The Team GB legend announced last year that his condition was terminal with doctors giving him two to four years left to live
Sir Chris Hoy has opened up on living with terminal cancer and revealed how he and his wife are approaching family life amid their respective health battles.
The six-time Olympic champion cyclist was diagnosed with cancer in 2023 and announced last year that his condition was terminal, after a scan found primary cancer in his prostate which had spread to his bones, including his shoulder, pevils, ribs and spine. Tragically, Hoy was given between two and four years left to live by doctors.
In a cruel twist, his wife Sarra was then diagnosed with an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis (MS), having had a scan just a week after her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
The couple have two young children – Callum, 10, and Chloe, seven – and Hoy has spoken previously about how his first thought when Sarra got her diagnosis was how they were going to break the news to them, describing it as an “absolute horror” and “a waking nightmare”.
However, while the 49-year-old feared the impact that making his diagnosis public would have on his children, he now says that his illness is “not something that really scares them” and his family are currently “in a nice spot”.
“Touch wood, it doesn’t feel as though they’ve been massively affected by it,” he told The Times as he provided an update on his health. “They’ve always been a bit frustrated with people coming up, wanting a photograph of Daddy. Now they’re like, ‘Oh, is it because of the cancer?’
“I think they understand that cancer is part of our lives. It’s not something that really scares them, they don’t really talk about it much, it’s just there.”
While Callum and Chloe know about their father’s illness, however, Hoy also revealed he and Sarra have not told them about her MS diagnosis, adding that she “doesn’t want the focus”. Indeed, Sarra initially kept her illness from her husband as he dealt with his cancer diagnosis.
The neurological condition, which affects the brain and spinal cord, is incurable but treatment can make it manageable.
“She doesn’t talk about it a massive amount,” he said when asked how Sarra’s condition had affected daily life. “I think she’s just determined to try and not allow it to get its feet under the table. It fluctuates, so she gets good days and bad days.
“When the days are difficult, she doesn’t ever admit to it, but clearly the thoughts are, ‘Is this the start of a decline? Is this how it’s going to be from now on?’ It’s just, it’s very difficult, and she’s so stoic and strong, and not willing to ask for sympathy.”
On not telling their children, Hoy added: “They know that she’s got sore hands sometimes, and I think that’s about the extent of it.
“If it wasn’t for my diagnosis, I think it would be getting a lot more attention, but she likes it that way. She doesn’t want the focus, she just wants to crack on.”
The Team GB icon has previously paid tribute to his wife as “the epitome of selflessness”, having supported him in the wake of his diagnosis despite also dealing with her own heartbreaking health battle.
He recalled in his autobiography that she went for a routine MRI just seven days after his cancer diagnosis for doctors to investigate a tingling sensation in her face and tongue and did not mention anything more of it for over a month.
“Then one evening in December, after our kids Callum and Chloe had gone to bed, Sarra looked serious and said she had something to tell me,” he wrote.
“I realised immediately it was something big as Sarra, always so strong in every situation, was beginning to crumble and struggling to get the words out. ‘Do you remember that scan I went for?’ she started through tear-filled eyes. ‘Well, they think it might be multiple sclerosis’. I immediately broke down, distraught both by the news and the fact she’d received it without me there.
“She went on to explain they had called her and told her over a month before. It was so hard to try to compute that she had absorbed the awfulness of this diagnosis alone, without sharing it with me, in order to protect me. I tried to let the words sink in as my mind was spinning, trying to understand what had been happening to her, all while she had been accompanying me to every one of my own hospital appointments.”
He added: “She is the epitome of selflessness, putting the kids and me before herself and always doing it through love not obligation. The future is a great unknown for us both now.”
Reflecting on how he felt after being told his cancer was terminal, Hoy added: “Initially you feel you’re never going to tell your kids off again. You want them to only remember you as the perfect father who always says yes if they want an ice cream, or yes if they get on the iPad, or whatever. And you realise that that phase is very short.
“It feels like the family routine is as it was before, which I think is remarkable, really. That will definitely change, obviously, but I think for now we’re just getting on with life, and it just feels like we’re in a nice spot.”