by S. Graveson

Created on: March 22, 2009   Last Updated: March 24, 2009

The best athlete of 2008 is really a rather peculiar subject, as the highlight of the sporting year was of course the Beijing Olympics, though the same year saw us have the greatest Wimbledon final in history and the UEFA 2008 tournament. We also saw Christiano Ronaldo have arguably the greatest season in premiership history, Joe Calzaghe beat two boxing legends before bowing out of the sport, Tom Brady's NFL season was a beauty to behold for the Pats, and LeBron James did everything to enhance his reputation. Lets admit it 2008 was a wonderful year for sport fans all around the world, whatever your sport was you had a highlight reel for it.

Having watched most great sporting events in the western world last year, and most of the Olympics, I'm sorry for not acknowledging things like Kabadi, Aussies rules, Bandy, Perolta or Bossaball (I realise some of them are played in Europe by the way), I just never caught any of them. I'd like to put a few names forward before putting my number 1, just to show how great some sports people were in 2008.

Rafael Nadal finally overthrew Roger Federer at the top of the tennis world and in the process won things for fun. Winning another French Open, before going on to win Wimbledon stopping the Fed-Express from taking it, before winning the Gold Medal at the Olympics. A season to savour perhaps, but amazingly he seems to be carrying the momentum into the 2009 season.

A bizarre mention perhaps here, but hardcore boxing fans will know exactly why he's in here, Juan Manuel Lopez, the current WBO Super Bantamweight world champion exploded onto the radar in 2008. Despite only fighting 6 rounds in the year, he'd feature in 4 fights, the first being a Latino title defence, the second being a world title fight against renowned puncher Daniel Ponce De Leon, and the following two fights being defences of the world belt he'd won. This is possibly the most exciting young boxer on the scene right now and one to watch.

Rebecca Adlington in the swimming pool at the Olympics is one of Britain's great success stories of 2008 Britain's first swimming gold medallist in god only knows how long, also set a world record at the games. Despite no one really know of her prior to the games she's become a bit like the nations sweetheart and has, on the back of her success lead to the swimming championships being televised over here.

Britain had one other fantastic Olympic success, the cyclist Chris Hoy who won British Sports Personality of the year after his

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