Sir Chris Hoy: the story of Scotland’s greatest Olympian

The track cycling at this year’s Commonwealth Games has just wrapped up at a velodrome in Glasgow’s East End named after a man who isn’t just Scotland’s greatest Olympian. Over the past two years, Sir Chris Hoy has shown a different kind of courage entirely — and been just as open about that as he was about everything else in a career built on hard work.

From E.T. to Olympic silver

Hoy was born in Edinburgh in March 1976, and his cycling story starts with a trip to the cinema. Watching the BMX chase scene in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at the age of six left him hooked, and his dad picked up a second-hand bike for £5 at a flea market to get him started. He raced BMX until he was 14, becoming Scottish champion and reaching ninth in the world rankings, before switching to track cycling and studying sports science at the University of Edinburgh.

His breakthrough came gradually rather than overnight. A team sprint silver at the 1999 World Championships was followed by his first Olympic medal, another team sprint silver, at Sydney 2000.

Building towards gold

By 2002, Hoy was a world champion in both the kilometre time trial and the team sprint — the kilo title won by one-thousandth of a second. Two years later at the Athens Olympics, he turned that form into his first Olympic gold, setting a new world and Olympic record in the kilometre time trial. It would prove to be the last time the event was contested at the Games; the IOC dropped it from the Olympic programme immediately afterwards, forcing Hoy to rebuild his career around sprint disciplines instead.

Beijing 2008: the greatest single Games

The switch paid off spectacularly. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Hoy won three gold medals — team sprint, keirin and individual sprint — becoming the first Briton in a century to win three golds at a single Games, since swimmer Henry Taylor in 1908. He was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year that December, and was knighted in the New Year Honours the following month.

London 2012 and Britain’s most decorated Olympian

Hoy carried the flag for Team GB at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, then delivered on home soil: gold in the team sprint, setting two world records along the way, followed by gold in the keirin. That sixth Olympic gold made him Britain’s most decorated Olympian at the time, surpassing his childhood idol, rower Sir Steve Redgrave — a record his former team-mate Sir Jason Kenny would go on to pass with a seventh gold at Tokyo 2020. He retired from competitive cycling the following April.

The velodrome that carries his name

Ahead of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Glasgow built a new indoor velodrome in the city’s East End and named it after him — Hoy was the first cyclist to ride it, in October 2012. Fourteen years on, he was back there this summer: track cycling at the 2026 Commonwealth Games ran at the venue from 30 July to 2 August, and Hoy greeted the King and Queen at the Games’ opening ceremony just days before it began.

A different kind of courage

In February 2024, Hoy revealed he was being treated for cancer. Further tests found the primary cancer in his prostate had spread to his bones, and that October he confirmed the diagnosis was terminal, with doctors giving him between two and four years. Rather than step back from public life, he has been remarkably open about it — writing a memoir, All That Matters, and fronting a 2025 documentary about the diagnosis and his mindset since.

That openness, as much as the six gold medals, is a significant part of why he remains such a widely admired figure well beyond the world of cycling.