BBC announce 2011 Sports Personality of the Year top 10
November 2011
November 2011
Sports Personality of the Year 2011: Mark Cavendish wins BBC award
Live from the dock10 studios - World road race champion and Tour de France green jersey winner Mark Cavendish has been voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
The 26-year-old is only the third cyclist to win after Tommy Simpson in 1965 and Sir Chris Hoy in 2008.
Cavendish said: "I am absolutely speechless. Just to be nominated was an incredible feeling."
Golfer Darren Clarke, who triumphed at the Open, was second with world 5,000m champion athlete Mo Farah third.
Cavendish won five stages of this year's Tour de France - including the final stage in Paris - to clinch the green jersey awarded to the race's best sprinter for the first time.
The Manxman followed that success by confirming Britain's emergence as a major nation in road as well as track cycling by taking gold at the World Championships in Copenhagen in September.
He said: "I am absolutely speechless, some of my team-mates here will say that is a rare thing.
"I had a group of guys who rode in Copenhagen who brought the rainbow jersey back to Britain after nearly half a century and that is a massive thing. Even to be nominated in the top 10 is an incredible thing.
"That we can produce champions from such a small place is superb."
Cavendish for his services to cycling and won the Sports Journalists' Association sportsman of the year award in December.
