Sir Chris Hoy has revealed how his “selfless” wife kept her own multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis a secret as they initially dealt with his terminal cancer.
The former track cyclist, one of Britain’s most successful Olympians, writes in his memoir that he “broke down” at learning of her fight “without me there”.
British cycling great Sir Chris Hoy.Credit: AP
Extracts from his book, All That Matters: My Toughest Race Yet, have been published a week after he detailed how he has between two and four years left to live.
Sir Chris, 48, praised his wife Sarra for her unwavering support while facing “this absolute crisis in the midst of my own”. Sarra began receiving treatment as Sir Chris was finishing his chemotherapy in March. He said she receives medication through an intravenous drip at hospital visits every six months.
He recalled that she initially went for a routine MRI – seven days after his cancer diagnosis – for doctors to investigate a tingling sensation in her face and tongue.
In extracts published in The Sunday Times, he wrote: “So whilst in a daze of shock, she went off to the scan, saying it would be a chance for her to have a lie down for an hour, joking it was as close to a spa day as she’d get. Afterwards, she continued to support me wholly and completely, leading me to push all thoughts of her MRI scan away, given her symptoms had long since disappeared.
Chris Hoy after winning the Men’s Sprint at the 2008 World Championships.Credit: AP
“Then one evening in December, after our kids Callum and Chloe had gone to bed, Sarra looked serious and said she had something to tell me. I realised immediately it was something big as Sarra, always so strong in every situation, was beginning to crumble and struggling to get the words out. ‘Do you remember that scan I went for?’ she started through tear-filled eyes. ‘Well, they think it might be multiple sclerosis’. I immediately broke down, distraught both by the news and the fact she’d received it without me there.
“She went on to explain they had called her and told her over a month before. It was so hard to try to compute that she had absorbed the awfulness of this diagnosis alone, without sharing it with me, in order to protect me. I tried to let the words sink in as my mind was spinning, trying to understand what had been happening to her, all while she had been accompanying me to every one of my own hospital appointments.
