“DON’T DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT”

Sir Chris Hoy's stage-four diagnosis has put prostate cancer under the spotlight among cyclists. Rob Kemp speaks to specialists to cut through the noise around risk factors and screening

- Rob Kemp

When Sir Chris Hoy revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer in September 2023, aged just 47, the shockwaves reached far beyond the velodrome.

Here was Britain's most decorated Olympian - the embodiment of supreme fitness - confronting a killer disease that affects one in eight men in the UK. Hoy, “but [since then] I've heard from people who have gone and had a PSA test off the back of my diagnosis - despite having had no symptoms - and been diagnosed, catching it early enough to treat and cure it.”

Hoy’s decision to go public with his terminal diagnosis has had a remarkable impact. According to Prostate Cancer UK, in the two months following his announcement, 286,000 men checked their prostate cancer risk online, and 38,000 of them indicated a family history of the disease. For a condition that often develops silently, that surge in awareness is likely to translate into lives saved. For many cyclists, the news raised uneasy questions. Could years in the saddle somehow increase the risk of prostate problems? Or is that just another piece of cycling mythology? To separate myth from medicine, Cycling Weekly marks Movember - Men’s Health Awareness Month - by speaking to leading experts and an amateur rider for whom Hoy’s story powerfully struck a chord.

Shock diagnosis