It is just after 9am in a back room of the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow – a few minutes before Hoy’s charity mass participation cycling event, the Tour de Four, is due to get under way.
The ride was set up, and given its title, in an effort to change perceptions around stage four cancer.
Every time the door opens, a member of British Olympic and Paralympic royalty walks through it.
Sir Mark Cavendish, Sir Jason Kenny, Becky James, Dani King, Sir Ben Ainslie, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Sarah Storey…
In and among the clip-clop of cycling cleats comes another sporting knight.
This one is wearing tennis shoes.
Hoy goes over to check in with Sir Andy Murray about his readiness and is met with a typical sardonic quip from his fellow Scot.
Hoy asks: “Are you feeling ready mate?”
“Well, I’ve got the kit,” Murray responds.
As it turns out, the two-time Wimbledon champion was woefully ill-prepared – completing the ride in tennis shoes and boxer shorts. Not typical road cycling gear, but typical of the response of Hoy’s friends to his diagnosis.
“The response of friends has been quite overwhelming at times,” Hoy says.
The friend response has been mirrored by that of the public.
September’s Tour de Four raised more than £3m for cancer charities across the UK.
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.
For Hoy, the fight to raise money and raise awareness is his new Olympic-sized mission and his response therefore was dignified, yet resolutely determined.
“I was quite astonished,” he said. “I can’t believe that the answer to this situation is to sit on your hands and do nothing. There are 10,000 men a year in the UK who find out they have prostate cancer too late – it’s incurable.
“We’re failing these men if we don’t do something proactive. Regardless, I’m going to keep pushing.”
Again, we meet his Olympic-honed mindset, targeted on a bigger mission.
“The Olympics was something that was my life for so many years and drove me on,” Hoy says.
“I’m still incredibly proud of it now and I look back with great fondness, but this is something on an entirely different level.
“It’s more important than riding bikes in anti-clockwise circles, put it that way.”
