Another year, another campaign to get a mountain biker on to the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award (traditionally awarded to people with little in the way of personality, but that’s beside the point). But 2006 is a bit different – the Beeb has changed the voting system…

This time around, members of the public can nominate sportspeople. The public’s top ten will be combined with the top ten lists of a judging panel to come up with the final shortlist. And then the winner will be voted for on the night as the show mutates inexorably into Strictly X-Pop Factor Get Me Out Of Here, or something.

But we digress. The campaign is being driven by the organisers of the ever-popular Fort William World Cup – they’re also responsible for the 2007 UCI Mountain Bike and Trials World Championships at Fort William next September.

As the nomination system is supposed to be one person/one vote, the suggested nomination is Steve Peat, who won the MTB World Cup for the third time this year. Obviously Tracy Moseley won the World Cup too, but then you get into a whole vote-splitting thing.

Clearly the fact that British riders won both the men’s and women’s World Cup should be in itself worthy of mention, but historically the BBC hasn’t been good at picking up on mountain biking success (despite the often thin pickings of British success elsewhere). So, time to make a bit of noise.

We’ll have to be quick, though – nominations close on 15 November. So head to the BBC website and get your nomination in…

Obviously the last time we encouraged people to vote in a BBC poll they got all upset and started moaning about “an orchestrated campaign” and “skewing the result”. Well, duh. We don’t hear ’em complaining about that when the General Election comes around. Anyway. Steve Peat for BBC Sports Personality of the Year!