Sir Chris Hoy convinced fundraising stumps Olympic achievements

Sir Chris Hoy knows his efforts to raise funds and awareness around prostate cancer will carry greater weight than his Olympic gold medals.

The six-time Olympic gold-medallist revealed last year his prostate cancer had spread to his bones. Doctors subsequently gave him between two and four years to live.

After Hoy acknowledged he started to “spiral”, the 49-year-old detailed his incredible mindset shift in a moving BBC documentary titled Sir Chris Hoy: Cancer, Courage And Me.

“We’re all terminal. The shock and horror of the initial diagnosis of going from normal life to going to being told you have a disease with no cure, you spiral and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody but once you kind of gather yourself and it takes weeks and months to get to that point, you kind of realise nothing has changed,” Hoy reflected.

“I wasn’t going to live forever before, none of us do, but I’ve never had to confront my own immortality and once you do, it’s about finding a way to find hope and hope of a different kind.

“It’s recognising the time you’ve got, that we’ve all got, and you’ve got to make the most of it.”

During an emotional hour-long documentary, BBC cameras go behind the scenes to the Hoy family home and show how the Olympic cycling champion channelled his focus into creating a major fundraising event called Tour de 4 after his terminal diagnosis.

Sir Andy Murray was amongst a star-studded list of attendees in addition to thousands of others with cancer as £3.1million was eventually raised.

At one point of filming Murray is shown to break down after he detailed how Hoy shared his stage-four diagnosis over a text.

“He has obviously got this terrible diagnosis but now, ‘what is it I can actually do about that?’ It is pretty incredible the way he has gone about his life since then,” Murray admitted.

“What he is doing (now) will end up being his greatest legacy.”

Dame Laura Kenny, Britain’s most decorated female Olympian, was equally emotional: “Jason (Kenny) rang me and told me. And I don’t know, you are just shocked because Chris is a superhero in my mind.

“And you think it’s the worst situation for quite literally one of the nicest people and nicest families you will ever come across.”

During Hoy’s own struggles with chemotherapy and treatment, his inspiration wife Sarra discovered she has multiple sclerosis.

“It was almost more shocking than when I got mine because it seemed surreal and it was the closest I came to thinking this is so unfair, but she’s doing it in a very silent, dignified and stoic manner,” Hoy said.

“She never demands the spotlight, it is never about her but she deserves it all the way. I can’t imagine having coped with it at all without her. She is an amazing person.”

“He is still the most handsome man in the room and I always tell him that I think I am the luckiest person to have met him, married him,” Sarra Hoy smiled before she broke down.

“And I still maintain that it’s my life’s privilege to walk beside him as he goes through this and I would not ask for it to be any other way. It has felt easier than it should be and it’s because we’re doing it together.”

In typically inspiration fashion, Hoy concluded: “The message is live in the moment, enjoy the present day and make the most of what you have.

“Talking about it, raising awareness, it is not a futile thing, it does make a difference and it’s what pushes me on.

“The Olympics was something which was my life for so many years and it drove me on… but this is something on an entirely different level because it is more important than riding bikes in anti-clockwise circles, put it that way.”