Beth Mead has been crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2022 after guiding England to a history-making European Championship that took women’s football mainstream.
The 27-year-old beat competition from Ben Stokes and Ronnie O’Sullivan to win the prize and stumbled onto the podium at MediaCity in Salford to collect the award after suffering a serious knee injury last month.
Mead said she was “speechless for once” and held back tears as she thanked her mother, who is being treated for cancer, and received a standing ovation from the sports stars in the crowd.
Mead said: “I certainly wouldn’t have done this without my father, my mother and all my family. This is especially for women’s sports and for women’s sports moving in the right direction. Let’s keep pushing girls and keep doing the right things.
Mead had been the overwhelming favorite after her tournament-best six goals and five assists, helping the Lionesses to a Wembley final where they defeated eight-time champions Germany to secure their first major trophy – and England’s first since 1966.
The award completed a clean sweep for England women at the 69th Sports Personality of the Year awards. They also won team of the year and coach of the year for Sarina Wiegman – the first woman to receive the award in her 23-year history.
It is the first time in half a century that the top prize has been won by women in consecutive years, following Emma Raducanu’s triumph in 2021. The last time it happened, a 21-year-old Princess Anne accepted the prize for winning eventing gold in 1971, followed a year later by pentathlete Mary Peters.
But it’s also a bittersweet win for Mead, who tore her anterior cruciate ligament playing for Arsenal last month – an injury that will almost certainly rule her out for next year’s World Cup – and has had to deal with her mother’s battle with cancer .
Mead hinted at her personal difficulties in an interview with Alex Scott earlier in the evening when asked how her Lioness teammates had helped her overcome the difficulties, watched from the audience by her father and brother.
“The girls are like a family away from home and when things weren’t going so well at home they were so supportive of me,” she said, appearing equally emotional.
The striker, whose mother briefly tried to encourage her to take up ballet before realizing her daughter was a much better footballer, later told reporters she would die happy if she won Spoty.
When asked if she had any advice for would-be future Lionesses inspired to take on the game this year, Mead said she played her best football “when I played for the six-year-old’s love that began”. She added: “So I would say enjoy every moment and don’t forget why you play football.”
The award caps off an eventful year for the footballer, who has spoken candidly about the ‘hatred’ of being left out of Team GB’s 2020 Olympics and, much more painfully, about her mother’s ongoing treatment for cancer.
Mead told the Guardian last month that she spent the year “trying to put a smile on my mum’s face”. There is perhaps no more fitting way to close out 2022 than with the coveted BBC trophy.
Seven of Mead’s Lioness teammates accepted the Team of the Year award, presented by Gary Lineker, Gabby Logan, Alex Scott and Clare Balding.
Jill Scott, just crowned queen of the jungle in I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here, said she hoped the team’s victory had inspired many girls to ask for football boots this Christmas “and it will be as normal be classified’ as she received their award.
Stokes, who finished second, could have had a strong claim to the coveted division had it not been for Mead’s golden year. Stokes took England to T20 World Cup glory, taking over as Test captain in April.
Eve Muirhead, who won Olympic gold as a women’s curling hen at the Beijing Winter Games, placed third in the competition, which is decided by a live public vote from a shortlist selected by a panel of experts.
One of the most emotional moments of the night was when Rob Burrow, the former England and Leeds Rhinos rugby league player, received a standing ovation as he received the Helen Rollason award for his work raising awareness of his condition, Motor Neurone Disease, increase.
On stage alongside his wife Lindsey Burrow, the former scrum half said he was “completely blown away” and was “inspired to keep going” by his close friend and ex-teammate Kevin Sinfield, who held back tears when he was handed a Special. Award for his superhuman fundraising efforts.
Sinfield, who raised more than £7 million by running seven marathons in seven days in 2020 and 300 miles from Edinburgh to Manchester in a week last month, described Burrow as “the most inspiring guy in the UK right now”. : “He has inspired all of us to become better friends.”
There was some controversy even before the first trophy was awarded, as Lineker joined a chorus of criticism over the omission of Matt Fitzpatrick, 28, who won the prestigious US Open in June.
Lineker tweeted two embarrassed emojis about the decision not to shortlist Fitzpatrick, while two-time World Golf Club Championship winner Ian Poulter described the awards as a “continuous farce and joke”.
