Sports Personality of the Year LIVE: Latest updates and results as Beth Mead wins award ahead of Ben Stokes

England footballer Beth Mead has been voted 2022’s Sports Personality of the Year after playing a starring role in the Lionesses’ stunning European Championships victory this summer.

Mead becomes the first female footballer to win the award following England’s first major international title in 66 years, with the Lionesses defeating Germany in a thrilling final in front of 86,000 at Wembley Stadium.

Mead scored six goals at the Euros, picking up the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament awards, and was the overwhelming favourite to win the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year prize.

Mead’s award completed a hat-trick for the Lionesses, with England winning Team of the Year and manager Sarina Wiegman winning Coach of the Year.

England Test cricket captain Ben Stokes finished second with Olympic curler Eve Muirhead in third. Jake Wightman, Jessica Gadirova and Ronnie O’Sullivan were also nominated.

Rob Burrow paid tribute to his late friend and “MND hero” Doddie Weir after receiving an award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony on Wednesday.

Burrow, 40, won eight Super League titles in a glittering playing career but was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, a life-limiting and incurable condition, in December 2019.

The former Leeds Rhinos star says Weir, who died last month after his own battle with MND, had helped him to come to terms with the diagnosis.

Burrow’s work to raise awareness of MND was recognised with the Helen Rollason Award, which in 2019 had been given to Weir.

“I’m totally overcome with this award due to the amount of amazing people that have won this before, in particular my MND hero Doddie Weir,” Burrow said at the ceremony in Salford.

“What a fantastic guy he was. I don’t think I would be here today without meeting him less than a week into my diagnosis.”

Burrow received the award alongside his friend and former Rhinos team-mate Kevin Sinfield, who received a special award in recognition of his MND fundraising efforts.

“I am inspired to keep going by my friend Kevin Sinfield, the guy who made the impossible possible,” Burrow added.

“My family as a whole have put their life on hold to care for me, especially my beautiful wife Lindsey and my amazing kids.

“Lindsey did not expect to sign up for this but she puts me first and foremost I’m not here without a sacrifice. This is for all the MND warriors out there, we will not stop (trying) to find a cure.”

As England prepared to play Spain in the quarter-finals of the Euros, Sarina Wiegman gathered her team and asked them a question. “You’ve got 10 days to change your life,” she said. “Do you want it or not?” Five months later, as the year draws to a close, even Wiegman could not have foreseen the impact England’s victory has created, and not only for them. It was not just their own lives the Lionesses were changing.

This has been their year. At the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year awards on Wednesday night, the Lionesses completed a resounding hat-trick of the major prizes. Beth Mead, England’s player of the Euros and the winner of the golden boot, picked up the main award. Wiegman, who succeeded where previous England managers had failed since 1966, was coach of the year. When it came to team of the year, there could only be one winner. No other victory has been as historic or groundbreaking than what the Lionesses achieved at Wembley this summer.

Beth Mead’s 2022 was an emphatic case of a player bouncing back.

The summer of 2021 was a hugely disappointing time for the Arsenal forward, with Hege Riise having left her out of the Great Britain squad that headed to the Tokyo Olympics.

A year later, shortly after being named in Sarina Wiegman’s England squad for the upcoming home European Championship, a very much in-form Mead spoke of having “channelled the negative energy into positive energy”.

The 2021-22 season had seen her register 14 goals and 19 assists in 40 appearances for the Gunners, and score 12 times in 10 England matches under Wiegman.

While Mead had no doubt she was in the best form of her career, she emphasised her belief she still had a lot more to give, and hoped she could show that at the Euros.

What followed was a tournament that could hardly have gone better for the 27-year-old, the England team captivating the nation as they secured the first trophy in their history, and Mead having a crucial role that saw her claim the Golden Boot and named player of the tournament.

Well this is awesome...

Beth’s Arsenal team-mates were playing in the Champions League tonight (where they thrashed Zurich 9-1) on were watching Sports Personality on the way home as Mead was announced as this year’s winner.

Mead is the sixth footballer to win Sports Personality of the Year after Bobby Moore, Paul Gasgoine, Michael Owen, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs. She is also the second woman to win the award in as many years, following Emma Raducanu’s victory in 2021 and 14 consecutive years of male winners.

England were also named Team of the Year while manager Sarina Wiegman won Coach of the Year, as the Lionesses completed a clean sweep.

Beth Mead: “I’m speechless for once. I’m incredibly honoured to win this award. Wouldn’t have done it without the girls. The team have backed me. Yes, I’ve won this accolade, I’ve scored a few goals but I wouldn’t have done it without them.

“I wouldn’t have done it without my dad, my mum and all my family.

“This is for women’s sport and women’s sport heading in the right direction. Let’s keep pushing and let’s keep doing the right thing.”

England footballer Beth Mead has been voted 2022’s Sports Personality of the Year after playing a starring role in the Lionesses’ stunning European Championships victory this summer.

Mead becomes the first female footballer to win the award following England’s first major international title in 66 years, with the Lionesses defeating Germany in a thrilling final in front of 86,000 at Wembley Stadium.

Mead scored six goals at the Euros, picking up the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament awards, and was the overwhelming favourite to win the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year prize.

Ben Stokes finished second with Eve Muirhead in third.

And the winner of the Sports Personality of the Year is Beth Mead!