Andy Murray
Andy Murray was told to hold his broken Sports Personality of the Year trophy close to his chest in case it fell apart and the top was held together with sticky tape!
The tennis world No 1 was presented with the trophy at a poolside in Miami by former heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis, who botched his handover to Murray when the Scot finished third in 2012.
That shambles was avoided but Murray revealed the replica trophy was broken when it arrived in Florida, where he is at his annual pre-season training camp.
‘Yeah, it is a bit broken,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of stuck down with tape. The top bit, where the camera is, is stuck down. I didn’t break it. They haven’t mentioned to me how it got broken, but I was told if I won I had to hold it close to my body so it didn’t fall over on camera.”
‘And after the problems with me and Lennox, the last time we did this, I listened to them!’
Murray has dominated tennis so ruthlessly this season, but this was perhaps his most convincing and predictable victory of all, even if wife Kim did vote for Olympic show-jumping gold medallist Nick Skelton.
Despite failing to win the family vote, Murray claimed his final trophy of 2016 with 247,419 votes compared to 121,665 cast for second-placed triathlete Alistair Brownlee.
And it is no surprise that he should become the first person to be crowned Sports Personality three times after a year in which he has consistently made history.