Sir Chris Hoy has shared an update on his health as he battles terminal cancer, revealing that he can no longer ride a bike like he once used to, even though he has continued to ride and even participated in a Zwift event in Mallorca earlier this month, where he faced off against Mark Cavendish and Russell Downing, as well as other former pros.
He posted a few images on Instagram and wrote: “What a weekend it’s been here in Majorca for the Zwift Community Live event. 3 days of riding on some of the best roads on the island with some of the best people. Catching up with old friends, making new ones. It’s been an absolute blast and I’m so pleased I got round ok even though my fitness isn’t quite what it was a couple of years ago. I might even have a beer tonight to celebrate! Huge thanks to @werkdodger and his whole team at @gozwift for their efforts in putting on such an awesome event. Thanks for having me!”
At the World Travel Market in 2021, one of Mallorca’s key promotional messages concerned sports tourism. The slogan “a year round training ground” was adopted to highlight the island’s great advantages for sport in general and for training specifically, be this for professional or amateur teams and athletes and Sir Chris Hoy gave the campaign his backing in person.
In a recent interview with The Times, Hoy described the emotional hit of the diagnosis as something that “takes away all the hope.” He said: “With stage one, two or three, there’s always hope that actually you can beat this. Stage four essentially means you’re never going to get rid of it. It will always come back at some point; it is a terminal diagnosis.”
Now, he’s aiming to reshape how people view a stage four diagnosis with the help of ‘Tour de 4’, a mass-participation ride and awareness day centred around the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow this September. “I thought: I’d like to do something that reflects how I’m feeling right now — that, actually, life goes on,” he said. “A lot of people are living with stage four.”
Hoy has always been a regular cyclist on the island which is the winter headquarters for many of the top cycling teams in the world, including Team GB and was home to Team Sky for over a decade.