It’s fair enough for Sports Personality of the Year to ask some searching questions | Sean Ingle


Given sport’s bad reputational year, it is fine that the BBC is preparing to get Chris Froome to defend himself on what is normally a controversy-free programme

For more than 60 years the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year has served up a mildly diverting few hours of saccharine and froth. The formula is long established: laud Britain’s sporting heroes, relive their glories through stirring montages, and throw a threw softball questions for them to answer.

Usually it makes for an easily digestible, if unchallenging, three hours of viewing. On Sunday night, however, the BBC is expected to break with tradition by firmly questioning Chris Froome about his failed test at the Vuelta a España when he appears via video link from his training camp in Spain.

Related: Team Sky and Chris Froome may find public will inflict a grim verdict | Richard Williams

Related: The Anti-Sports Personality of the Year awards 2017

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