Most Loved and Hated British Athletes Since 2000

By Jim Tomlin

Apr 9th, 2026 4:48 PM EDT

Mo Farah is a running legend and his life story makes him just as compelling. (Peter van den Berg-Imagn Images)

The British sporting public can’t get enough of their heroes or their villains. But how do you determine who is who, and how they rank?

Bookies.com, where you will find reviews of the best UK betting apps, sought to find out. We used 10 objective inputs to determine the 10 most loved and 10 most hated British athletes from a starting list of 50. Here is the interactive list of most loved and hated British athletes, with the methodology below:

Who Is The Most Loved British Athlete?

Mo Farah is one of the most decorated British Olympians of modern times. He collected four Olympic gold medals, sweeping the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races in the 2012 and 2016 Summer Games.

Those 2012 Olympics were in London. The crowd response to his dramatic win in the 5,000 tells its own story:

Farah, who was born in Somalia but has lived in England at age 8, still resides in London with his wife and four children. He dedicated his four Olympic golds to his family – one for each child. Farah won many other honors including six World Championships and five European Championships. He even won the Chicago marathon in 2018, four years after his first competitive attempt at 26.2 miles.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) named Farah as its inaugural global Goodwill Ambassador in 2024. One of his roles is to campaign against child trafficking (he revealed in 2022 that he had been trafficked from Somalia as a child).

Now 43, and known as Sir Mo Farah after being knighted in 2017, he is atop our list of the most beloved British athletes with 8.94 points according to our metrics. That puts him just ahead of a noted Scottish star.

Andy Murray and Four Women Among Top 10 Most Loved

The only three-time winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award is second on our list.

Retired tennis star Andy Murray (8.77 points) won three Grand Slam tournaments including The Championships at Wimbledon twice. This was in an era when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic utterly dominated the ATP Tour including the majors. From 2004 to 2021, Murray was the only player outside that trio to win three Slams and achieve the No. 1 world ranking,

In 2013, Murray became the first Briton to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936. He furthered his knack for UK success when he captured the gold medal in men’s singles and silver in mixed doubles at the 2012 London Olympics. Like Farah, he repeated as champion in the 2016 Rio Olympics, taking another gold in singles.

Perhaps most of all, the native of Glasgow transcended the auld Scottish lament about their athletes (“If they win, they’re British; if they lose, they’re Scottish”) and became a popular figure throughout the UK and beyond.

There are four female athletes in the top 10 as well: No. 4 Jessica Ennis-Hill and No. 5 Kelly Holmes in track, No. 6 Laura Kenny in cycling and No. 9 Rebecca Adlington in swimming.

You might well ask where David Beckham ranked. The former Manchester United and England star just missed the cut at No. 11 (with 5.38 points). He’s the highest-ranked football player, even though his playing career ended in 2013. But don’t worry, football betting stars past and present are all over our next category.

Who Is The Most Hated British Athlete?

Gallons of ink have been spilled about John Terry – allegations of cheating on his wife (with the ex-girlfriend of a teammate, no less), of racism, of general unpleasantness and ego.

How much of it is true? That question has crossed into the realm of irrelevance. What is true is that a man who has not played a game since 2018 has a reputation so damaged that he is easily the most hated athlete in our survey. Terry has minus-4.68 points, more than double the negative score of anyone else.

On the field, John Terry was one of the most decorated players in his generation. He was a towering defender, a captain for both Chelsea and his country, with five Premier League titles, five FA Cups and a UEFA Champions League medal among his honours.

Terry, now 45 and a fringe member of the staff at Chelsea, was fined and suspended for the incident in which he used a racially tinged profane slur, aimed at an opponent during a game. That was after reports emerged that he had a relationship with the ex-girlfriend of club and national squad teammate Wayne Bridge. All parties have denied the cheating story for years, but Terry was temporarily stripped of the England captaincy after that incident.

John Terry Staying in the News

This month, according to The Athletic, Terry appeared to use his Instagram account to signal his approval of a post by a far-right, anti-immigration group. Terry’s philanthropic efforts, such as the John Terry Foundation, become buried in more than a decade’s worth of bad publicity.

Terry’s presence at the top of the list, and that of five other current or former football players, brings up a more esoteric question: Why are they all on this list and none are among the 10 favourites? After all, they play the most popular sport in England and in perhaps the most popular league in the world.

Every individual who contributes to our social-media driven metrics on our list will have different reasons, perhaps including a Premier League betting punt gone wrong. But one thing links the football players on our list: They all played for dominant club teams for a good chunk of their careers.

And when one team dominates, supporters of every other club hate it (they don’t hate winning, mind you, just that fact that their club isn’t the one doing it). This ill feeling toward certain players will carry over, even if that player accomplishes great things for the national team.

The likes of Jude Bellingham or Marcus Rashford can transcend this trend even when they join clubs outside England. But sometimes a World Cup or a Euros appearance is a temporary truce when fans spend most of their time rooting against a player.

Just ask John Terry.

Our list of best betting sites UK will keep you updated on available operators.

Methodology

Bookies.com wanted to see which British athletes are the most loved and hated in the country. We scored 50 British post-2000 athletes using 10 objective, publicly verifiable inputs per athlete — BBC Sports Personality of the Year records, YouGov fame ratings, national honours, major championship golds, popularity survey rankings and documented controversies. These feed two composite scores. The Love Score draws on public recognition, cultural impact and redemption arc. The Hate Score combines controversy (incidents multiplied by severity) and sustained public resentment. Subtracting one from the other produces a Net Score that determines each athlete's results.

Data sources: BBC SPOTY records, YouGov UK fame ratings, Research Without Barriers popularity survey, and the documented public record on controversies and honours.

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