The Scot is an overwhelming favourite, but our writers state the cases of these other deserving nominees...
Gareth Bale – {ODDS:123998465:9/1}
Only five footballers have won Sports Personality of the Year.
The national sport – the one that gets all the attention on Sky Sports News and the back pages of the national newspapers – has been surprisingly under-represented in the award’s history.
The truth is, Britain’s recent achievements on the pitch have not compared to those on the track, in the velodrome or on the court.
That’s not the case this year, though.
This year, Gareth Bale became British football’s most successful European export ever.
The 27-year-old won his second Champions League with Real Madrid – outshining Cristiano Ronaldo in the final by setting up his side’s only goal.
He also became the highest-scoring player from the UK in the history of La Liga.
Bale’s greatest achievement of the year, however, was in international football, when he led Wales – in their first appearance at a European Championships – to the semi-finals of Euro 2016.
Without him, it’s unlikely they would have even made it to the tournament.
Sports Personality hardly lends itself to team sports. Of the 26 winners since 1990, 20 have been from individual disciplines.
But in 2016, Bale has been as close to a one-man show as you will find in football.
He is Wales’ talisman, the best player for Europe’s best club team – even though they won’t admit it – and a deserving winner.
Mo Farah – {ODDS:123998449:12/1}
Mo Farah’s assertion that he doesn’t stand a chance of finishing in the top three at this year’s Sports Personality is misguided.
Fourteen of the 16-person shortlist competed for Team GB this summer, but it was Farah’s achievements that shone more than any other at Britain’s most successful Olympics in more than a century.
By defending both his 5,000m and 10,000m golds in Rio, he became just the second long-distance runner to ever win the ‘double-double’, sealing his status as this country’s most successful track-and-field athlete of all time in doing so.
That, despite sizeable factions of his competitors conspiring to try and tactically nullify his superiority, not to mention having to pick himself up from a fall in the 10,000m to sprint home by less than half a second.
Farah has now won nine successive titles at major championships dating all the way back to 2011.
Nobody else in the history of his sport has ever strung together more than five.
Given Andy Murray’s recent feats, another first place this weekend is, clearly, beyond him.
Having been bizarrely overlooked before, though, the very least that Farah deserves this time around is to be acknowledged without question as being the best of the rest.
Jamie Vardy – {ODDS:123998523:12/1}
Fairytales don’t come much better than this.
But unlike a heart-warming Disney film, it did not happen once upon a time, in a land far, far away.
Jamie Vardy’s story started nine years ago, in Stocksbridge.
Since then, the 29-year-old has risen from level eight on the football pyramid all the way to the top.
That meteoric ascent has been accompanied by a glut of trophies, too.
The Evo-Stik Premier Division-win at Halifax in 2010/11 was followed by a Conference title at Fleetwood and lifting the Championship trophy with Leicester.
Last year, though, Vardy outdid himself.
Scoring 28 goals for Claudio Ranieri’s side, he was instrumental in their Premier League title-winning campaign – a feat that is unlikely to be matched ever again.
He broke records, too, with 12 of those strikes coming in consecutive matches between August and December.
And let’s not forget his equaliser against Wales at Euro 2016, one of few moments England fans could get excited about in France.
Vardy was duly rewarded for his remarkable campaign, winning Football Writers’ Player of the Year at the end of the season.
Another accolade at the flagship BBC event would be a fitting additional chapter in football’s greatest story.
Max Whitlock – {ODDS:123998478:14/1}
At 6.30pm on 14 August, Great Britain had never won an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.
By 8.15 that same evening, they had claimed two.
And both, extraordinarily, belonged to Max Whitlock.
In isolation, beating Kenzo Shirai of Japan in the men’s floor for victory number one was a significant upset.
The 23-year-old – with his favoured pommel horse to come later in the evening – might have been content just to coast through the first event, particularly as the Japanese athlete was the clear favourite.
His gold, therefore, was a thrilling bonus.
And having, indeed, brilliantly won – in doing so, fulfilling British potential for a gymnastics gold that had been burgeoning since 2008 – he was able to clear his mind in time to compete again just an hour later.
Stunning mental resilience and concentration.
Beating compatriot Louis Smith in that second competition – the one both men had a genuine shot at – ensured that the Hemel Hempstead-born gymnast made history by becoming the first British athlete to win two golds in a day since 1972.
The softly-spoken Whitlock – who, by the way, also won Britain’s first Olympic all-round gymnastics medal in Rio – has since used his elevated profile to promote his sport around the country.
The perfect ambassador, and record-breaking champion.
Danny Willett – {ODDS:123998530:100/1}
The most important factors when choosing the Sports Personality of the Year?
Achievement and narrative – and Danny Willett has both.
Willett was ready to skip this year’s Masters in order to be with wife Nicole for the birth of their first child, whose due date coincided with the final round of the season’s first major.
Thankfully, Zachariah was born the week before the tournament started, leaving his dad just enough time to fly over from Yorkshire to Georgia.
Hardly ideal preparation, but Willett triumphed by three shots to become the first English golfer since Sir Nick Faldo 20 years earlier to claim the green jacket.
The 29-year-old’s victory was a surprise to some in Britain, most probably because golf is almost exclusively hidden away on Sky Sports.
It shouldn’t have been.
Willett had been ascending to the top of the sport ever since he won Gary Player’s Nedbank Challenge in South Africa 18 months earlier.
A couple of other prestigious triumphs followed – the 2015 European Masters and 2016 Dubai Desert Classic – meaning that when Jordan Spieth blew up on the last day at Augusta, Willett was ready to do something amazing.
He duly did, becoming a first-time father and a major champion in the space of 12 days.
Years don’t get much better than that.
