And will Sir Mohammed Farah be getting to his mark in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres in the 2017 world athletics championships in London?

Speculation is rife, notably among the bookmaking fraternity, that one or both will be getting the tap on the shoulder from Her Maj as a result of the New Year’s Honours list to be published this weekend. And why not? Numerous less worthy recipients have knelt for the ritualistic dubbing over the years, from the realms of sport, entertainment business and politics.

And after the glories of Team GB’s Olympics in Rio, we can be sure there will be a multitude of honours for those gold medal winners not already in possession of a gong, plus upgrades for those who have.

And possibly even a damehood or two, eh Nicola and Laura?. Or maybe UK Sport’s Liz Nichol, British sport’s chief cashier.

There will surely will be fistfuls of others in the post-Rio gongfest, those who helped orchestrate a year in which sport, by and large, lifted the depression which hovered over many other elements of our lives.

Yet it has been a funny old year for sport, with well-chronicled perversities globally as well as some unforgettable moments of ecstasy at home, like Leicester’s Premier League victory. But then, that has always been the name of the game and the Games.

The main question to be answered in 2017 surely is whether Lord Sebastian Coe can get the much-maligned sport of athletics back on track-and field and whether cycling – at least, the road racing element - can finally remove the spoke in its current wheel of misfortune.

What we are all intrigued to know, as are UK Anti-Doping and members of a parliamentary committee, exactly what was in the mystery package delivered to cycling icon Sir Bradley Wiggins on behalf of Team Sky, now under the stewardship of the sport’ long-time guru, Sir Dave Brailsford.

We do know it wasn’t boiled sweets - but anything dodgy would be disastrous for the sport.

Knighthoods can be given - and taken away – as ex-jockey Lester Piggott will testify.

So many sports are now the subject to the finger of suspicion being pointed in their direction.

Indeed, it is because his own sport is so indelibly tainted that the UK’s outstanding athlete, Farah, was so brutally snubbed in those end-of-the-year personality polls?

Fourth place in the SPOTY awards-again. Fair enough being beaten by tennis ace Murray, but why was he so far behind triathlete Alastair Brownlee and a 58-year-old showjumper, Nick Skelton. How can that be?

True, voters’ affections for Brownlee were influenced by the spectacle of him stopping to assist his younger brother, Jonny, across the line at a triathlon in Mexico just weeks after successfully defending his Olympic title in Rio.

But Skelton was a shock third-placed after his win in Brazil aboard Big Star.

Presumably this was deemed a greater achievement, and by some distance, than Mo’s golden double bubble, achieved for the second time.

Murray received over twice as many votes as the closest contender. The tennis world number one picked up 247,419 votes on the night, putting him well clear of second-place Brownlee with 121,665 and Skelton in third on 109,197.

Mo Farah, who made history as Britain's most successful track and field athlete in Rio, only managed fourth place pulling in 50,000 fewer votes than Skelton.

And some 20,000 fewer than the disgracefully behaved heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury did when he was in seventh place the previous year.

I found that astonishing. Although born in Somalia, Farah’s new-found British patriotism is touching, always draping himself immediately in the Union Jack for his numerous laps of honour.

But it seems that outside the track and field fraternity there is an odd antipathy towards him and his Mobot.

Is it simply because he is a Muslim (boxer Amir Khan insists his religion has always dimmed his popularity); or that he spends most of his time overseas ,much of training with the controversial coach Alberto Salazar, who has been dogged by an alleged association with doping which remains unproven; or is it because he was once famously unavailable for a drugs test himself?

Who knows? But in terms of personality Mo has it by the bucketload, and isn’t that what SPOTY is supposed to be mainly about?

Not that Farah seems fazed. Earlier this year, he even predicted he would not make it into the top three saying, “I’ve never been in the top three of Sports Personality. And I won’t be in the top three again. You have just got to accept what it is. What drives me is winning medals and just going out there and enjoy it."

Actually Farah was wrong. He actually finished third once, in 2011, before his London 2012 achievements.

In all, fewer than a million votes were cast for the 16 short-listed contenders which suggests the annual Beano is losing its viewer-appeal and is no longer in the same league as Strictly Come Dancing.

Similarly the Sportsmen of the Year section of the Sports Journalists Association awards saw Farah again trailing in fourth place, this time behind winner Murray, cyclist Jason Kenny and gymnast Max Whitlock.

For the record, Brownlee was a fifth and Skelton seventh, with supreme cyclist Laura Kenny taking the women’s trophy ahead of bubbly boxer Nicola Adams.

Despite this a knighthood is believed to be very much on the cards for Farah, already in possession of a CBE, the next highest honour.

And a knighthood from the Establishment (the Sports Honours Committee led by Lord Coe) would certainly be welcomed by his peers and contemporaries, in sport and more than adequate compensation for any perceived snub by the public.