Six-time Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy credits his wife Sarra with having 'unbelievable' strength.
The cycling legend, 46, recently revealed that he has terminal stage-four prostate cancer and has been given two to four years to live, after being diagnosed in September 2023. Chris went for a check-up after suffering from pain in his shoulder and ribs, and scans showed a tumour, with the cancer spreading to his bones.
Just days after he learned of his heartbreaking prognosis, his wife Sarra received her own life-changing diagnosis. The mother-of-two learned that she had multiple sclerosis (MS) - though kept it a secret from Chris and only initially shared the news with her sister because it came so soon after her husband was hit with cancer.
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Instagram/@sarra.hoy)MS is a chronic condition that affects the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms can include extreme tiredness, vision problems and difficulty with balance. Medicines and treatments can help to alleviate symptoms, but it cannot be cured. Sarra, who met Chris in 2006 and instantly fell in love, was later told her MS was "very active and aggressive".
In December 2023, Sarra confided in Chris about her condition and he has since praised her almighty strength and support. In an interview with BBC Breakfast this morning, ahead of his BBC One documentary with Sally Nugent tonight, Chris said: "The strength of Sarra is unbelievable, she kept it to herself."
He continued: "Throughout all of that she was there for me but didn't at any point crack. And it was really only in December that she said, 'This is the news I've had'. That was the lowest point I think. That was the point where I suddenly thought, 'What is going on?' I almost felt like saying, 'OK stop, this is a dream, wake me up, this isn't real, this is a nightmare'."
The father-of-two continued: "That was the bit where you think if you didn't have the kids, if you didn't have that purpose and the absolute need to keep getting out of bed every day and moving on, it would have been really difficult. But that's why you're a team. You help each other."
He said: "You worry about your family, you worry about people close to you. It's not where we thought we would be a year ago." He added: "But we're pressing on, she's receiving treatment and she's doing well at the moment, and aren't we lucky that there's treatment for it? She has medicine she can take and I have medicine I can take. So we're lucky."
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PA)Chris also said that his biggest concern was telling Sarra, as he recalled: "I just remember sort of halfway home thinking, 'Where am I?' And then I was thinking, 'How am I going to tell Sarra? What am I going to say?'" Their children Callum and Chloe were aged nine and six at the time, and Chris said it was a "living nightmare" having to tell them the news.
"We just tried to be positive and tried to say, 'Do you know what, this is what we're doing and you can help because when I'm not feeling well, you can come and give me cuddles, you can be supportive, you can be happy, you can be kind to each other'. I'm sure lots of families do it in different ways and I think there's no right approach for anyone," Chris said.
In an extract from his memoir, All That Matters: My Toughest Race Yet, published in The Sunday Times, Chris said Sarra showed him unwavering support while facing "this absolute crisis in the midst of my own". He explains that she went for a routine MRI scan after suffering from a tingling sensation in her face and tongue.
Chris said she joked it was "a chance for her to have a lie down for an hour" and "as close to a spa day as she'd get". He revealed Sarra, who was "always so strong" was "struggling to get the words out" when she finally broke the news to him in December. She asked him if he remembered the scan, with "tear-filled eyes", and said: "They think it might be MS."
He writes: "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. 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."
- Sir Chris Hoy: Finding Hope airs on BBC One at 8pm tonight on Tuesday, November 5.
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