British Olympians take top prizes at SJA awards

08/12/2011

British 2012 Olympic hopefuls Rebecca Adlington and Mark Cavendish have taken the awards for sports woman and sports man of the year at the 2011 Sports Journalists' Association awards.

The event held last night (December 7th) saw the swimmer and cyclist taking the respective gongs in recognition of their successes this year.

Fans enjoying corporate hospitality at the London Olympics may be keen to see if they can add more glory in the form of gold medals in front of a home crowd.

Adlington pipped another woman who may star next year, triathlete Helen Jenkins, while others performing well in the vote included heptathlete Jessica Ennis, swimmer Keri-Anne Payne and gymnast Beth Tweddle.

On the men's side, Mo Farah was runner-up to Cavendish.

Both men were recently shortlisted for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, although Adlington was missed out as the ten named were all men.

This caused controversy and brought a pledge from the BBC to review its shortlisting process.

By Keith Prowse