BBC Sports Personality of the Year: Who will be Britain's chosen one? Just to look at those candidates who will be up there in the hustings is to be transported back to glory. What victories they delivered. What happiness they engendered. What crimes of facial hair they inflicted. Try reading this shortlist of surnames without a tear forming at the memory of how their performances sent us giddy with celebration: Adams, Ainslie, Ennis, Farah, Grainger, Hoy, McIlroy, Murray, Simmonds, Storey, Weir and Wiggins. That's some firm of solicitors. White, black and mixed race, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic, male and female, able-bodied and disabled: what a cross-section of modern Britain they represent. And one of which we can be rightly, justifiably and immeasurably proud. But the distillation process does not end with their exclusion. Now, to satisfy our urge always to classify and rank, we have to decide who is the greatest participant in this greatest of sporting years. It is down to our phone votes to determine the first among equals. A glance through history gives us little help in that selection process. The award was first given in 1954, to the athlete Christopher Chataway, later the brains behind the London marathon. The title was significant. This was not just recognition for winning. Sports Personality meant the gong was to go to someone "whose actions have most captured the public's imagination." Over the years, it was relatively straightforward to decide who had best done that. Mary Peters in 1972, Paul Gascoigne in 1990, Steve Redgrave in 2000: these were people whose feats transcended their disciplines, whose performance illuminated the national discourse. This year, though, any one of the shortlisted dozen has done as much as that, if not more. The other day I was at an event attended by one of the nominees (in the interests of editorial balance it would be invidious to reveal who it was; oh all right, it was Jessica Ennis). A naturally modest, undemonstrative character, she was none the less the centre of attention. Everybody wanted to talk to her, to be photographed with her, to touch her medal. But most of all, as she graciously posed for their snapshots, they wanted to tell her what they were doing when she triumphed on Super Saturday. That wonderful evening has become a part of our collective consciousness, a point of time outstanding in the emotional recall. It is our Kennedy moment. Across the country this autumn a similar scene has been repeated hundreds of times with a rotating cast of dozens. Never before have we had such a collection of young heroes to acknowledge. But it is what their victories tell us about the nature of achievement that will have the most profound influence on us all. Much has been spoken about the legacy of this golden year. For the Olympic architect Lord Coe it will be one of facility and renewal. With a whole London district detoxified and redeveloped, new places in which to participate, he insists, will encourage us off the sofa and into healthy activity. As his slogan claimed, a generation will be inspired. But, as was demonstrated by the reaction to Ennis, the most inspirational thing has not been the infrastructure. It has been the people. We have a new landscape of heroes. And what heroes. These are not chancers who achieved prominence through the happenstance of reality television. They did not strike gold on a scratch card. These are people who grafted, who toiled, who spent years sweating unseen and unnoticed. It was not just because she has a nice pair of legs that Ennis stood on the podium, choking back the tears as the national anthem played. She was there because of the number of times she defied every insistent urge to stay in bed on cold January mornings and instead went out and trained. She was there because when every aching muscle told her to go home and have a hot bath, she forced herself on another lap of the running track. What we have witnessed in 2012 is a new type of fame, one based on a foundation of unstinting hard work. Imagine what a difference that will make to the rest of us. If the national attitude shifts but one degree away from the expectation of something for nothing to the realisation that the best route to success is via application, that will be some legacy. Indeed that is why ultimately the result tomorrow night is the least important part of the event. Whoever wins, what we will celebrate is the triumph of effort. Be it Brad or Mo, Andy or Jess, Ellie or Rory, of this we can be certain: the nation is a better place for their success. BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2012, BBC One Sunday 7.30pm