Buckle up, we have two hours of sporting fun/hell ahead of us, depending on your point of view, as we look back on a year that brought us the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, someone called Raygun, England’s men kind of flunking Euro 2024 while still reaching the final, England’s men kind of flunking a T20 World Cup while still reaching the semi-finals, the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Glasgow, 15-year-old Mika Stojsavljevic becoming the first British girl to win a junior grand slam title since 2009 (and a couple of senior Grand Slam singles titles for each of Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka), Manchester City winning stuff for a change, Emma Hayes leaving Chelsea, Jude Bellingham coming third in the Ballon d’Or voting, Ireland winning the Six Nations, Lando Norris finishing second to Max Verstappen in the Formula One world championship, Lukes Humphries and Littler in the World Darts final and further world championships in, among other things, aerobic gymnastics, beach handball, beach soccer, biathlon, biathlon, bobsleigh, canoe marathon, canoe polo, canoe sprint, chess, curling, cyclo-cross, diving, field archery, figure skating, flag football, ice hockey, indoor bowls, judo, luge, modern pentathlon, orienteering, parkour, race walking, road bicycle racing, rowing, skeleton, ski flying, speed skating (four of them!), squash, team table tennis, track cycling, weightlifting and wrestling. Plus the scandal-ravaged conkers competition, obviously.

Tonight we’ll ignore most of those things because British people weren’t that good at them, and focus on celebrating some of the nation’s great success stories. Along the way eight awards will be presented, namely:

• The Helen Rollason Award, given “for outstanding achievement in the face of adversity”.

• The Unsung Hero Award, given to a volunteer who has a significant impact on sports participation in their community. The winner will be chosen from the 15 people who have received regional awards – read more about them on the BBC website here.

• A lifetime achievement award, which we already know will go to Sir Mark Cavendish.

• Coach of the Year, won in each of the last four years by football managers and currently held by Pep Guardiola.

• Team of the Year, won in each of the last four years by whichever football team was managed by the Coach of the Year and so currently held by Manchester City.

• World Sport Star of the Year, for which six athletes have been shortlisted: the Swiss para athlete Catherine Debrunner, Swedish pole-vault deity Armand Duplantis, the Dutch Olympic women’s marathon champion, and 10,000m and 5,000m bronze-medalist, Sifan Hassan, French swimming sensation Leon Marchand, American basketball ace Caitlin Clark and her compatriot, the needs-no-introduction gymnast Simone Biles.

• Young Sports Personality of the Year, for which the three shortlisted athletes are the 18-year-old para-swimmer William Ellard, who won two golds and a silver at the Paralympics, the skateboarder Sky Brown, who at 16 won her second Olympic medal in Paris, and the 17-year-old darts phenomenon Luke Littler.

• And finally the Sports Personality of the Year, for which the nominees are triathlete Alex Yee, para cyclist Dame Sarah Storey, the very same Luke Littler who will presumably have already pocketed the Young Sports Personality of the Year award, Real Madrid and England’s Jude Bellingham, record-obliterating cricketer Joe Root, fresh from being England’s best player in a Test match yet again, and pre-event favourite Keely Hodgkinson, who won a brilliant gold over 800m in Paris.

The great and the good of the world of sport are gathering as I type in Salford, with the ceremony starting at 7pm GMT and ending two glorious, joyful, miserable, interminable (delete as appropriate) hours later. Welcome!