Just before Hoy’s charity mass participation cycling event, the Tour de Four, is scheduled to begin, it is just after 9 am in a back room of the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow.
In an effort to alter perceptions surrounding stage four cancer, the ride was set up and given its name.
Every time the door opens, a member of British Olympic and Paralympic royalty walks through it.
Dame Sarah Storey, Sir Mark Cavendish, Sir Jason Kenny, Becky James, Dani King, Sir Ben Ainslie, Sir Steve Redgrave, and Sir Jason Kenny…
Another sporting knight is present in and among the clip-clop of cycling cleats.
This one is wearing tennis shoes.
Hoy checks in with Sir Andy Murray about his readiness, and the Scot’s fellow Scot makes a raunchy quip.
Hoy asks, “Are you ready, mate?”
“Well, I’ve got the kit”, Murray responds.
Turns out, the two-time Wimbledon champion completed the journey in boxer shorts and tennis shoes. Not your typical road cycling equipment, but Hoy’s friends’ response to your diagnosis is typical.
“The response of friends has been quite overwhelming at times”, Hoy says.
The public’s response to the friend response has echoed this sentiment.
More than £3 million was raised for UK cancer charities during the Tour de Four in September.
However, the highs of that success were followed in November by the UK National Screening Committee’s recommendation that a prostate screening cancer programme for all men in the UK was not justified.
Hoy’s new Olympic-sized mission required him to raise money and awareness, so his response was dignified yet steadfast.
He said, “I was quite shocked.” “I can’t believe that the answer to this situation is to sit on your hands and do nothing. In the UK, 10,000 men discover prostate cancer too late, an incurable condition, each year.
If we don’t take action, we’re failing these men, they say. Regardless, I’m going to keep pushing. “
We again encounter his focused, Olympic-honed mindset with a larger goal.
Hoy says, “The Olympics was something that changed my life for so long and continued to inspire me.”
” I’m still incredibly proud of it now and I look back with great fondness, but this is something on an entirely different level.