Dario Franchitti, the unnoticed sports personality

 

It's a crying shame Dario's achievements have been ignored by the media again. In part, you would have hoped they might have accidentally read a paragraph or two about what Dario has achieved in the United States whilst rushing together pieces on the disastrous Las Vegas IndyCar season finale, but they probably didn't want to accidentally talk too much about a series which they in fact know nothing about.

It's a remarkable irony that Britain is one of the most engaged countries when it comes to engineering skills and its involvement in running the top motorsport teams in a variety of different disciplines, whilst simultaneously having one of the most unengaged national media on the same subject.

This follows on from the weekend's announcement that Sky Sports has formed an entire channel just for its newly acquired coverage of Formula 1 next year, and early signs are that won't include anything else but Formula 1. Sky is certainly not blind to the fact that there are other motorsports. It airs the IndyCar Series live, it tried its hardest to get the UK interested in NASCAR two years ago, it runs highlights in the same week of the event of the British Rally Championship and has other wrap-up programmes too, yet it still felt it needs to treat Formula 1 fans separately from other general motorsport fans.

This is driven from the fact that unfortunately other motorsports do not get a look in from the UK's national media. IndyCar popped up after the Las Vegas race for what was solely coverage of Dan Wheldon's tragic death in the event, which was a matter of mention only for the respectable media, or a savage witch hunt by the usual hideous 'newspapers'. The only other notable appearance of IndyCar racing in the newspapers recently was for the previous year's Indianapolis 500, which was of course just to highlight Mike Conway's season ending accident, barely mentioning Dario Franchitti's second win in the event.

It's no wonder there's a general perception in the UK that IndyCar is just a dangerous sport, with no other insight beyond that from your average Joe.

The only other sport that had a reasonable profile in the UK is the FIA World Rally Championship. Rallying is a popular sport at a national level in the UK, but the '90s and early '00s heydey of British rally drivers Colin McRae and Richard Burns is long gone, and with Sébastien Loeb's eight year domination, and the sport migrating further and further down the EPG, it's been disappearing from the public consciousness at about the same rate.

So sadly, it isn't any surprise to see no representation from motorsport in this year's BBC Sports Personality of the Year, with the shortlist drawn up by the national media's nominations.

The Sun, which actually sponsors Chevrolet touring car drivers Jason Plato and Rob Huff didn't even nominate their men. Of course if they had, the cynical view would be it could have been a deceitful attempt to get sportsmen wearing their logos in the shortlist, whereas in fact the truth is they're probably the only newspaper really aware of Plato and Huff's achievements - and in all reality, if three time World Touring Car Champion Andy Priaulx can't get nominated, what chance did they have?

Jenson Button, a good year in a bad car just missed out by one vote on making the shortlist, whilst Dario Franchitti got one nod from Scottish newspaper The Herald, the same amount of nominations as Lewis Hamilton, who most certainly just had his worst year in the Championship.

People can get really mad about the absence of women in the shortlist if they want, but I think it's more than just that. The exclusion of true British sports heroes highlights the poor system that is being used to select the shortlist for this 'prestigious' award, relying on a body which are assumed to be qualified to produce an acceptable shortlist, when it seems quite likely that they are in fact not.

 

Comments

[Andrew Fletcher]

I didnt watch Sports Personality and don't proclaim to know the shortlist, so I wont comment on the nominees, however I too was dissapointed to see the lack of motorsport representation - we could have picked from quite a lot of disciplines, as well as the obvious Franchitti there could have been Dan Wheldon post-humously, for his 500 win more so than the crash which saw him take the greatest accolade in racing as a part-time racer in a budget entry. Heck, he deserves an MBE in my opinion for his achievements in 2005, let alone Sports Personality. Cal Crutchlow deserves a mention also, as does Rob Huff.

Unfortunately it seems that anything thats not Formula 1 isn't worth talking about these days, yet with Top Gear and custom car scenes bigger than ever I cannot see why. The typical view of IndyCar is that it's not worth watching because its all left turns, a completely false approach from detractors who know nothing of the intricacies of oval raceing (and also that IRL is now 95% street courses anyway).

As for the lack of women in the shortlist - if the top ten athletes for 2011 have all been men then they all deserve to be in the list, and a female shouldnt displace a better performing male just to balance the roster. However, I strongly assume that that is not the case at all, which again shows how far detracted from the wider picture SP now seems to be.