Try telling Hoy you can't be a Scot and win Olympic glory for Britain

Updated: 03:50 EST, 15 December 2008

This evening in Liverpool, before a television audience of more than 10 million people, a remarkable sporting champion will become BBC Sports Personality of the Year. It may be Rebecca Adlington, the twice-golden swimmer. It could be Lewis Hamilton, the magnificently accomplished racing driver. Or it just might be Chris Hoy, the cyclist who won three gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.

Hoy was born in Edinburgh but lives in Manchester and trains at that city's fine velodrome. He describes himself as 'a Scottish athlete in a British team' and insists that he is proud to be both Scottish and British.

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Golden boy: Olympic champ Chris Hoy is proud to be Scottish and British

He is the latest and most successful of a distinguished company of Scottish Olympic gold medallists. One thinks, for instance, of the swimmer David Wilkie, the sprinter Allan Wells, the heroic Eric Liddell, the boxer Dick McTaggart and Rhona Martin and her astonishing curling team.

With those Olympian achievements in mind, consider the following reactions to the possibility of young Scottish footballers forming part of a British Olympic football team in London 2012. Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, announced: 'It's a Pandora's Box and we will open it at our peril.' Christine Grahame MSP believed it could have 'a catastrophic social and economic impact in Scotland'. While Ian Black, a spokesman for the 'Tartan Army', declared: 'It's a pernicious nonsense which is about as welcome in this country as the Black Death or avian flu.' Now Salmond sounds uncannily like Private Fraser from Dad's Army - 'We're doomed! We're all doomed!' - while Black is clearly unhinged. But today in Glasgow, Ms Grahame of the Scottish National Party is to launch a petition entitled 'Save Scottish Football'. And she will be joined by Craig Brown, the former manager of Scotland and a man who, I suspect, has never knowingly uttered a controversial opinion in his life.

And it is at this point that the rest of us ought to take notice. For what is taking shape is an alliance of opportunistic politicians and blinkered blazers. The politicians, led by the strident Salmond, are pushing the line that Scottish representation in a British Olympic team would lead to FIFA removing independent status from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In effect, they are warning that the home nations would simply disappear from the football map. And they are encouraged in this scaremongering by Brown, who says, dimly and darkly: 'I don't trust FIFA.'

The blazers are fearful. The Scottish FA are implacably opposed. David Collins, secretary of the Welsh FA, says: 'I believe we have the support of all the football fans in Wales' and we assume he has consulted every one of them.

While Raymond Kennedy, president of the Irish Football Association, says he doesn't 'see any need to have football as an Olympic sport' and, furthermore: 'It is held at the height of the football season.' Terrible thing, holding a football tournament in the football season. The cold fact is that the British Government has been given categoric assurances from FIFA that a Great Britain team will not compromise the individual associations and it is justified in taking the world body at its word. For football is a sport firmly rooted in the Olympic calendar and it will receive a tumultuous reception in 2012. It would be shamefully unacceptable if the fledgling footballers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were to lose their chance of Olympic competition - especially as Hampden Park is one of the designated Olympic football venues. The opportunity for young Scots to perform in the spiritual home of Scottish football should not be denied by chancers and time-servers.

Salmond is plainly entitled to pursue his independence agenda by whichever means he chooses. But since he clearly knows little of sport he would be wiser to keep his distance. When he sneers at the Olympic football tournament, when he attempts to speak not only for 'the people of Scotland' but also for 'the English fans', then we are entitled to deride his arrogance as well as his ignorance.

For the Olympic Games is not a four-yearly spasm of exclusive, self-regarding, small-minded nationalism. It is a festival touched with nobility, an inclusive celebration of the best in humankind. If anybody doubts it, then a brief chat with Chris Hoy should put them right.

Shame we won't see another Massa moment

With respect to Lewis Hamilton, my enduring memory of the Formula One season was not that last-lap manoeuvre in Brazil which won him the title, but the magnificent pit-stop pantomime in Singapore, starring Felipe Massa.

Massa, you may recall, was leading after 18 laps when he made his first refuelling stop - and was waved back into the race before the petrol had finished pumping. Off he roared, with several yards of fuel hose attached to his car. And his mechanics, portly, panting and splendidly optimistic, gave chase down the pit lane. Eventually, Massa slowed down and they disentangled him. But his race was lost and the title was edging towards our Lewis. And did we laugh our sympathetic socks off? Of course, we did.

Sadly, for those of us who regard the whole of Formula One as a protracted panto, such a cameo is unlikely to be repeated. Max Mosley has cracked his whip and decided that motor racing shall become as green as, say, race-walking or origami. And so, as part of his grand environmental strategy, refuelling will be banned from 2010. Naturally, some will dismiss this as a frivolous gesture, like a fat man waving away the dessert trolley at The Ritz. Personally, I've always believed that the ritual of refuelling tends to humanise the petrolheads. I used to imagine Nigel Mansell having his windscreen wiped while idly deciding between the Mars and the Twix. Or Damon Hill flicking through the NME as they totted up his Nectar points. The fact that, like the rest of us, they couldn't move a yard without petrol was strangely reassuring.

Now they will all drive with one eye on the fuel gauge. They will seek out short cuts, go easy on the right foot, perhaps even switch off their engines while travelling downhill. Sure, the entire circus - trucks, cars, transporters and functionaries - will leave enormous carbon footprints from Australia and the Far East, to Europe, Canada, back to Europe, Singapore, Brazil and Abu Dhabi. But they will save a few gallons of pitstop petrol.

We must hope that the planet is truly thankful.

Keegan: Read all about it

One of the saddest images of the sporting year was that of Kevin Keegan, old beyond his years, trudging away from St James' Park.

Of course, he had his faults but the virtues outweighed the shortcomings. From the early days in Doncaster right through to the leaving of Tyneside he was ambitious, original, endlessly enthusiastic. Ian Ridley's Kevin Keegan: An Intimate Portrait of Football's Last Romantic (Simon & Schuster £16.99) is a perceptive study of a fascinating man.

Other books worthy of Christmas consideration include Janie Hampton's The Austerity Olympics (Aurum £18.99), an enthralling account of the 1948 Olympics which contains lessons aplenty for London 2012. Also Sweet Summers, the Classic Cricket Writing of J.M.Kilburn (Great Northern Books £16.99). Old men insist that Kilburn was the finest cricket writer who ever lived. They may well be right. Finally, there is Roy of the Rovers, the unauthorised biography by Mick Collins (Aurum £14.99). Given the author's name, my praise must be constrained. Suffice to say that it is a witty and affectionate tribute to one of the few football men who can be mentioned in the same breath as Kevin Keegan.

PS

Given the closeness of tonight's BBC vote, who would past winners pick? Well, McGuigan went for Hamilton, Flintoff for Hoy, Holmes for Adlington. But Steve Davis, a snooker player who ludicrously contrived to win in 1988, plumped for a man who is not even a contender - 'Phil Taylor, who has dominated darts for years.' Some thought he was being ironic but Davis doesn't do irony. I suspect it was just one master of a non-sport recognising another.