Sir Chris Hoy has ‘two to four years to live’ after terminal cancer diagnosis
Olympic legend Sir Chris Hoy has revealed doctors have given him two to four years to live after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Hoy, 48, revealed earlier this year he was undergoing chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer in 2023, explaining the treatment was ‘going really well’.
But in an interview with The Sunday Times, one of Great Britain’s greatest ever sportsmen has now revealed his condition is terminal.
The Scot, who was knighted in 2008, has known for a year his illness will not be cured.
‘As unnatural as it feels, this is nature. You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process,’ cycling legend Hoy said.
Hoy, a father of two children aged seven and 10, initially sought treatment for what he suspected to be a shoulder strain in September last year.
After further scans, a tumour was found in his shoulder with further tests discovering cancer in his prostate which had also metastasised to his bones.
Tumours were found to his shoulder, pelvis, hip, spine and rib.
Hoy began chemotherapy treatment in November with the process described in the interview as a ‘horror show’, suffering a ‘violent allergic reaction’ during one round of treatment that left him ‘absolutely broken by the end of it’.
Hoy also recalled an incident where a journalist reached out enquiring if he had a ‘terminal illness’, at a stage where the Briton was still ‘a long way from sharing his diagnosis with the world.’
‘It would have happened at some point,’ Hoy said of learning his news had been leaked. ‘And there was a relief with it. It was awful, because that Pandora’s box is opened and you can’t shut it. But it was like a pressure release.’
Hoy has been writing a memoir about the last year, All That Matters: My Toughest Race Yet, which will be released next month. In the book, he also tells how his wife Sarra has been diagnosed with a ‘very active and aggressive’ type of multiple sclerosis following a scan last November.
She made the devastating discovery after she started to suffer a ‘curious tingling sensation in her face and tongue.’
‘It didn’t seem real,’ Hoy said. ‘It was such a huge blow, when you’re already reeling. You think nothing could possibly get worse. You literally feel like you’re at rock bottom, and you find out, oh no, you’ve got further to fall. It was brutal.’
Hoy won a total of seven Olympic medals, six gold and one silver in cycling events and is the second most decorated British athlete of all time at the Games, behind ex-Team GB team-mate Jason Kenny. He is also an 11-time world champion, having brought the curtains down on an extraordinary career in 2013.
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