The Sheffield athlete, 23, who edged out world gymnastics champion Beth Tweddle, succeeds 2008 winner Rebecca Adlington as Sportswoman of the Year, and follows a long line of fellow athletes to have won the prize, the most recent being Paula Radcliffe when she won the marathon world title in 2005.

The achievement of triple jumper Phillips Idowu, Britain's other gold medallist in Berlin, was also recognised when he was awarded the prize for outstanding performance.

UK Sport, who sponsored the glittering ceremony at The Brewery in London, gave their award to world triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee, who dominated his sport in 2009, winning five races in the world championship series, including the final.

It will have been of some consolation to the 21-year-old Yorkshireman, controversially overlooked for the short-list for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award which will be announced on Sunday.

Jenson Button, who clinched the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship for the Brawn team, was voted Sportsman of the Year.

After 30 years in which no motor racing driver managed to win the SJA Sportsman of the Year award, Button becomes the second in three years to take the top honour, following his soon-to-be team mate Lewis Hamilton’s win in 2007.

Due to prior commitments, Button was unable to attend the ceremony, but Jim Rosenthal, the compere for the event, introduced to the 350-strong guests a recorded message from the driver as he accepted the famous old trophy.

Runner-up to Button in the Sportsman of the Year poll was England cricket captain Andrew Strauss, with Idowu beating Tour de France cyclist Mark Cavendish for third in SJA members' votes.

Among the other awards presented today, the Bill McGowran Trophy for the disabled sports personality - the longest established of its kind, first awarded in 1963 - was shared by swimmer Eleanor Simmonds and yachtswoman Hilary Lister.

This year Simmonds added three European titles and a world short-course title to the Olympic gold she won in Beijing, while Lister became the first disabled woman to sail around Britain.

The trophy for the outstanding contribution to British sport off the field of play was presented jointly to Phil Kimberley and David Faulkner for their work in steering England’s hockey men to a stunning victory over Germany in the final of the European Championship.

The SJA Committee Award went to British Gymnastics, recognising not only the impressive staging of the World Championships at the O2 Arena, a 2012 Olympic venue, but also the progress made by a sport which is now established as a medal-winning force on the world stage.

Sir Michael Parkinson’s SJA President’s Award went to showjumper Ellen Whitaker.

The big surprise of the afternoon was that England's women cricketers took the team award, ahead of their Ashes-winning male counterparts.

During the year the England women won the World Cup and the World Twenty20 and retained the Ashes, with batsman Claire Taylor named Player of the Tournament in both – a feat which resulted in her being the first woman named as one of Wisden’s five Cricketers of the Year.

The SJA Team of the Year Award capped off a tremendous couple of days for English women’s cricket: on Tuesday evening at the UK Coaching Awards, Mark Lane, the women’s team’s coach, was named UK coach of the year and picked up the high performance coach of the year prize.

A women’s team - the world record-setting Great Britain 4×800 metres quartet which included Lillian Board - won the SJA’s Team of the Year prize when it was introduced 39 years ago, but the 2009 England cricketers are the first women’s team to lift the award since their World Cup-winning predecessors in 1993.

Taylor also finished third in the Sportswoman of the Year poll.