Sir Chris Hoy’s glittering track career ended with six Olympic gold medals and 11 world titles, but it all started with E.T. and his first bike, refurbished by his dad to look like a BMX, even if it wasn’t.
That bike didn’t last long – “inevitably, I snapped the bike,” Hoy says – but it started a journey in cycling that took the Scotsman to the BMX World Championships as a teenager, before a dalliance with road riding and mountain biking, and eventually his calling on the track.
Hoy joined the BikeRadar Podcast for an exclusive interview in which he reflected on four decades as a cyclist, from his first bike and early passion for BMX, through to his cycling heroes, first big win on the track and, of course, his first Olympic title.
Hoy stood atop the podium having won the kilo at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, at a time when cycling barely registered on the British sporting consciousness. For Hoy, it also marked a turning point in his career – with the kilo subsequently dropped ahead of the next Games in Beijing, he faced a choice: retire on a high as Olympic champion or re-train as a sprinter.
The rest, of course, is history. Hoy won three sprint titles in Beijing – and two more titles at a home Games in London.
Since retiring, Hoy has launched a bike brand, raced Le Mans and been a regular face on British television through coverage of track events at the World Championships and Olympic Games. He’s also one of the investors behind Skarper, and we spoke to Hoy at the launch event for its ebike conversion kit.
Earlier this year, Hoy made public that he had been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer and, in October, disclosed that the disease was terminal. He has written a new book, All That Matters, about his cancer diagnosis.
In our wide-ranging interview, we look back on Hoy’s lifelong obsession with cycling – and more. You can listen to the full chat on the BikeRadar Podcast via the player below – or directly on Apple Podcasts and Spotify – while the abridged interview here takes us on a journey through the moments that shaped Sir Chris Hoy’s career.
Editor's note: our interview with Sir Chris Hoy on the BikeRadar Podcast has been edited here for length and clarity. Listen to the podcast episode (on Apple or Spotify) for the full interview.
Sir Chris Hoy on… his first bike
I first got into cycling by watching the film E.T. I watched it at six, when I saw a BMX for the first time and was captivated by being able to ride a bike that way. I'd never considered that you could jump a bike, and you could carve round turns. It was like Evel Knievel, but for kids.
My parents obviously thought it was just a passing fad. A Raleigh Burner was about £105 back then – that was a lot of money – so I think the first bike they got me… I can't even remember what type of bike it was, but it definitely wasn't a BMX.
My dad stripped it, resprayed it black, put BMX stickers on it, changed the handlebars and grips, and made it look like a BMX to a six-year-old's eyes. I learned to ride it straight away and, within what must have been a few weeks, I was building ramps out of planks of wood and bricks because I was determined to get my wheels off the ground.
Inevitably, I snapped the bike, because it just wasn't designed for that kind of use.
…his first World Championships
I then got a Raleigh Super Burner for my birthday and went down to the local BMX track at Danderhall in Edinburgh, and it spiraled from there. I started racing in and around Edinburgh, then around Scotland, then it was all over the UK, and yeah, by the time I was 10, I raced the [BMX] World Championships in Slough in ‘86 and made the semi-finals.
I didn’t quite make the final, though. I got to the final straight of the semi-final in third place, went over the last jump, slipped my pedal and came fifth. I was absolutely devastated and thought I was never going to make the final of a World Championship again.
I did that until I was 14, then got into mountain biking for a couple of years. Then I joined a conventional cycling club in Edinburgh, to try and get fitter for mountain biking. I also did a bit of time trailing and cyclocross, but most importantly, I tried the velodrome in Edinburgh and that was that. I was about 16.
…his cycling hero
My inspiration? I could talk about this for hours. Graeme Obree was the big one. Lots of people inspired me – I remember watching Greg LeMond in the Tour de France, Andy Ruffell in BMX and Tim Gould in mountain biking – but Graeme Obree was my all-time hero.
He was Scottish. He was a one-man band. He didn't have a team of experts behind him. He was on his own with his own ideas and his own logic, and very little money.
He made his own bikes with his own two hands. He welded bits of scrap metal. He got bearings from washing machines; his logic was that washing machines spun way faster than a cyclist’s legs, so they must be pretty good bearings.
He looked at skiers and saw the way they tucked their arms into their body when they were going downhill, so tried to mimic that on the bike with these really narrow handlebars, really high up, with his chest on the bars.
He won the National Championships and that got his ticket to the World Championships in Norway in '93. When he warmed up, people were laughing at him. Foreigners had never seen this guy before. He looked like an alien. It was a completely different style of riding. But they stopped laughing when he went up for the qualifier and he broke the world record… qualified fastest.
He went on to beat the current Olympic champion, Chris Boardman, in the semi-final. He beat Philippe Ermenault in the final with a new world record. It was so inspirational for me, as a young Scot in my teens at that time, just getting into track cycling.
…his first big win
The 500m handicap at the Edinburgh Grand Prix. They’d have a two-lap race, with riders from the under-15s up to the pro guys, the Olympians. I was a 15-year-old novice, so they put me off about 100m ahead, so I only had to do 390m.
I still remember that feeling, being in the lead round the last corner, and I could hear them coming, but I crossed the line first and won the £50 prize. I went down to Edinburgh Bike Co-Op and bought a Time helmet.
Remember the Time helmets that Stephen Roche wore back in the early 90s? They were white with the little orange logo. It was one of the first cool-looking helmets, because helmets, when they first came out, looked awful. They were heavy, they were hot and they were sweaty, but this was lightweight, had decent airflow and I thought I was pretty cool with it on.
…his first Olympic medal in 2004 – and how he then became the world’s best sprinter
Back then, when I was younger, there wasn't a clear pathway to the top, like there is now if you're a junior rider with the talent, potential and drive. There are steps you can follow that will lead you – potentially – to an Olympic gold medal, but when I started there was no funding.
There were two full-time members of staff for British Cycling. The velodrome was empty because they couldn't afford to rent it to put the national team on it to train. Then the National Lottery came on board and funded sport. Cycling got a decent portion of the money and we were able to employ coaches. We were able to use the facility that was built here, we were able to go on training camps, go to races. It opened the door to be competitive on the world stage.
It was pretty late in my life – I was 28 – when I won my first Olympic gold medal in Athens [in the kilo, a 1km time trial].
Then, a year later, they took the kilo off the programme for Beijing 2008. I was 29 and by then I'd been Commonwealth champion, world champion, Olympic champion and the choice was, well, either to stop, having ticked more boxes than I could ever have imagined or [carry on having found out] the Olympics are going to be in London in 2012, so in seven years' time there's a home Olympics. Is that enough of a carrot to dangle in front of you to make you want to keep going? The answer was yes, undoubtedly.
So, it was back to the drawing board, learning the sprint and Keirin, in addition to the team sprint. Very technical events that require tactical and technical knowledge. It was almost like going back to being a student again, learning the events.
I needed help understanding the nuances of these new events, so they brought in Jan van Eijden, a former world sprint champion. He won it in 2000. He wasn't the fastest rider that year – I think he qualified 10th or 12th – but he won the sprint because he was very tactically astute.
He taught us the tricks of the trade. He kept it very simple, because sprinters aren’t known for being the most intelligent. I was grateful that he just helped me simplify it all and to take it one step at a time.
Fast-forward to Beijing and I ended up winning three gold medals, in the sprint, Keirin and team sprint. The moral of that whole story is [to adapt to] change. When it happened, it was horrendous – I was absolutely devastated when the kilo got dropped – but if I hadn't been forced to make that change [to target sprints], I would never done it out of choice.
I would never have left the security of the event I was good at, to go and do two different ones, at that stage in my career. But it was the best thing that could have happened to me and it forced me out of my comfort zone. It made me realise that you can do different things if change comes along. You can embrace it and look for the opportunity.
