Olympic icon Sir Chris Hoy has opened up on the moment he had to tell his children that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The British cycling legend first announced he was undergoing treatment in February this year but last month revealed he had known since September 2023 that it was incurable.
Hoy, 48, was diagnosed with prostate cancer that he soon learned had spread to his bones.
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“No symptoms, no warnings, nothing. All I had was a pain in my shoulder and a little bit of pain in my ribs,” Hoy told the BBC, assuming it was gym fatigue.
“But this ache and pain didn’t go away.
“I assumed it was going to be tendonitis or something, and it was just going to be lay off weights or lay off cycling for a wee while and get some treatment and it’ll be fine.”
Hoy said learning he had a tumour was “the biggest shock of my life” and left him walking home “in a daze”.
The questions he asked himself about how he would tell his wife Sarra, who has since herself been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, intensified after they learned his cancer was terminal.
“That was the first thought in my head. How on earth are we going to tell the kids?” Hoy said.
“It’s just this absolute horror, it is a waking nightmare, living nightmare.”
The couple’s children Callum and Chloe were aged nine and six at the time.
Accepting he could not “outrun” the diagnosis influenced his approach to ease their young minds.
“We just tried to be positive and tried to say ‘do you know what, this is what we’re doing and you can help because when I’m not feeling well, you can come and give me cuddles, you can be supportive, you can be happy, you can be kind to each other,” Hoy said.
“I’m sure lots of families do it in different ways and I think there’s no one right approach for anyone.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all, but for us I think that was the best way to do it.”
Jumping almost immediately into chemotherapy proved “excruciating” but he kept two people front of mind: Callum, and his own great uncle Andy — a former prisoner of war in Japan.
“It’s like torture basically. I wasn’t ready for it, I didn’t know how to cope with it, how to deal with it initially,” Hoy said.
Despite his own battles, Hoy said his “lowest point” was when Serra opened up about her diagnosis in December last year after initially only telling her sister.
She is now doing well after beginning treatment.
“That was the point where I suddenly thought ‘what is going on?’ I almost felt like saying ‘OK stop, this is a dream, wake me up, this isn’t real, this is a nightmare’,” Hoy said.
“You were already on the canvas and I just felt this, another punch when you’re already down — it was like getting that kick on the floor.
“That was the bit where you think if you didn’t have the kids, if you didn’t have that purpose and the absolute need to keep getting out of bed every day and moving on, it would have been really difficult. But that’s why you’re a team. You help each other.”
Hoy, whose father and grandfather have both had prostate cancer, finished his chemotherapy six months ago.
“I‘m riding my bike every day, I’m in the gym, I’m physically active, I’m not in pain,” he said.
“When people talk about battles with cancer, for me the biggest battle is between your ears.”
