‘It’s been the toughest year of our lives’: Cycling legend Chris Hoy on terminal cancer | Sport-others News
Less than three week after he revealed that his cancer was terminal, six-time Olympic gold medall Sir Chris Roy had opened up about the ‘absolute shock and horror’ about the condition apart from him and his wife Sarra dealing with the situation. 48-year-old Roy, who won six Olympic gold between 2004 and 2012 including a fairytale finish to his Olympics career at the London Olympics, spoke for the first time with his terminal cancer diagnosis with BBC.
“It’s been the toughest year of our lives so far some stretch. No symptoms, no warnings, nothing. All I had was a pain in my shoulder and a little bit of pain in my ribs. But this ache and pain didn’t go away. i assumed it was going to be tendonitis or something, and it was just going to be to lay off weights or lay off cycling for a wee while and get some treatment and it’ll be fine. It was the biggest shock of my life. I remember the feeling of just absolute horror and shock,” Roy said on the initial diagnosis of cancer diagnosed last year in an interview to BBC on Monday.
The Scottish cycl, who had won his first Olympic gold in 2004 Athens Olympics before winning five more Olympic gold medals in 2008 Beijing and London Olympics, holds the second place for the highest number of medals any British Olympian behind Sir Jason Kelly’s seven medals. With his prostate cancer being diagnosed last year and now spreading to bone marrow, Roy has been given two to four years the doctors. He had told The Times last month that the cancer had spread to his bones meaning it has entered stage four. “I just basically walked back in a daze. I couldn’t believe the news and I was just trying to process it, I don’t remember walking. I just remember sort of halfway home thinking ‘where am I?’ And then I was thinking ‘how am I going to tell Sarra? What am I going to say?. I’d had zero symptoms, nothing to point me towards that might be an issue. We were given the news that this was incurable. Suddenly, everything, all your thoughts, everything rushes. It’s almost like your life is flashing before your eyes at that moment,” said Hoy while talking with BBC about the latest diagnosis.
Hoy also admitted that the latest diagnosis was just the first step of acceptance for him. “It does feel like this isn’t real. You feel that you want to get out, you feel like you’re a caged animal, you want to get out of that consulting room and get away from the hospital and run away from it all. But you realise you can’t outrun this, this is within you and this is just the first step of the process of acceptance,” added Hoy.
Hoy is married to lawyer Sarra Hoy and the couple have two children named Callum and Chloe. The cycling legend also recalled how the couple had a tough time breaking the devastating news to their children. “That was the first thought in my head. How on earth are we going to tell the kids? It’s just this absolute horror, it is a waking nightmare, a living nightmare. We just tried to be positive and tried to say do you know what, this is what we’re doing and you can help because when I’m not feeling well, you can come and give me cuddles, you can be supportive, you can be happy, you can be kind to each other,” said Hoy.
