RTÉ Sports Person of the Year
Irish sports award / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The RTÉ Sports Person of the Year Award is the titular award of the RTÉ Sports Awards ceremony, which takes place each December. The winner is the Irish sportsperson (from the island of Ireland) judged to have achieved the most that year. The winner was originally chosen by a special panel of RTÉ journalists and editorial staff, but was selected by a public vote from a predetermined shortlist in 2016. The first Irish sports award ceremony took place in 1985, and was closely modelled on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award.
Four people have won the award multiple times: athlete Sonia O'Sullivan won the award five times, including a record three successive awards, and golfer Pádraig Harrington and boxer Katie Taylor, with three wins, and golfer Rory McIlroy, who won it twice. The oldest recipient of the award is Christy O'Connor Jnr, who won in 1989 aged 41. Rory McIlroy, who first won in 2011, aged 22, is the youngest winner. Ten sporting disciplines have been represented; golf has the highest representation, with eight recipients.
Eamonn Darcy, Ronan Rafferty and Des Smyth, who won the Alfred Dunhill Cup in 1988, are the only non-individual winners of the award. Counting them separately, there have been thirty-one winners of the award (from 1985 to 2021). Five of these have been Northern Irish. The most recent award was made in 2022 to Katie Taylor.