Sir Chris Hoy admits his cancer diagnosis has put the pressure of his cycling career into perspective and insists he feels “lucky” to have time to spend with his family.
The six-time Olympic champion revealed last month in a Sunday Times interview that his cancer is terminal after he first made public in February that he was undergoing treatment, including chemotherapy.
A tumour was found in Hoy’s shoulder and a second scan found primary cancer in his prostate, which has metastasised to his bones.
"It can happen to anybody... go to the doctor."
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) November 5, 2024
A powerful message from @chrishoy after his cancer diagnosis. 💙#BBCSport pic.twitter.com/IC6SWheLZ5
During a BBC documentary titled ‘Sir Chris Hoy: Finding Hope’ to be broadcast on Tuesday, Hoy urged men – especially those with a family history of prostate cancer – to ask their GP for a free prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test.
The 48-year-old Scot also revealed he is planning a charity bike ride in 2025 for people with stage four cancers to show “many people can still have very full and happy lives, and healthy lives, dealing with it”.
“I’m not saying everybody’s in the same boat but there’s hope out there,” Hoy said.
“Look at me now, six months on from finishing chemo and I’m riding my bike every day, I’m in the gym, I’m physically active, I’m not in pain. When people talk about battles with cancer, for me the biggest battle is between your ears.
“It’s the mental struggle, it’s the challenge to try and deal with these thoughts, deal with the implications of the news you’re given.
We genuinely feel lucky, as crazy as that might sound, because we've got the time
“When you hear terminal illness, terminal cancer, you just have this image in your head of what it is, what it’s going to be like.
“And everybody’s different, and not everybody is given the time that I’ve been given – and that’s why I feel lucky. We genuinely feel lucky, as crazy as that might sound, because we’ve got the time.”
During his career on the track Hoy won six Olympic gold medals, 11 World Championships and 34 World Cup titles before he retired from competitive racing in 2013.
Two of Hoy’s Olympic golds came in London in 2012 and he added: “I was so lucky to have a home Olympics during my career and my lifetime.
“That moment when I walked on to the track and you knew that this is it. This is the final scene in the movie, this is kind of the culmination of all that hard work and that response from the crowd, the noise. It was something I’ll never forget.
“I can bring those images back like that. You shut your eyes and you’re back in that velodrome.
“We all have these moments in our lives. It’s just wonderful to have these memories that you can look back on and it just becomes a bit more poignant over the last year, you look back on them with even more intensity.
“The stakes are much higher now. It felt like life and death in the moment when you were battling it out for an Olympic gold medal, but the stakes have changed dramatically and it is life and death.
“But the principle is the same, it’s about focusing on what you have control over and not worrying about the stuff that you can’t control.
“You don’t just suddenly have a leap forward and one day you wake up and everything’s OK. It takes time and you’ve got to be disciplined with how you approach it, and you’ve got to nip things in the bud before these negative thoughts start to take hold.”
