and assuming the Royal Family have not vanished from the UK social map, I'll know what to do!

regards,

FT

p.s., back to football now, and I have a paper tested prediction system for trying to profit from Premiership fixtures which seems to predict about 60% of home wins correctly on the basis of only 2 predictor variables. I intend to share my predictions and am starting to stake on this as of the coming weekend, so assuming I have time for some blogging, I'll share my tips.