COMMENTARY: Teams again routed by individual athletes in annual vote

Kaisa Mäkäräinen

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By Riitta Koivuranta
     
      If Kaisa Mäkäräinen managed to miss the target five times in her biathlon World Cup competition in the Czech Republic on Sunday, she certainly had no difficulty finding the bullseye on Monday evening.
      By rising (in the end very conmfortably) to the top of the heap in the voting for Finland's Sports Personality of the Year for 2011, Mäkäräinen added another name to a historic streak of female winners going back to 2008.
     
Also historic was the fact that once again the sports journalists who make the decisions on these matters showed an aversion to selecting a team as the Sports Personality of the Year, even though the Finnish Lions ice hockey squad, complete with their IIHF World Championship gold medals and trophy, were seen as being among the strongest challengers to Mäkäräinen in the ante-post betting.
      There are those who opine that it is hopelessly old-fashioned to take the view that "a team can't be voted in", but by the same token one might ask why on earth there is still an award category entitled Team of the Year if a group can compete against individual athletes for the main prize.
     
The whole thing is difficult enough already without this additional demarcation line over "team vs. individual". Merely putting the achievements of sportsmen and sportswomen from different disciplines into some semblance of order of significance is already an extremely challenging exercise, and if we are brutally honest, there can never be any real objective absolute truth about the result.
      Adherents of motor sport, for instance, often feel hard done by, as exponents of sports "close to the Finnish heart" (track & field and Nordic skiing quickly come to mind) tend to get a distinct leg-up in the voting, and "international recognition" sometimes counts for little.
     
"To my mind it isn't a very good idea. They [teams and individuals] are very difficult to compare one with another", observed Mäkäräinen before she learned of her victory.
      "Maybe I'm a bit conservative in this respect, but in my view they should be kept separate", echoed Jukka Jalonen, the head coach of the victorious hockey squad.
      Jalonen collected the 2011 coaching award, and his charges were fairly naturally give the Team of the Year prize.
     
Since 1947, when the awards were inaugurated , the sports journalists have always had the freedom to vote for a team rather than an individual as the best of the year, but they simply have not taken the bait.
      Does this say something about the journalists' old-fashioned ways, or about a need to amend the voting rules?
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.1.2012


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Kaisa Mäkäräinen crowned Sports Personality of the Year (17.1.2012)

See also:
  COMMENT: Worldwide fame provides no assistance (18.12.2007)
  Javelin world champion Tero Pitkämäki takes Sports Personality of the Year trophy (18.12.2007)

Links:
  Finnish Sports Personality of the Year (Wikipedia)

RIITTA KOIVURANTA / Helsingin Sanomat
riitta.koivuranta@hs.fi