Ronnie O’Sullivan joins Beth Mead and Ben Stokes in the running for the 2022 Sportsperson Award

Ronnie OSullivan has been named as one of six candidates to win the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year 2022 award.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday, December 21.

OSullivan equaled Stephen Hendrys’ all-time record of seven world titles at the Crucible in May.

He is world number one and has won the Champion of Champions and the Hong Kong Masters this season.

Although he doesn’t appear to be very emotionally attached to snooker at times, he told BBC Sport: “Hate love isn’t about hating the game, I’ve always loved the game, it’s just that my frustration would spread and it would look like I was in love with the game.

“But that was just because I didn’t play to the standard I wanted to play.”

England striker Mead could be a leading candidate for the award.

She won the golden boot and was player of the tournament when England were crowned champions of Euro 2022. Mead scored six goals and provided five assists at the tournament and finished second in the Womens Ballon d’Or.

Stokes led England to victory in the men’s T20 World Cup and has helped turn the Test side’s fortunes around. The Test side have won nine of their last 10 matches, including a historic 3-0 win in Pakistan.

18-year-old Gadirova won floor gold on the last day of the World Gymnastics Championships and also won silver in the team competition and bronze in the all-around.

She is only the fifth British gymnast to be an individual world champion.

Muirhead led the Great Britain women’s team to curling gold at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, while Wightman won 1500m gold at the World Athletics Championships.