It was reported over the weekend that Chris Hoy has been recommended for a knighthood, a highly unusual honour for a sportsman still in the throes of his competitive career. The news will doubtless cause yet more paroxysms of ecstasy within the increasingly smug cycling community, but will also raise the hackles of those who lament the lack of proper acclaim for the footballing heroes of '66, the absence of an MBE for Lloyd “Honey” Honeyghan and the lack of due recognition for Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards for services to falling over.

What is beyond doubt is that Hoy is just the kind of chap who those bestowing honours tend to adore: clean-shaven, clean-cut, clean-living and bereft of the merest whiff of controversy. He talks nice, understands discretion and is the last person who might embarrass Her Majesty on his trip up to Buck House. This is what the big fella said a few weeks ago when the possibility of a knighthood was first raised: “Any honours or accolades you get you gratefully receive, obviously, but you certainly don't expect them. And you wait until you're asked.” Give the guy a medal for obsequiousness.

What worries me is that these baubles, conferred by patronage rather than victory on the field of play, are turning sportsmen and women into politicians - eager to say and do the Right Thing. Last weekend at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony, Lewis Hamilton's opening comment was along the lines of, “Thanks for that welcome, it really means a lot to me,” a lovely sentiment, to be sure, but so obviously worked out with his army of hangers-on that it left many feeling queasy.

Perhaps he was aware that his less than sickly-sweet interview on stage last year was said to have skewed the vote in favour of Joe Calzaghe. This time he was outdone by the ubiquitous Hoy, a man rapidly becoming the master of the lachrymose soundbite.

It is enough to make one long for the days when sportsmen and women were proper bastards and proud of it; when sport was about winning trophies rather than votes and gongs; when a golfer such as Nick Faldo could stalk around the golf course with barely concealed contempt for opponents, the media and even the fans, something that, he insists, was central to his success. After his Open Championship victory at Muirfield in 1992, he paraded his prickliness with a memorable tribute to the press: “I would like to thank you from the heart of my bottom.” Is it a coincidence that Faldo, the pre-eminent European golfer of his generation, has never been appointed anything higher than an MBE, something that puts him in the same bracket - gong-wise - as the lamentable Matt Dawson?

It is Christine Ohuruogu I feel sorry for. This is a woman who has achieved the miracle of producing her greatest performance on the grandest stage twice in successive years (her time in the final in Beijing was the fastest of the year; her next best times were 19th and 70th); a woman who cites “hard work and God” as the factors behind her inspirational successes; an athlete who demonstrated almost supernatural calm to stick to her stride pattern in the Olympic final after Sanya Richards, the American athlete, took off from the blocks like a cheetah. And yet she will be lucky to get access to the Buckingham Palace car park, let alone a damehood.

Her complete lack of headway in the BBC vote has been nothing less than embarrassing. Last year she got fewer than 1 per cent of the vote, finishing tenth, this year she finished a disastrous eighth. Sure, she has missed a few drugs tests in her time, but let's not pretend that the indifference surrounding her every achievement has nothing to do with her awkward and somewhat diffident personality. The poor dear could win every medal for the next 20 years and still not be lionised like Hoy - not unless she enrols in the media-relations lessons that the British Olympic Association now offers to its products; sorry, athletes.

Is it not time for sporting gongs to be wrestled from the whim of suited committee members? Should we not find a thoroughly objective, cleanly measurable way of picking the winners? A series of Superstars, perhaps, with episode winners being appointed OBE and the series winner getting a knighthood. No public votes, no soliciting of preferment, no brown-nosing, just a good, clean and properly cut-throat fight. That would get the competitive juices flowing and put an end to the preposterous hierarchy created by the honours system, which has left many of our most brilliant - and prickly - sportsmen in the shade. And may the nastiest bastard win.