The records and landmarks behind 70 years of BBC Wales SPOTY

The BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year award celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.

There were no shortage of contenders for the 2024 prize, but it was track cyclist Emma Finucane who scooped the award for the second year running.

There was also the Team of the Year award for the Wales women football team, who will feature at a major tournament for the first time next summer after qualifying for Euro 2025 in Rhian Wilkinson's first campaign as head coach.

To commemorate the 70-year landmark, BBC Sport Wales delves through the archives to review the best achievements, records and images from the award's history.

Ten multiple winners and a first in 2024

A total of 55 athletes have won the award since its inception in 1954, but only 10 have won it more than once.

Colin Jackson, Joe Calzaghe, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Ian Woosnam and Howard Winstone have all been crowned BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year on three occasions.

Geraint Thomas, Jade Jones, Ryan Giggs, Lynn Davies and now Finucane are the others to claim the title multiple times - with all five doing so twice in their careers.

Manchester United and Wales winger Giggs holds the record for the longest gap between wins - with his successes in 1996 and 2009 coming 13 years apart.

• BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year winners

Former boxing world champion Calzaghe and golf Hall of Fame inductee Woosnam had been the only winners to retain the title prior to this year.

Calzaghe did so in 2007 after unifying the super middleweight division by beating Mikkel Kessler in front of more than 50,000 fans at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.

Having already won the award in 1987, Woosnam went back-to-back in 1990 and 1991 as he won the Masters title and became world number one - the latter title he held for 50 weeks.

But after a remarkable year in which she claimed Olympic gold in the team sprint along with bronze in both the keirin and sprint, Carmarthen's Finucane - who also earned sprint and team sprint gold at the World Championships in Denmark - becomes the first female to retain the title, and only the third athlete altogether to do so.

Joe Calzaghe (R) beat Roy Jones Jr in 2008 to end his professional career with an unblemished 46-0 record

The trailblazers and a post-millennium shift

Ken Jones, the first winner of the BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year at its inception in 1954, is the only winner to feature in two different disciplines in his career.

Blaenavon-born Jones is remembered by most as the player who scored the crucial try that helped Wales beat New Zealand 13-8 at Cardiff Arms Park in 1953.

The flying winger's club career included 145 tries in 293 matches while Jones also scored a then-record equalling 17 tries for Wales in a then-world record 44 caps for his country between 1947-57 - with achievements including three Test appearances for the British and Irish Lions and two Grand Slams.

But Jones also enjoyed an astonishing career away from the rugby field.

He captained the British track and field team at the 1954 European Championships - winning silver in the sprint relay.

Jones was also a bronze medallist at the 1954 Commonwealth Games and held four Welsh sprint records and 17 domestic titles.

Kirsty Wade waves the national flag of Wales after winning 1500m gold at the 1986 Commonwealth Games

More than three decades after Jones won the inaugural award, middle-distance runner Kirsty Wade became the first female BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year.

The three-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist won the 800m and 1500m titles in Edinburgh in 1986, having already won the 800m title in Brisbane four years earlier.

Only six years after Wade's triumph, in 1992, Tanni Grey-Thompson - then just Tanni Grey - became the second female to be crowned BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year.

In doing so, Grey-Thompson was the first Para-athlete to win the award having been recognised alongside able-bodied competitors.

Further triumphs in 2000 and 2004 mean wheelchair racer Grey-Thompson has won the title more times than any other female.

Cyclist Nicole Cooke became the third female winner in 2003 after becoming the youngest ever winner of the women's World Cup.

It meant there were only three different female winners between 1954 and 2011, although as a result of Finucane's latest triumph, six of the past 12 winners have been female.

Four athletes share the record of winning both the Welsh and the national BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award in the same year.

Legendary golfer Dai Rees achieved the feat in 1957, with Joe Calzaghe (2007), Ryan Giggs (2009) and Geraint Thomas (2018) also doing the double in the same calendar year.

Jade Jones, the 2012 and 2016 taekwondo Olympic gold medallist, is one of only three women, along with Emma Finucane and Tanni Grey-Thompson, to be named BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year more than once

A multitude of disciplines, with one clear favourite

The 70 winners so far (the 2020 award was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic) come from a total of 16 disciplines.

But rugby union has produced the most winners of any sport in Wales.

Including first winner Jones, who also features in the athletics category for sprinting, the award has gone to a rugby union player on 14 occasions. Two of those years included success for the Wales national team - when John Dawes won in 1971 and Mervyn Davies in 1976.

Boxing has produced 12 winners, 11 have come from the world of athletics and Para-athletics, while 10 winners have been footballers.

Golf has produced a winner six times, while cycling (five), wheelchair racing (three) and taekwondo (two) are the only other sports to produce a victor on more than one occasion.

Swimming, snooker, cricket, show jumping, eventing, race walking, marathon and motorcycle racing have all produced one winner each.

Rugby union has produced more BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year winners than any other sport