The award state of affairs

Laureus Award's were held a few weeks ago. This is where the world's best and brightest in the world of sport are praised for their achievements over the past year: think BBC Sports Personality of the Year but less shit. What's good about this award is that it doesn't focus on specific nations, like many others, so those often shunned for these types of awards get a look in. Or that's what they'd like you to believe anyway. In actual fact, these awards always do tend to go against a particular field of sport – motorsport. Though one of the world's most popular, motorsport is always given the cold shoulder, and I can't understand why. It's the most exciting, one of the most skill-required, and one of, if not the, bravest sport in the world. Usually motorsport comes through in an award ceremony when the public have been asked to contribute, but when its left to so called 'experts' something else always wins out. Case and point, the 2014 BBC SPOTY went to Lewis Hamilton after a colossal phone-vote victory. That very same award also highlighted my above point. When it came to the 'experts' to decide the 'Oversees' winner motorsport was overlooked. Marc Marquez was nominated after a sensational year (which I will talk about just shortly), but it was Christiano Ronaldo who won. A footballer. Cards on the table, I hate football. And I'm sorry: any arse hole can play football, but not any arse hole can straddle a 250hp MotoGP bike around circuits like Sachsenring and Mugello. This infuriated me to no end. Marquez is 21 years old, and at 21 years old he is a double MotoGP World Champion – the premier class of motorcycle racing, in just his second bloody season! He took on the likes of Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, the absolute best in the business, and beat them! At Silverstone in 2013 he dislocated his shoulder three hours before the race. He missed out on the victory three hours later by a couple of hundredths of a second. In 2014 he won ten races in a row, and thirteen in total – setting all kinds of new records. He was also 2010 125cc and 2012 Moto2 World Champion before stepping up. All of those achievements, and yet sports 'experts' thought an overpaid, primadonna footballer was more impressive. And the same has happened again. This time in the Laureus Awards. I'll admit, Novak Djokovich is very impressive, but he's not double MotoGP World Champion in just his second year impressive. I think bike sport, out of all the motorsports overlooked, is the most disregarded by the sporting world. When was the last time a TT rider, a WSB rider, BSB rider, MotoGP rider, etc, featured on the main sports bulletin on a news channel or on the back page of a major newspaper? Motorcycle racing is, by far and away, the best form of motorsport. It demands a skill and bravery only few possess. In a car you're boxed in, protected by the crash structure around you. On a bike you know you've gotten away from a big crash if all you've done is broken your collarbone. But maybe lack of mainstream media coverage is a good thing. Every year the Grand National comes on you always get the people who cry “animal cruelty” without any prior knowledge of the event. They see a small man riding a horse and think, “what a barbaric madman”. Fans of horse racing must get royally fed up with their sport being dragged through the mud by uneducated morons who think they know everything about everything. Could you imagine what the 'mainstream fools' response to the Isle of Man TT would be? One shudders at the thought, but the principle is the exact same. You'd get a bunch of ignorants seeing only a man, and indeed a woman, on a really fast bike hurtling past hedges and houses, and all you'd get non-stop would be bawbags crying, “think of the children, they're being turned into speed freaks”. Okay, maybe an extreme outcome, but definitely plausible. The original aim of this rant was to vent anger at the shameful way a true great of our time has been overlooked for an award. But now I've come to the conclusion that maybe it's a good thing. Bike racing is left out of mainstream view, but that's where it should be maybe. That way the uninformed public can't get its hands on it and ruin it for those who truly appreciate it. It's still inexcusable that Marc Marquez didn't win Laureus Sportsman of the Year though.

#paddockgrump