Vintage year proved a rewarding one for very best of British.

(From The Journal)

YOU can normally judge the feats of British sport with some degree of accuracy by the nature of the end of year shindig that is the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year.

Another 12 months of the sort of valiant failures and gallant near-misses the British have made their forte, and the recipient of the award is as easy to predict as the outcome of a 100m dash between Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt and Newcastle United's portly owner Mike Ashley.

In a vintage year such as this, however, there was considerably more interest in the annual celebration of our sporting endeavour and it is a measure of the success we had in 2008 that there were at least seven worthy winners from a variety of different sports.

Although winner and triple Olympic gold medallist Chris Hoy was perhaps the most deserving, few would have complained had double gold medallist in the pool Rebecca Adlington or Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton took the trophy.

In an Olympic year, the focus inevitably falls on the heroic deeds - or lack of them - of our Olympians and for once we had every right to be proud of what we achieved in Beijing.

For so long forced to accept our inferiority to the likes of Australia, France, Germany and even, at times, to second tier sporting nations like the Netherlands, Japan and Italy, 2008 represented a monumental shift in the established order.