The BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award is presented at the annual

BBC Sports Personality of the Year The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is an awards ceremony that takes place annually in December. Devised by Paul Fox in 1954, it originally consisted of just one, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. Several new awards have been ...

award ceremony. It is awarded to the sportsperson aged 17 or under as of 1 January of that year, who has made the most outstanding contribution to sport in that year. Nominees are generally British. Non-Britons are eligible if they are UK resident, play a significant amount of sport in the United Kingdom, and their core achievements for the year took place in the UK, and were not done with a non-UK national team. All winners to date have been British. Nominations are put forward via

Youth Sport Trust Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood ( maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a young adult. Yout ...

, and a judging panel then decides on a ten-person shortlist. The panel later reconvenes to choose the top three, and decides on the winner by

secret ballot The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vo ...

. The BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award was preceded by the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Newcomer Award, in which the recipients could be aged up to 25.

Decathlete The decathlon is a combined event in athletics consisting of ten track and field events. The word "decathlon" was formed, in analogy to the word " pentathlon", from Greek δέκα (''déka'', meaning "ten") and ἄθλος (''áthlos'', or � ...

Dean Macey Dean Macey (born 12 December 1977) is an English athlete from Canvey Island. He is best known for competing in the decathlon, which he did from 1995 to 2008, winning the Commonwealth Games decathlon, two World Championship medals, as well as twic ...

was the inaugural winner of the Newcomer Award in 1999, and racing driver

Jenson Button Jenson Alexander Lyons Button (born 19 January 1980) is a British racing driver. He won the 2009 Formula One World Championship when he drove for the Brawn GP team. After his F1 career, he became champion of the 2018 season of the Super GT ...

was the second and last winner the following year. In 2001, the award was replaced by the Young Sports Personality of the Year, and sprinter Amy Spencer was the first recipient of that award. The only two non-English recipients to win the award are Scottish tennis player

Andy Murray Sir Andrew Barron Murray (born 15 May 1987) is a British professional tennis player from Scotland. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 41 weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 in 2016. Murray ...

, who won in 2004, and

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

skateboarder

Sky Brown is a British-Japanese professional skateboarder and surfer who competes for Great Britain. She is the youngest professional skateboarder in the world, and has also won the American TV programme '' Dancing with the Stars: Juniors''. She repres ...

, who won in 2021, and represents Great Britain whilst living in both

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. The only person to win the award more than once is diver

Tom Daley Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name) Characters * Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' * Tom Beck, a character ...

, who won the award three times, in 2007, 2009, and 2010, and was nominated to the ten-person shortlist in five successive years (2007–2011). The most recent award was presented in 2022 to

artistic gymnast Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which designs the Code of Points and regulates ...

Jessica Gadirova Jessica Gadirova (born 3 October 2004) is an English artistic gymnast of Irish birth and Azerbaijani descent, representing Great Britain internationally. She represented Great Britain at the 2020 Summer Olympics and won a bronze medal in the ...

Winners

Newcomer Award

Young Personality Award

Winners by sport

* Including a Newcomer of the Year award

Note

* – Age refers to the age at which the sportsperson won the award. * - Brown was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a British father, and divides her time between Japan and the United States. However, she represents Great Britain due to her dual-nationality via her father.

References

;General * ;Specific {{SPOTY Young Personality Children's sport in the United Kingdom Awards established in 1999 1999 establishments in the United Kingdom Annual sporting events in the United Kingdom