Dina Asher Smith didn’t win the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award but she absolutely should have. In 54 years of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award, a hotly contested competition where sports people’s personalities are voted on by the public, and, controversially, Michael Owen once was found to actually own a ‘personality’, just 13 women have won.
Two of those were royals: Princess Anne and her daughter, Zara Tindall whose knack for horses is surely boosted in the polls by being part of the most famous family in the world. One other woman winner, Jayne Torvill, received the award jointly alongside figure skating partner Christoper Dean.
One consolation is that women’s wins of the prize (under a fifth of all wins) are peppered through the decades, beginning with swimmer Anita Lonsborough’s 1962 win. However, In 2006, women simply stopped winning, and the past 12 years marks the longest period of time the awards have been going without a woman's win.
The dry spell could be broken next year. After all, the England women’s football team are off to the World Cup in France and have the capacity to go all the way. But if the long line of men winners couldn't be broken by runner Dina Asher-Smith, what hope does even a 23-woman strong squad have?
Dina Asher-Smith, who has studied for a history degree at King’s College London alongside her athletic career because surviving as a female athlete means you need to side-hustle, hard, was shortlisted for the award alongside Lizzy Yarnold and Jimmy Anderson, and placed in the public vote behind third place Harry Kane, runner up Lewis Hamilton and winner Geraint Thomas.
Dina wasn’t there as some tokenistic nod to the underdog. She was there because she’s won three European gold medals this year, and beaten both the women’s 100m and 200m records, after making a bet with her mum that she could run 100m in 10.85 seconds. Also, what's refreshingly unlike so many other sports stars, who tend to insist that they’re as glamorous and fun as they are fit and capable of pushing the body to extremely healthy limits, she actually admits that her training regimen means she’s not the funnest 23-year-old around, recently telling The Guardian ‘Generally I am a bit boring but I think you have to be if you want to run faster and keep improving’.
Dina deserved an BBC #SPOTY award, as they're known. Not simply because some woman deserves to win, or because black women are owed their dues, but because Dina is spectacular and - no pressure - she’s going to bring Great Britain absolute Olympic greatness at Tokyo 2020. Perhaps a public vote - remember other things our Great British Public has voted for of late - couldn’t recognise that, but one way of helping them along would be a woman’s category at the awards.
Sports, traditionally and stereotypically watched by and played by men, need to step out of those manacles and become everyone’s preserve. And Dina and many other women like her have gone great strides to making that happen. But they deserve recognition. Part of that would be having the BBC introduce a sportswomen’s personality of the year award, alongside what’s cracking up to look like its mens’ personality of the year award. What else is it if women have only reached the podium four times in the past 12 years?
It seems a little retro, at a time when many suggest that we should do away with gender categorisation, to make an award for the ladies. This award, though, isn’t lesser. It’s vital, because so long as women’s sport is paid less attention than men’s, women athletes are paid less than men both in and outside their sports (think about how little Serena Williams earns in comparison to Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal), the only way to re-set the scales is to give women their own space to shine. We already allow women to compete separately to men, so this award isn’t admitting that women can’t compete with male athletes, it’s just responding to the proof - 12 years of no women winners! - and saying look, Imma let you finish, but Dina did the best running of 2018, and is a winner in our eyes.