Michael Owen roundly mocked for way he congratulated Emma Raducanu on SPOTY win

The brilliant Emma Raducanu was the most deserving winner of the 2021 BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

The Bromley teenager had the nation gripped through her run to the fourth round of Wimbledon, and then followed that up with a scarcely believable victory at the US Open in September.

The then 18-year-old became the first ever qualifier to win a grand slam in New York, and the first British woman to do so for 44 years.

With all of that going on it was little wonder that she dominated the public vote on Sunday night, clinching the main SPOTY prize ahead of Olympians Tom Daley and Adam Peaty.

Everyone was naturally delighted for her, and it wasn't long before the congratulations came flooding in.

Raducanu has two million followers on Instagram and another 620,000 on Twitter, and her social media mentions would have been melting as the kind words came.

Some were a bit more noticeable than others though, and it was Michael Owen's message which caught the eye of many.

Owen, of course, can easily relate to Raducanu.

He won the Sports Personality of the Year award shortly after he'd turned 19 too, with his heroics in the 1998 World Cup seeing the nation sit up and take notice of his superb skills.

But when Owen chose to tweet a picture of himself with the famous trophy in response to Raducanu's win it... er.... didn't go down very well.

Some of the replies were ruthless, and pretty funny.

Not that any of that matters to Raducanu though, and she was obviously delighted with her win.

"Thank you, it's such an honour to be amongst the nominees. Congrats to you for such an amazing year and all your achievements," she said upon receiving the award.

"To win, it's pretty amazing to me. I am really happy with this of course and I watched Sports Personality of the Year growing up, so I'm really humbled to join the amazing past winners.

"I'm very happy for British tennis that we managed to get this award again."

"Thank you so much to all the voters and all of the fans, for all of the support I received this past year, it's been absolutely insane, especially the energy I felt at Wimbledon this year and playing in front of my home crowd. That was something I have never felt before so thank you very much.

"I'd like to say a big thank you to my team, thank you for all your hard work and efforts over the years. My team, my past coaches, the LTA, my family and friends, thank you so much.

"Congrats to everyone else's teams as well, it's definitely a team effort, so thanks to everyone and see you soon."

We won't forget her victory in a hurry, and Owen certainly won't.