Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy has announced that he has terminal cancer. The six-time gold medallist revealed in February that he had the disease, but told the Sunday Times in an interview today that the cancer is incurable, and doctors have given him two to four years left to live. “In the space of one sentence, just a collection of words, your whole world has fallen apart,” he said.
Hoy, 48, is the third most decorated Team GB athlete of all time, after fellow cyclists Sir Bradley Wiggins and Jason Kenny. His ascent to the highest level of sporting prowess is a tale of radical optimism and rigorous training.
Born in 1976, Hoy grew up in a suburb of Edinburgh and led a happy childhood. He credits the film E.T. for providing his gateway into cycling – he watched it aged six and was mesmerised by the BMX bikes which the children rode. After pestering his parents, Hoy got his first set of wheels: a BMX which cost £5, and by age eleven he was ranked second in Britain for BMX racing. Hoy pivoted to track cycling aged 17 when he joined the City of Edinburgh Racing Club.
After podium finishes in various track cycling world championships and a silver medal at the Sydney Olympics, Hoy went into the 2004 Athens Olympics going for gold. Just days before his event, a bus carrying Team GB cyclists collided with a car on the way to the velodrome. Though no one was seriously injured, Hoy was cycling behind the bus and swerved out of the way just in time, falling off his bike in the process. He went into his main event, the Kilo Time Trial, with scratched arms and legs, but still broke the World Record and received his first Olympic gold.
After that, the medals kept coming. In 2008 at Beijing Hoy became the first British Olympian in a century to win three gold medals in a single Olympic games. He was knighted that year. He credits his success with a rigorous training routine. “Literally every effort counts, and if you aren't training right now, your rivals will be training,” he told the High Performance podcast in 2020. This approach has also helped him to be stoic in defeat. “If you get to the start line, knowing there’s nothing more you could have done within your powers to be the best you can be, then you can accept the result.”
Hoy’s main rival on the track was also his teammate: Team GB star Jason Kenny. The duo competed against eachother in track events, with Kenny beating Hoy to earn the sole spot for the singles sprint at the 2012 London Olympics, but they also worked together in team sprints to bring home a number of gold medals for Great Britain.
As well as taking a “scientific approach” to his training, Hoy says that Team GB’s sports psychologist Professor Steve Peters helped build his winner’s mindset, with optimism and perspective. Among the psychological theories Peters taught was The Chimp Paradox, where in situations of stress the animal, emotional part of the brain overtakes the human, logical part. Peters helped Hoy to “cage the chimp”, which allowed him to manage his anxiety before races and focus on his strategy.
At the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics Hoy led Team GB out, waving the Union Jack. He won two golds that year and became the most successful British Olympian ever, though Jason Kenny would then overtake him in 2020. Hoy announced his retirement from competitive cycling the following year, and transitioned into motorsport, another passion of his.
Hoy met his wife Sarra Kemp in 2006, and they got married in 2010. Their first child, Callum, was born 11 weeks premature in 2014, weighing just over 2 pounds. He spent nine weeks in hospital. “You just sit and watch this little baby in an incubator for hours a day… and he’s so fragile, you’re terrified you’re going to hurt him. So it was without doubt the hardest period of our lives,” Hoy said in 2020. Callum beat the odds and has grown up healthy. A daughter, Chloe, followed in 2018.
In September last year, Hoy went to his physio for what he thought was a strained shoulder. After he was referred for a scan, a tumour was discovered. Further scans revealed that Hoy had primary cancer in his prostate, which had spread to his bones, and tumours all over his body. Doctors told him that the cancer was stage 4 and terminal – they gave him two to four years left to live. Hoy decided to keep the news private, but was forced to reveal his cancer diagnosis in February after a journalist caught wind of it. “As you might imagine, the last few months have been incredibly difficult. However, I currently feel fine - I am continuing to work, ride my bike and live my life as normal,” Hoy wrote in an Instagram post announcing the news.
Just months after discovering the cancer, there was a second blow: Hoy’s wife Sarra was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an incurable degenerative disease. “You literally feel like you’re at rock bottom, and you find out, oh no, you’ve got further to fall. It was brutal,” he told The Sunday Times. Nevertheless, Hoy’s wife helped him to remain positive. “How lucky are we?” she said to him. “We both have incurable illnesses for which there is some treatment. Not every disease has that. It could be a lot worse.”
Hoy is currently organising an annual charity bike ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow called Tour de 4, aimed at changing the perception around Stage 4 cancer. He hopes that “as many people as possible who have been affected by cancer” will take part. “Stage 4’s not just, right, this is the end of your life. There’s more to be lived,” he says.
The Olympic champion is approaching his illness with the sense of perspective and hope which has defined his career. “I’ve learnt to live in the moment, and I have days of genuine joy and happiness,” he says. He has written a memoir called All That Matters: My Toughest Race Yet, which will be published in November. Despite the unbearable pain he has had to endure, Hoy says he feels grateful to have been “given enough time” to make peace with his lot.
