Sir Chris Hoy says the treatment he is receiving for his stage-four prostate cancer is ‘working’ and he is hopeful of living beyond the diagnosis he has been given by doctors.
Having first been diagnosed with cancer in September 2023, Hoy, a six-time Olympic champion, announced last month that his condition was terminal.
The 48-year-old first confirmed he was undergoing chemotherapy in a heart-wrenching statement in February of this year, revealing how the decision to go public with the news ‘had been forced’.
Tragically, Hoy’s wife Sarra was diagnosed with a ‘very active and aggressive’ form of multiple sclerosis just weeks after the former British track cyclist was informed that he had terminal cancer.
But Hoy is determined to remain positive, despite being told that he had between two to four years to live in 2023, and was pictured cycling in Greece with his partner and their two young children, Callum, 10, and Chloe, 7, during half-term.
Hoy, Scotland’s most decorated Olympian of all time, has also been putting Paddy McGuinness through his paces in the Peak District, with the latter preparing for a gruelling 300-mile challenge for Children In Need.
‘Well the plan is, right now, keep doing what I’m doing in terms of treatment because it’s working,’ Hoy told The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio when asked for an update on his situation.
‘Touch wood – the diagnosis was two to four years, but actually if you look beyond that it can be many years.
‘There’s people out there that are still around who’ve been in the similar situation for 20 years. So you know there’s hope.
‘There is hope and I’m very lucky that there is treatment for me. But also you don’t know it could be less than that. So that is the target you know – crack on for many years, ideally.’
Hoy hopes his memoir All That Matters – which hit the shelves on Thursday – proves to those experiencing a ‘difficult time’ that ‘you can get through it’ no matter what the situation.
‘It’s a book for anybody going through a difficult time,’ he added.
‘But you can get through it. You have to be able to be quite tough for yourself in terms of saying, right, I’m going to actively choose not to embrace the negative thoughts. I’m going to actively not, I’m not going to let them creep in.
‘They will, they will come, but you’ve got to push them away and focus on, focus on the here and the now. You don’t think too far ahead. You know, the future doesn’t exist yet. All we’ve got is the present.’
Hoy used Princess Kate’s diagnosis to demonstrate how cancer can be a ‘leveller’ which can impact anybody, with Prince William this week describing 2024 as the ‘hardest year of my life’.
‘That’s the point. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the King or whether you’re an average person. It’s a leveller. Cancer can affect anybody at any time,’ he continued.
‘Doesn’t matter how physically fit and strong you feel you are – If it’s genetic, then it can happen. So it’s not discriminating, affects anybody at any time. So the key thing is early detection.
‘If you can get things checked, if you can get an early test, then you have the odds in your favour.’
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