Six-time Olympic cycling legend Sir Chris Hoy has opened up in raw, emotional detail about the most devastating moment of his life: breaking the news of his cancer diagnosis to his young children.
The 48-year-old champion, who revealed his cancer publicly in February, has now shared that he has just two to four years left to live — a shocking revelation that has left fans reeling.
In his upcoming memoir All That Matters: My Toughest Race Yet, Hoy describes the gut-wrenching decision to tell his children, Callum (10) and Chloe (7), about his condition as he prepared for chemotherapy.
Instead of a dramatic sit-down announcement, Chris and his wife Sarra chose to break the news gently during dinner at the kitchen table, hoping to spare their kids from a traumatic memory.
“I tried to make it sound casual, even though inside I was falling apart,” Hoy recalled. As Sarra started, “You know when Daddy went to the doctors…,” the children looked up, unaware of the storm about to hit them.
Chris explained that doctors had finally found the cause of his painful shoulder — it was cancer.
Callum immediately asked the question every parent dreads: “Are you going to die?”
Hoy responded with heartbreaking honesty: “None of us live forever… but we hope I’ll be here for many more years because of the medicine I’m taking.”
At the time, little Chloe was only six and too young to fully understand. Trying to explain a timeline felt “barbaric,” Chris admitted.
Despite the heavy news, Chris and Sarra managed to end the conversation on a positive note. Chris picked Chloe up and swung her around the kitchen, trying to show her that he was still strong — at least for now.
“Seeing them smile and laugh gave me a huge sense of relief,” Chris wrote. “It was a moment I had dreaded over and over in my head, but somehow, we came out of it together, still laughing.”
In a heartbreaking twist, Hoy also revealed that his wife Sarra was diagnosed with “active and aggressive” multiple sclerosis just weeks after his own cancer diagnosis — a double blow that nearly crushed them.
“It felt like the universe was playing a cruel joke,” he confessed.
Hoy met Sarra, a lawyer from Edinburgh, in 2006, and the couple married in 2010. They welcomed Callum in 2014 and Chloe in 2017.
Through unimaginable pain and fear, Chris Hoy’s story is a powerful reminder of love, resilience, and the fragile nature of life.
