167. Sir Chris Hoy

0:00As a cycling coach once told me, you train on the turbo and you race on the road. And that's a mantra I've long since stuck by. Grinding out those boring indoor Ks with the hopeful payoff, it'll be worth it, I'll be faster, I'll be better when I go and ride my bike outside. But then Ruvie came along and actually makes riding indoors, whisper it, real. That's because Ruvie is like riding your bike outside, only inside. name a climb a ride a destination Alpe d 'Huez, Sacralabra, Paris-Roubaix, Strada Bianchi, New Zealand, Vietnam and you can ride it all on Ruvie. It makes Ruvie a brilliant way to train for an event or a big trip.

0:38You can climb the Stavio, tackle the Ahrenberg or test your legs over the Poggio all from the comfort, well that does depend on how hard you pedal, of your home trainer. Ruvie is also super social with loads of group rides and events and from the 12th to the 25th of October, it's Ruvie Fest, a celebration of riding together with group rides like Pico Del Tedi in Tenerife, Cap de Formentor in Mallorca and Lake Garda in Italy, plus a host of special guests, challenges, rewards and giveaways, and the annual Ruvie Fest race, which brings riders together for one huge race while keeping the vibe fun and inclusive.

1:15Right now, Cyclist Magazine podcast listeners can get a one-month free trial, valid from now until the 31st of March, 2027 by using the code KEEPITREALCYCLIST at the checkout. That's KEEPITREALCYCLIST, all one word, at the checkout. Offer valid for new users only.

1:37Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I'm your host, James Spender, and it is once again, but little old me. There is no William Strickson nor Robin Davidson. It is just me with our guest yesterday, Sir Chris Hoy, a man who, if you haven't heard of him, was a pretty good cyclist. And I might just run through why he was such a good cyclist in a moment. But I'm not really sure what you guys like out there. But I listen to Adam Buxton, and he always does some really nice, he just does his walkie chats, where he's got some lovely crunching leaves as he talks to himself. So maybe I'll try that.

2:13Maybe I'll tell you that I've just come back from a ride. I did a rather a naughty late lunchtime ride. We only are supposed to have one hour for lunch at Cyclist. I took an hour and a half and I did my usual loop because I'm nothing if not a creature of habit. I always really like just kind of riding the same things as boring as that sounds because then you can just do the riding. You don't have to think about where you're going at all. And there's something brilliantly cathartic and dare I say meditative in that and just nice. I just kind of like cycling just for cycling's sake so I went out on a ride and I came back and opened up Strava and ping a second place PB that's not bad is it after all these years riding the same routes to get a second place PB so that's quite fun quite happy about that although you always look at the leaderboard don't you and you're like bloody hell my best best time on this route is like it's like more than a minute slower than the fastest person over this particular 4k stretch It's quite a long segment, this one, which is disheartening, isn't it?

3:14But, you know, what can you do? You keep riding. You keep pedaling. You keep pumping up your tyres every time you ride if you've got tubeless wheels. And you keep smiling, and the weather's still good. Actually, the weather's great at the moment for cycling. So I'd like to do more of that. And I'll tell you what, right at the end of this interview, after I stopped talking to Chris, Chris said, I've just got to go. I've got to go for a ride. And I was like, that's cool. That's what you should be doing. That's what everyone, not like I've got to go into another meeting. I'm sorry I've got to dash.

3:42It should be, I need to go because I need to go and ride. And I wish I could say, more of us got to say that. But Chris, I think if anyone has earned it, Chris Hoy has earned that right to go riding whenever he damn well pleases. So I'm not sure if that worked for you. We were actually talking at work about getting some feedback on the podcast. So if you've listened this far into this introduction, email me, it's james.spender. Confusingly, that's not part of the email address, james.spender at metropolis.co.uk. Metropolis is the publishing house that owns Cyclist. So that's why I've got a Metropolis email.

4:19So james.spender at metropolis.co.uk. Tell me what you like. Maybe tell me what you don't like. I'm very thin skinned. I'm still doing therapy. I need it. Low self-esteem, all that sort of stuff. So, you know, keep the criticisms light. Maybe give me the classic defecation sandwich. Let me down gently. Or just, you know, both barrels, whatever. I'll just hand it to Will. He can read it and digest it for me. So yes, do please send us your feedback. What do you like about cyclist podcast? What don't you like? What can we do better? What do we do terribly? And also, I should probably start saying more.

4:56You've got to like and subscribe, yeah? Because that just genuinely really helps because as much as you are a podcast, Gary Lineker doesn't own us. Rory Stewart is not sitting opposite me at a desk. Mercifully, neither is Alistair Campbell. There's a little shot across the bowels. And we're not sponsored by Airbnb. So we need all the help we can get. If you do like this podcast, please do like and subscribe. And if you don't, like I say, email me, tell me why, and I'll try and make it better. I'll do everything in my power if I can. but I'll probably end up being second best PB sort of time standard to whatever it is that you throw my way in terms of criticism that will be the level of response I'll be a minute off wherever you'd like me to be but I will try so hard anyway shall we get on with the show so Chris Hoy sir Chris Hoy have you heard of Chris Hoy of course you've heard of Chris Hoy but just in case you haven't or just in case you'd just like to know Chris won little recap time Chris won six six Olympic gold medals and one silver medal on the track.

5:58That is mad. That is absolutely incredible. He was the most decorated male British cyclist for an awfully long time until Jason Kenney came and took that crown away from him. He spanned four Olympic Games, not literally, although he is a big man. He's got a big reach. He probably could gather them up in his big bear-like arms. He spanned four Olympic Games, including that incredible week at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he won three gold medals in a single week in the team sprint, the individual sprint and the Kieran. That was when Team GB notched up 14 cycling medals across the men's and women's cycling.

6:33I think kicked off with Nicole Cook winning the women's road race, which was exceptionally. And that, ladies and gentlemen, as we all know, cemented Britain's place. I'm definitely not reading this from my Q notes, am I? Cemented Britain's place. Who says cemented? Cemented Britain's place as a cycling powerhouse. and who says powerhouse and it put no but it genuinely did it put british cycling on the map it made us not look like big hitters we suddenly have become big hitters that was the beginning of the brailsford medal factory and i think it's the beginning of putting cycling into the public you know sort of consciousness the mainstream it meant that my mum had heard of chris hoy and it did absolute wonders for our sport and it continues to do so that legacy just lives on and on um and off the back of that as well i think you know i'm not not something we touched on in interviews so much but Chris Hoy was a bit of a kind of bigger brother father trailblazer kind of figure to all of those other people that went before uh that went after him sorry Mark Cavendish Wiggins I mean these you know these are contemporaries but they they their heyday came perhaps a bit later and often on the road Alex Dowsett Sarah Story she would probably be up there as a on as the sister to to the Chris Hoy brother but these these were the riders that really owed so much to those early escapades on the track.

7:49So anyway, I'm blathering on, but I think you can imagine what we talk about. We talk about Beijing. We talk about Chris sitting trackside at Athens, his first, well, no, second Olympic Games, first gold medal, watching world records get smashed over and over again, just before he was supposed to go out there and beat everybody. How do you do that? How do you go out and not just beat everyone else, but beat everyone else who have also just been beating world records multiple times? That is serious pressure. Chris kind of holds that. We also talk about Chris going to Japan to learn to race Kieran.

8:18And by the way, I can't remember if this goes in the interview, but Chris did say it was okay to call him Chris. Not Sir Chris, but he is knighted. We also talk about how many cyclists are knighted. Think about that. Think about your answer. Chris has it later. We also talk about his famous love of coffee that meant he travelled everywhere with a coffee machine and a grinder, probably much to the annoyance of the baggage handlers for Team GB because those things are heavy. And his even bigger love and respect for his cycling compatriot compatriot and maverick record breaker graham obrie who went um head-to-head uh so often with chris boardman in the early 90s um over our records absolutely changed the game look graham obrie up if you haven't heard of him off the back of this i'd love to talk to graham if that could ever be possible because i think that he he was a pioneer a true pioneer and did it all in his own terms graham obrie absolutely amazing chris can tell you more and also chris talks about one of his teammates, again, see if you can guess, who rode for quite a while with different length cranks without even noticing.

9:16So there you go. That tells you all you need to know about a certain type of cyclist out there. You just do the riding. You don't care about your kit. Chris, he definitely cares about his kit, as you'll get to learn. And sadly, of course, lots of you already know, Chris talks about his stage four cancer diagnosis and how he's sort of living with that, I guess, as much as you can, and how prostate cancer affects men. And at the same time, it's actually potentially much more curable, treatable than many other cancers. And there are so many ways that men can catch it early, one of which is going to prostatecancer.org slash risk checker, which I've just done actually.

9:58And you can check your prostate cancer risk if you're a man in under 30 seconds. So that's absolutely do that. So So Chris talks around that and also very specifically and most brilliantly, Chris talks about his annual charity ride called Tour de Four because it's raising money for cancer charities into research and care, particularly for those with stage four cancer diagnoses. And this year, Tour de Four had 191 riders riding with stage four cancer, joining thousands more, including Jason and Laura Kenny. And they helped raise nearly three million pounds for cancer charities. And that took Tour de Four's, this is only the second edition, right?

10:36That took Tour de Four's total to a staggering 5.8 million over two editions. That's huge. It could be bigger. It will get even better. You can support that too. there's links in the show notes to that and prostatetecancer.org. So yeah, head over to tourdefour.com to see how you can donate, support, or even better yet, sign up for next year's event. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Chris Hoy. Sorry, Sir Chris Hoy. I promise you, you did sound good calling, Chris.

11:10so i've got to say i do come at track cycling from a road cycling perspective but at the same time for i would say you were front and center the most famous face and man and name of cycling in britain as i was going through uni and growing up which i think is remarkable because without sounding disparaging in any way towards track cycling it would feel perhaps more niche compared to road cycling today yeah I mean it definitely was I think there was a huge shift heading from Sydney Olympics through to Athens I think that's when Britain started to invest in its sport and the national lottery began in 1998 Sydney was the first games that we as a nation started to do relatively well you know in atlanta in 96 britain won one gold medal and that was in rowing and we were 34th on the the nation's medal table so it's unthinkable now but back then that was that was the reality and i think the the national lottery the beginning of the national lottery and the funding of a national program for all sport was the beginning of britain's success in the Olympics.

12:22So you've got the backdrop of that. You've got the nation who were used to seeing us as plucky losers, you know, coming in fourth, fifth, sixth, or maybe scraping a medal and that would be something to be celebrated. But it was rare to see a gold medalist. And I think that's what made people like Steve Redgrave so special, because even in that environment where they weren't getting the support that athletes nowadays get, you know, he was still winning five consecutive gold medals at the Olympics. So off the back of that, we went into Athens and did really well relative to the previous two games.

12:57But then it was Beijing was the game that really took off and we finished third overall as a nation. And then I think inevitably, because of that extra interest in the sport, because we were heading into London in 2012 as the host nation, there was an increased interest in Olympic sport. and because I won three gold medals in Beijing I was I was getting that attention I was getting that kind of extra focus so I guess by default I was you know the person who was maybe most recognized or I was on the back of brandflex packets I was on cheesy adverts so you know I think that's that is why and it but you're right that track cycling is a kind of niche branch of the of the sport and certainly in Central Europe, that is the road cycling is by far the biggest part of it.

13:45But in Britain, if you went into a taxi and chatted to the driver, he would know about the velodrome. He wouldn't necessarily know much about the Tour de France or what our road riders were doing. It was all about, he knew Bradley Wiggins, he knew Victoria Pendleton, he knew me, he knew, you know, a whole host of names who had become, you know, household names through the Beijing Olympics. What is it about tracks cycling, do you think, that makes track cyclists so knightable and dameable. I should have said, should I call you Sir Chris? But just in looking through the kind of annals of cycling, I think I'm right in saying there's been six knighthoods and damehoods handed out, and they've all been to people who have been track cyclists either through and through or have transitioned onto road.

14:29So that's your starter. And then the supplementary question is, can you name those six people or five others? Good question. good two-pointed question um i don't know i think that the i think track cycling and the olympics are seen as a they belong to the nation you know you're it's you don't have to be a cycling fan to know about track cycling because you turn on the olympics every four years and you go oh we're good at the sport i'll watch this and you see somebody from britain winning a medal or winning a gold medal and you have to be a cycling fan like particularly now when it's behind a paywall You've got to go out of your way to follow road cycling and other branches of cycling, but you don't for the Olympics.

15:11So, you know, I think it's the general population will follow any sport that we're doing well. I remember as a kid, I used to watch lawn bowls during the Commonwealth Games because Scotland had an outside chance of a bronze medal, you know, as a 10-year-old. So I think we do follow success. We want to cheer on our nation and see success in that respect. So I think that we value that. And therefore, if you have a sport like track cycling where you can win multiple medals, it's not like running the marathon or doing the road race where you have one shot at a medal. In track cycling, you have multiple chances.

15:45And therefore, if you are successful at those and if you take those opportunities, then that kind of elevates you by the fact that you have more medals than anyone else. So the second part of your question, who are the other dames and knights? Well, I'd like to say I was the first. You know, I set the tone. Absolutely. I should get all the credit for that. No. Who were the other ones? Jason Kenney. Sir Jason Kenney. Mark Cavendish. I think Mark was shortly after me, wasn't he? He was after he won his gazillionth stage at the Tour de France. Bradley Wiggins. That's three. Sarah Story got Dame Hood.

16:27And, of course, Laura Kenney. Dame Laura Kenny. Is that it? Is there not another? Did Geraint not get a knighthood? I'm going to have to check that. There is a bonus point for a man affiliated to cycling who never technically took up. You know, he would have cycled a bike in his life, but he wasn't competing. But he may be spearheaded at the time, part of the success of the Metal Factory. And his name was... Oh, Dave Rillsford. Yes. Yes, of course. And do you know what? Do you know what? There's another knight who none of you will have heard of, I reckon. And the only reason I know of this guy is because we used to train in Perth in Australia in the winter.

17:02And on the wall, there's a poster about this guy called Sir Hubert Opperman, Oppie. And he was this Aussie cyclist who did these crazy long, you know, coast to coast record attempts. And he raced a train, famously raced a train from one point of Australia to another. And he was knighted. And this is back, you know, over 100 years ago, you know, when Australians got knighted back in the day. so I wasn't the first so I can't claim that actually Sir Hubert Opperman check that here on Google I think but you know what I've not checked that you need to double check that and verify it but from my memory from a poster a random curled up poster on the wall at Perth Velodrome that's a little bit of a factoid for you fantastic so you've travelled all over the world to kind of to train and apply your trade as it were but one thing that stuck out to me And I say this because I'm sort of like Japanophile, like lots of people are.

17:59I just find it absolutely incredible because, and this is kind of jumping around a bit, but you're a specialist in the kilo. The kilo gets taken out of the Olympic program post-Athens, which forces you to reinvent yourself in a way. You're also participating in sprint and team sprint. So you take up Kirin, which is a new sport. And to do that, that's got its roots deeply in Japan. It comes from Japan just after the Second World War. I think almost a sport invented to boost the economy. It was all centered around kind of gambling and getting money moving around after obviously the devastation of the Second World War.

18:34You go to school, they have a Kirin school, which I think a lot of people would be surprised about, and study Kirin. I mean, that must have just been an immense culture shock because you would have been in your mid-20s maybe. and I believe the way in which it all kind of unfolds in Japan is eccentric maybe is the way to describe it and very particular what was that like it was unforgettable it was it was a one-off thing that I did 2005 post-Olympics from after Athens as you see I was a kilo rider at that point and I was 29 so I was basically I was very focused a very specialist in a time trial event doing you know a very singular specific event all of a sudden being thrust into this world where the reason it's a gambling sport is because it's highly unpredictable and there's nine riders on the track and there's so many quirks to it we could have a whole podcast just talking about the the japanese kieran and nine riders get invited from all around the world one from each of the top nine nations to come and do the the international kieran the coxai kieran and and so you've gone from your your national setup where you have your coaches and your physios and your support all around you people to your mechanics to sort your bike everything is done for you and you fly into tokyo and you get picked up and you have to travel in a suit and tie that's the first little quirk and you arrive in saitel which is the cyclist hotel at the top of this mountain in the middle of japan in shizuka prefecture and it's like being in dorms essentially dormitories and it's like almost a military style where everybody gets up at the same time there's a little speaker above your door and at like 6 45 there's a little ohio goes a mess and and then you're like basically get up get to get to breakfast you shuffle down have your smoke kippers and um rice and miso soup and all that for breakfast and then it's the day begins and And the reason they take you to this school is to teach you the rules of curing racing because there's billions of pounds.

20:46I think it's a 10 billion pound a year industry. It's huge. And because there's so much money bet on every single race, they have to be sure that you know the rules. You're not going to do something stupid that's going to affect the end result and then have a knock on, you know, a ripple effect. So you sit in these classes and you have all these different translators for, you know, you imagine you've got the Spanish writer, French writer, you've got Australians, you've got the English, you know, you've got all the different languages um not australian's different english but um you know what i mean you've got all the different translators the german translator and and so there's a guy that it's almost like bill murray's lost in translation it's this the comedy element to it where you have this guy who'll stand and talk for five minutes and my guy will say to me i said so what did he say he said um always do your best and good luck that's all he said and yeah yeah that's all he said so you've got to kind of deal with this lecture every day that goes on and essentially they repeat the same thing every day and the guys that have been before there was one there's a rennie wolf the germanoid i used to sit with a book and just read a book and completely ignore and they didn't seem to mind that as long as you turn up as long as you sit in the class they've done their job that you technically they can tick the box you've listened to the rules you know what's going on and therefore you can take responsibility in the afternoons you do your your the training and they teach you about the rules on the track and you've got to wear these massive big motorsport helmets and big pads like sort of american football style pads with shoulder pads and hip pads so you're about as aero as a brick and you've got to ride steel bikes so all the frames have to be approved by the national the kieran association round tube steel i think it's minimum 32 spoke wheels you can't have deep section it's proper i mean even back in 2005 this was really vintage so now it looks faintly ridiculous but i love it i love i love all the history i love the tradition i love the fact that when we went back in 2000 or 2019 to do a documentary about it nothing had changed in that 14 years and to the point where i went back to my room in saitel in the hotel call it hotel it's like barracks and i'd stuck one of the two to give you these little stickers to give to the fans with your picture on it and your name on it in Japanese and I'd stuck one of these stickers on a ceiling tile like on the other side of the ceiling tile in my room just because I thought that'd be a nice little thing to leave there because I know that you know friends of mine from different nations go and I could say check that tile and see if my sticker is still there anyway I went back with the film crew lifted this tile up turned it around and there was my sticker still there and then it was yeah nothing has nothing has changed and I love I love the fact that the Japan is this contrast between the ultra modern and the past and this acknowledgement of years gone by and people that have laid the path before them.

23:41So yeah, I thought the whole purpose of that trip was just to try and win a bit of cash because that's the reason you go out there. There's big prize money and you can do really well in the space of three months. You can go out there and you can earn probably more than you would earn in your whole year as a national lottery funded rider because there was very little money or there still is very little money in track cycling you know compared to road cycling so i did that thinking that was a one-off and a really great experience and you know something to add to my kind of list of it of memories and we came back from japan and we're told that the kilo had been dropped from the olympic program so all of a sudden you didn't realize i didn't even know okay no okay so i had no idea that this was going to be so important so That was unknown to me at the time.

24:27That was the start of my experience of riding the Kieran. And did you win when you were out there? Did it work in that regard? No, I was rubbish. I was rubbish. I had people, you had these guys. So it's weird because you normally go to race, you know, you come from races where the crowds are, you know, you're at the track and the stadium's full of people and they're cheering you on. You go to these velodroms and they're great, big, huge, amazing facilities and there's nobody there. but all the people that are there are behind you know in the kind of betting offices and you know people don't go to watch the cycling they go to gamble so they'll be in the in the betting arenas but the ones that come down to the side to sort of see it live they tend to either be there to shout abuse at you for not winning if they bet on you and they're tearing up the betting slips and and i just remember riding around after my first race in kawasaki and i think i came second last I'd gone way too well.

25:21I completely messed up the tactics, got bullied, you know, kind of knocked about. It was a very physical style of racing and I wasn't ready for it. And I came last, or second last. And obviously, as Olympic champion, going in as Olympic kilo champion, my betting odds were, you know, people were expecting me to do well. And I remember this guy shouting, I can't say exactly what he told me, but basically, hi, go home. You, something, something. And I was impressed that they learned the swear words so accurately um you know they didn't speak much english but they spoke really good swear words but um yeah it was tough and then you didn't have the support of your team around you when you had a bad day and i remember going home that first night thinking is this for me what am i doing out here i should be back training and i should be preparing for next year's world championships and all that but it was you sort of bounce back from it literally and figuratively and i had a great time the best result i got was a second place in the final race in the kind of A final.

26:21It was a great, a really great learning experience, but one of the best parts of it was getting to know the other guys from the other nations. And, you know, some lifelong friends now, Teo Boss, an old rival who I got to know well out there. He's coming to my 50th birthday party in a couple of weeks' time. So, you know, it's lovely when you finish your career and fierce rivals, you know, can become great friends. And were you one of those, think of like those ITV, mid-90s reality TV shows where people, it's Brits abroad and it's like the custom show and they open up the suitcase and someone's brought loads of tea bags and baked beans.

26:57I'm not sure you can get baked beans in Malaga. Were you going over there with a suitcase full of SIS gels and the guys are like, hang on, we just have mackerel here and miso soup? Pretty much. It's funny you should say that because, and not just that, but I was then, I remember Laurent Gagne, the French writer, he saw it was Regal Rapid back then and it was a really good product and it was way isolate but there was also carbs it was like a kind of not quite a meal replacement but a recovery shake with carbs, protein there was a little bit of creatine in there full sort of vitamin supplement in there and he was like what is this?

27:35We don't get this in France and I let him try it and he's like and so yeah I became the go-to guy because I had a little package delivered halfway through with all the science and sports stuff in it because you can't take it all in one go with you. I'll tell you, the Spanish rider, Jose Escaredo, his family business was jamon, the big legs of ham, the Spanish ham. And he brought out, he got a leg of ham sent out, which sat on a little wooden stand. Yeah. And a tea towel over it. And I'd never seen him before. I was like, you're not leaving it out. You've got to put it out in the fridge. He goes, no, no, no, it's been smoked.

28:13It's fine. and I remember that was the first time I tried Hamon and I absolutely fell in love with it so yeah that was a maybe not quite as important for performance as a way isolate but it was a treat I've got a feeling and this is a complete rumour but you used to travel with a coffee machine is that right? You used to be that fastidious about coffee Yeah I did and it was like I remember when I were coaches saying well you know you shouldn't be having to take all this stuff and you know you've got to be more resilient and be able to just deal with whatever's happening and drink the coffee in the hotel.

28:46And I was like, well, yeah, I can do that. But actually, it's a nice little addition to the day and it's something I look forward to. And it's not a, I must have this, otherwise I can't perform. But it was, you know, when you're at a training camp or when you're at a race or to have something, you know, it's your little moment in the day, making your coffee at the start of the day, getting yourself set up. And in the end, it became like a little cafe for all the riders. You'd get, all of a sudden, you became the most popular person on the team. You'd just get that little knock on the door and you'd sit and wait for the initial small talk and you wouldn't offer it.

29:19Wait until you go, is the coffee machine on? Yes, it's on. What would you like? What was your setup? Back then, I had a Mazzer grinder, a mini Mazzer grinder and a rocket espresso machine. So that's about 40 kilos of kit you're cutting around with you probably. Yes, yes. And Ernie, the mechanic, had to put it into, yeah. So I would never take it If I was flying somewhere, I would never take it. But if there was space in the van, I would bring it down. And it was brilliant. And it just, you know, my love for coffee came from living in Australia or spending time in Australia in the winter. You weren't drinking alcohol when you were training, so you didn't go to the pub.

29:56So the cafes became your social hub and you would go there on your days off. You would go there, you know, in the morning before you, on the way to the gym, you get to know the people in the cafe. I did a barista course, did another barista course, really got into it mainly because I knew that back in those days early 2000s you couldn't get decent coffee unless you're a couple of places in London but really you couldn't get decent coffee anywhere in the UK so I thought this coffee tastes great I want to have this more frequently at home so I've got to work out how to do it myself so it was yeah I kind of worked I did the barista course managed to buy a second hand machine built up my little setup and away you go as a cycling coach once told me you train on the turbo and you race on the road and that's a mantra i've long since stuck by grinding out those boring indoor k's with the hopeful payoff it'll be worth it i'll be faster i'll be better when i go and ride my bike outside but then ruvi came along and actually makes riding indoors whisper it real that's because ruvi is like riding your bike outside, only inside.

31:03Name a climb, a ride, a destination, Alpe d 'Huez, Sacre-Lobre, Paris Roubaix, Strada Bianchi, New Zealand, Vietnam, and you can ride it all on Ruvie. It makes Ruvie a brilliant way to train for an event or a big trip. You can climb the Stavio, tackle the Ahrenberg, or test your legs over the Poggio, all from the comfort, well, that does depend on how hard you pedal, of your home trainer. Ruvie's also super social, with loads of group rides and events, and from the 12th to the 25th of October it's Ruvie Fest, a celebration of riding together with group rides like Pico del Tedi in Tenerife, Cap de Formentor in Mallorca and Lake Garda in Italy, plus a host of special guests, challenges, rewards and giveaways and the annual Ruvie Fest race, which brings riders together for one huge race while keeping the vibe fun and inclusive.

31:54Right now, Cyclist Magazine podcast listeners can get a one-month free trial valid from now until the 31st of March 2027 by using the code KEEPITREALCYCLIST at the checkout. That's KEEPITREALCYCLIST, all one word, at the checkout. Offer valid for new users only.

32:17Is it fair to say that there's something in your mindset that is very analytical and scientific? It's why you would do coffee like that. It's why you could race to thousandth of a second and win gold medals. And I'm assuming now, you know, with your latest hat on, chairing. So, I mean, I want to ask you about that as well. Chairing the science aspect of science and sport. That's what gives you the desire to want to get into those more, you know, the minutiae of life. But yeah, how's that kind of translated into where you're at now with working with science and sport? yeah i've always found that interesting and i did my degree in sports science and i it was mainly because i had all these questions that i couldn't i didn't have coaches but back in the early 19 or mid 1990s there were no sprint coaches around we didn't have any success in our country and in the in the sprint event so you didn't even have someone to talk to to to try and get information from or to learn from or even just to watch racing so it was all it was this puzzle all these questions very little answers so it was well i'm gonna have to work it out myself and essentially looking at other sports that were similar to cycling in terms of the physiological demands so looking at 100 meter runners 200 meter runners 400 meter runners looking at the training they did looking up journals studies into these athletes how they develop the power and the speed and i found that fascinating i love i love solving a problem or a puzzle and i am quite geeky about getting into the detail of stuff and yeah the science and sport connection i mean i i was i remember as a student buying creatine it just came out kr10 i think it was called back in the day and it was a lot of money for a poor student but it was i was so i'd read all the papers about creatine monohydrate and realized this is this is something special and it's obviously a naturally occurring substance it occurs in meat but to get those kind of levels of creatine you have to eat a huge amount of meat and that wouldn't be practical.

34:17So I remember getting that. And then that was the first time I became aware of science and sport. And then, of course, they became linked with British cycling. So it was, you know, they've been the constant thread throughout my career. And they've been important. I broke my leg back in November last year and I've been on the science and sport collagen nonstop trying to help that recovery. So, yeah, I mean, it's always been there. and this new role is the chair of the advisory panel, this elite performance advisory panel. And essentially what that means is a connection between other elite athletes or current elite athletes and teams like British Cycling and acting as a kind of conduit between them and the new product development team.

35:01So in essence, ensuring that everything that science and sport create, it's A, based in fact and science, but also it's been used by the very elite athletes around the world in different sports to make sure it's not just in theory this should be good, but actually in practice, this is how the athletes will use the products. This is the feedback they give. This is what they want. And even there's so many new exciting areas, but also I think a lot of supplement companies, they jump on the bandwagon, whatever the latest thing is, and you get these latest wonder supplements and they tend to come and go.

35:36But you look at the range of science and sports, products they tend to when they bring something in it tends to stick and it tends to be there for the long run it's not just a little flash in the pan latest thing with some great marketing behind it it's everything they do as the name suggests it's it's backed by science and and so yeah it's really exciting there's lots of fun stuff we're looking at just now it's funny that we you know new things coming out or new ideas often you go back back to the future you know you look back in time looking at the things that were you know being used and being thought about and being discussed back 20 30 years ago like for example i did my dissertation at uni on bicarbonate of soda i was gonna ask about bicarb yeah so as a kilo rider so we the kilo 1000 meter time trial it lasts around about a minute it's the worst possible duration for a race because it's not a pure sprint but it's not you're not pacing it it's it's this horrible duration where the lactate begins to build up after about 35 seconds 40 seconds it starts to really get nasty and you're hanging on for the last 15 20 seconds and that doesn't matter whether you're you know in the early days i used to watch the kilo and think well it's just about being fit it's about training it's about doing the right sort of training so you don't die off at the end but it's a physiological phenomenon you can't change your physiology and working anaerobically means that you do produce lactate as a byproduct But it does stop the muscles functioning correctly when the level of the acidity becomes so high.

37:05The muscles don't function correctly, and therefore you grind to a halt. So you see these riders, on the last half lap of a kilo, it looks like they're barely pedaling, and it feels like that. You look at the power trace, and you'll peak, as an elite kilo rider, you'll peak well over 2 ,000 watts in the first half lap. And by the end of the minute, you could be down as low as 300, 350 watts. Wow. I mean, you're average for a minute, An elite kilorider, a 90 plus kilo rider, will be averaging well over 1100 watts. And we were close to about 1200 watts for a minute. So, you know, it's a huge amount of energy in a very short space of time.

37:40But it's not like sitting on a turbo trainer and doing 1200 watts flat for a minute. It's way worse than that. You've got to invest a huge amount of effort in the first 15, 20 seconds. And then you just drop, drop, drop off towards the end. so the reason that we the bicarbonate soda is obviously an alkaline and we used to scoop so it's basically 0.3 of a gram per kilogram body weight you put that you work that out so that's 30 grams roughly you put that into water mix it up tastes like seawater you chuck it back and it creates this um this very alkaline situation where you have a buffer and and the bicarbonate ions will bond with the lactate ions and and essentially give you just give you a couple seconds of buffering.

38:22So that real sting, that horrible feeling, it delays that little bit. So it basically stops you dropping off a cliff a little bit, or it delays that situation. Yeah. So that's been around for many, many years. It's just, again, it's a cooking ingredient, it's a food. It's nothing that you have to create. But the trick is, how do you get that into yourself without causing gastrointestinal distress? Because it can make you really sick, right, if you get the dose. It can, yeah. You've got to get the timing right and you've got to get the dosage right. And so the study that I did, or the dissertation was comparing two groups of elite athletes, a sprint group and an endurance group, and doing a 60 second all out ergometer test, and seeing if there was a difference between sprint athletes and endurance athletes and how they responded to bicarbonate loading.

39:09because the theory was sprinters are able to produce more power and therefore more lactate. They get higher lactate levels. So would they benefit more from bicarbonate loading than an endurance athlete who wouldn't be able to spike the power as high and create as much fatigue? And in the end, that was what we found was that it still benefited both groups, but the sprinters benefited more from the bicarbonate soda than the endurance group. So that's a lot of science to get my head around. But one thing that sticks out to me is it's really important to be able to articulate it like that, which I imagine is therefore makes your role with SIS really crucial because you can talk between a rider who can explain various things in the cycling lingo to you, and then you can relay it to people that are doing it from a science point of view.

39:59Because that's always blown my mind. Because any brand worth their salt will say, we sponsor pro riders, and obviously it's great marketing, but it's really important for the development of our bikes or our tyres or our kit, whatever it is. And something you might be able to speak to actually, because of your also secondary career in motorsport, is when you get a cyclist who's able to articulate what it is about a bike to a bike designer, or an F1 driver that can say, this is what's wrong with the car to an engineer, so the engineer can actually understand it. Because the two things are quite different.

40:31You go, hey, my bike doesn't feel right. And you go, well, what's wrong with it? I don't know, it feels a bit, it feels a bit washy in the corners, or it feels a bit soft at the back. But how does then the bike engineer know what to do with that? And you strike me as somebody that can analyse and then kind of re-explain, tell me like I'm five, kind of thing. And that's an important quality. You must have worked with, you know, alongside other riders who just had very relatively little appreciation. They would be happy with an Escafe in the same way they would be they don't know what pressure their tires need to be and it's just like give me a bike pin a number on my skin suit and i'm off jason queely rode for about six months right with odd length cranks without realizing and jason jason's one of my best mates so he wouldn't mind me taking the mickey about this and he laughs about it but he was he's one of these riders that was very kind of out of touch with his bike yeah and was just this phenomenal he was just a phenomenal engine he was this incredible athlete and he came to cycling quite late he took it up in his mid-twenties and by the time he was 30 he won the kilo in Sydney and he was the one that got the ball rolling and really you know we talk about Chris Boardman's win in Barcelona in 92 and that was crucial but Jason's was the first lottery funded gold medal and that got cycling that extra amount of money for the next Olympic cycle which really every single gold medal that British cycling have won subsequently you can trace it back to jason queley so um so yeah i'm taking the mick but actually i do have a lot of time for jason he's a wonderful guy but yeah i think there's two types of people you either take a great interest in what you do you know as a rider and you want to know why you're training this way and what the you know why we set the bike up or you take you take an interest in every um stage or you just sit back and say tell me when to turn up tell me what to do tell me what to wear tell me how long to ride for and i'll do that and and they they kind of like to absolve themselves of any stress or worry or thought about that and focus purely on on the job at hand of riding the bike and you there's merits in both but i i love the detail love knowing about it i think it stemmed from not having a coach as a young kid and also enjoying solving problems and trying to work things out and and and i you know because i came from a sports science background i used to write my training program so i would do i would write all my stuff that i was going to do and plan it out and then we did get coaches and because i was that they didn't want to say right here is your training do what you're told they recognized that was important to for because it doesn't matter what you do i don't think there's more than one ways to skin a cat and and therefore i think the important thing is that you buy into what you're doing and you believe in it because then you commit 100 and that's that's the most important thing it's how you it's not what you do it's how you deliver it so i'd sit down with the coaches and i would present my training plan for the year and i'd break it down into cycles and i would explain and they would come back they'd read it all and they'd come back and say why are you doing it this way for here and what about this the taper coming in do you not think you should bring the gym a bit closer a bit further away or what do you think about the impact you need more recovery from this from the world cup or coming into here and we would discuss it and in the end we'd make little tweaks and changes but at the end of it both sides were happy and content and therefore it worked really well but some riders would just be like well do you know what tell me what to do yeah and i'll do it did you um cross paths with graham o 'bree obviously different generations i did absolute absolute legend he's one of my again this is a another whole podcast and i think you should do i saw him two weeks ago he came to the tour de four which is our charity bike rides up in Glasgow and he is just there's never been a guy like Graham will breathe there never will be again he's an absolute one-off for any younger listeners he was pursuit world champion in 1993 he was he started out as a time trialist in the west coast of Scotland winning you know 10 mile time trials 25 mile time trials 50s then he became Scottish champion and the word spread on the grapevine very quickly about this guy who's riding with his handlebars turned up the way so so it's like you know really weird riding position and that was the thing that that initially spread and graham essentially looked at the problem of riding a bike and well you've got to try and make yourself as aerodynamic as possible how do you do that well he looked at skiers and he saw that they tucked their arms up into their chest rather than having them down in front of you he thought well that looks a much more aero position so i'm going to make some handlebars so he actually got some scrap metal welded these bars that brought his hands right up to his armpits essentially and he looked at the bottom bracket and he didn't like the fact his legs the q factor was so big that his legs were so wide apart he wanted to bring his knees closer together there were no bottom brackets on the market that existed that were narrow enough so he said right i'm gonna have to build a frame a whole new frame i'm gonna have to take away the top tube so that my knees can be close enough and not not hit the top tube i'm gonna make a narrow bottom bracket i'm gonna get bearings from somewhere well where do you get bearings from and you haven't got a lot of money and you haven't got a team behind you.

45:38Well, there's an old washing machine down at the dump. I'll cut that apart, take the bearings from a washing machine. And with his own two hands, he built this bike from scratch. The idea, the concept, bringing it into fruition, built it, turned up at the local time trails and just started smashing records. Then he went to track and he went to the national championships in Leicester in 1993. And the winner of that, the nationals, got the golden ticket to go to the world champs. in Norway and he did it but he did it the hard way as Graham always would do in that he pulled his foot out at the start of the pursuit and lost about three and a half seconds to Brian Steele who had Chris Boardman's Lotus bike this full monocoque carbon thing you know amazing multi-million pound bike that had won in Barcelona and he pegged him back and he won the race and got the golden ticket to go to Norway and he turned up in Norway with his brother-in-law as his kind of coach to hold him up at the start line and take the times and write them down and he broke the world record and he beat philippe ermineau and he beat chris boardman who was the olympic champion at the time and i was i was 16 at that point and he was my hero still is my hero now but he was he was just it was amazing to see and there's this fantastic documentary called battle of the bikes and it's about the two contrasting um approaches chris boardman with peter keen and the science yeah and uh you know the kind of white lab coats and and uh you know the scientific approach and then you had graham sitting outside on this old rusty static bike in his backyard with a washing line over his head in the pouring rain and uh and just this maverick this amazing guy who had who never just he never just accepted the status quo he always looked for ways to do or to try and question something and is this the best way to do it if not can i do it better and he went on to win he broke the world our record he did it he broke our record twice he was world pursuit champion twice throughout all of it he'd been struggling with mental illness that's right and there's there's a movie about his life called the flying scotsman played by johnny lee miller um yeah i mean literally i could talk about graham for hours he's just he's the most incredible guy and he was there two weeks ago at this this charity right we put on and it was great to catch up with him and classic graham he was still smashing everybody up the hills he's 60 something now um and he's he'd a pair of trainers on he didn't even use cycling shoes it was incredible he's um he's maybe like a kind of almost a third type of rider as we're discussing like you know the person that takes a lot of time puts a lot of energy into understanding their kit and analyzing what's going on and training things like that then the other type of rider just goes in essence you know steer me spoon feed me i'll just do whatever and then he doesn't have the team backing behind him or necessarily you know he's not gone to uni to study um sports science but intuitively he just knows somehow there's better ways to do it and feels his way towards those ways as opposed to sitting there you know lab coats and and charts and i think like and you can tell me if this is true i think anecdotally i've heard that like one of his sort of training techniques as it were would be just to go outside in his kit and sometimes you get to the garden gate and go today's not the day but kind of what that is is what like a garmin watch like i'm wearing now is trying to tell you like how are you feeling and now that might be measured with like hrv he may well have seen that his heart rate variability was was was the wrong end of the spectrum if he could be measuring that but he just listened to his body and said no today's not a good training day or today's a training day i'm going to take my fixed wheel bike out and just crank it up the hills with my was he a gardener did he do that in his spare time he had his gardening kit used to cycle around he did a lot of things yeah he just i mean he was he had always had different things on the go but you're so right he he listened to his body he wasn't just a a genius inventor and an engineer it was so people who watched that documentary back in the day and most of them were picked you know they picked up and the media certainly picked up on the the guy who built a bike from a washing machine angle what i picked up from and what i because he wasn't doing the same event as me he was doing the pursuit but so he wasn't a sprinter but what i saw was somebody pushing their body way beyond anything i'd seen before the commitment and it wasn't just on the line on the night for the medal it was as he said champions or medals are won or lost on wet tuesday afternoons and i and you saw that with the wage every single either train or don't train but don't do it half-arsed yeah you know you if you're gonna do it you've got to be fresh enough to or within you know that kind of window of fatigue if you're absolutely knackered there's no point in training because you can't train at high enough quality to get something decent out of the session so wait until you are and when you are you you give it 100 % a true 100 % effort and I saw the way you trained and I thought I'm not training that hard I didn't know it's possible to do that i need to i need to rethink my my whole philosophy of how much i commit in every effort of every single session so he inspired me massively and he's he's he's one of these guys that only won two world titles but the you know people won a lot more world a lot more had a lot more success in the sport than he did but he's left a much bigger imprint and and you You know, his stories and his achievements and the way that he did it, he was a huge hero to me, always will be.

51:09And I think his story will last, you know, outlast him. And for many, many generations to come, there'll be the story of Graeme O 'Brie, this amazing maverick who managed to succeed. And then, you know, the other part of the story, I guess, is that the position he wrote in was banned by the UCI, who were always focusing on really important issues. and then you know he then thought about it and came back with an even more efficient position so not only did he invent one position that was better than the one that had existed for over a hundred years he came back you know a year later with a new more efficient position and then everybody started copying it Chris Borbin copied it all the other the Italian team pursuit team you know there was multiple different teams and riders took on that position and had success in it as well so he was a one-off and yeah I would urge anybody listening to this afterwards to make a bookmark, go and watch The Battle of the Bikes, Chris Boardman, Graham O 'Brie.

52:04It's an amazing little documentary and it looks very vintage now. It's from back in the mid-1990s. Except for Boardman's bike still looks space age, that Lotus, which curiously, as much as all of the Peter Keane science and doing things in labs and developing this bike, curiously was actually developed by another mad, sadly passed away, maverick inventor Mike Burrows, a bloke designing recumbents in his shed, who kind of went, look, I've got a really great idea for a bike, but I can make it, but it's gonna be really expensive. And they managed to get Lotus on board to make this thing out of carbon fiber, which back in the early 90s was just like, carbon fiber, what is this?

52:42Do you ever look at a bike like that, or O 'Breeze positions on a bike and go, I wish that the UCI just left it alone and let these things develop. Because imagine how fast riders could have gone. Yeah, I kind of do. And I understand what they were saying at the time about we want it to keep cyclists to keep looking like cyclists and bikes to look like bikes. But I think life is about, you can't stop progression and you can't stop evolution of things. And well, they can, they can ban them. But I think it's a shame when you, why not? It doesn't make a difference. It doesn't diminish from Eddie Merck's success or Francesco Moser's success and their records.

53:22records are there to be broken and ever you can't stop progression and you look at the you know look at track cycling now the records are astonishingly quick and the main reason well there's two reasons for that one is the aerodynamics the understanding of aerodynamics and looking at the riding positions of the riders the sprinters now in their drop handlebar bikes are more aero than the team pursuiters were on their aero bars back in the day and the size of the gears they're the riding some of the sprinters are 65 12 sprinting on mad we used to sprint on 51 14 so we you know the cadence that we were pedaling at 150 rpm in a sprint and they're now pedaling at 110 so the understanding of efficiency and the best way to do it is always going to evolve so you can't stop it so why not allow the bikes to evolve as well and i remember seeing in person the lotus bike at the 1993 nationals in leicester as i was a junior i walked up to this bike it was on a stand a little thing saying do not touch and everyone was taking photos of it and it was it was like an alien spaceship and landed on the planet on planet earth and everybody was it was so different to anything else out there and it does feel like nothing has touched that since then if you've got the hope bikes you know the hope lotus bikes which had the wide forks and wide rear stays and And that opened up and changed the game.

54:45But I don't think anything was as big a step change as that Lotus bike, the Mike Burrows design, versus a traditional steel or aluminium, you know, diamond-shaped frame. Now, just finally, Chris, because I know your time pushed and I don't want to keep you, but I do want to ask you a couple more questions, if that's all right. Sure. One of them is contrasting. I just imagine, like, you sitting in the middle of the velodrome in Athens, so cast your mind back to, what's that, 2004, and you've gone into the Olympics as world number one in a kilo, hot favourite, you're last out, and you've got to watch as all the other riders ride, the world record get broken four times in front of you just before you're about to supposedly go on and be the best in the world at this.

55:31Compare that feeling to you're in Le Mans, you're riding as a trio, so this is fast forward to Chris being a motorsport driver, and you're staring down the barrel of an insane 24 hours of motor racing. What similarities are there between your states of mind and which one gives you even the kind of heebie-jeebies thinking about it now? Nothing will outdo the feeling of going onto the start line at an Olympic final for me, purely because that was my thing. That was what I'd worked for. that's you know i took up cycling age six watching the film et that was the moment of inspiration and that from then on cycling was the main thing in my life and i was 28 so 22 years building towards this moment and if i you know it was realistic or there was an opportunity of becoming olympic champion and being the best in the world i'd won the worlds the year before so it wasn't an an unrealistic expectation.

56:34But doing it on that one opportunity and making it count under the most extreme pressures when the goalposts had moved three times before I got on the track, you know, new world record after new world record after new world record and being able to deal with that pressure and focus on what I had to do. And no race, even London in front of a home crowd, my final Olympic appearance, even that didn't compare to that first one in Athens. The difference between that and racing at Le Mans in the 24-hour race, you are an amateur driver in a pro-am team. You have clear expectations of what you can achieve.

57:10You know that you're not the best driver in the world, so you're not trying to... You're trying to do the job that you can do. In essence, the same thing as when you're winning a gold medal, but it's just that the level of performance is a lot lower. But what I found harder at Le Mans was just it's terrifying because you have these imposter syndrome moments where you go, what on earth am I doing here? how did I end up on the start line at Le Mans I'd watched it as a kid I'd watched it as an adult I was a fan never you know remotely imagine that one day I'd be on the start line taking part in it so you kind of think how did I get here and am I is this safe and am I is this a stupid thing to do but I had three years of racing leading up to it and I'd done everything I could to be ready for it and it was an incredible experience and it was it was wonderful and scary and exciting and exhausting and i was you know i'm so glad that i had the chance to do it and every time i go back to leon now as a fan i still can't believe that i did it but but nothing will nothing will trump that feeling of the nerves and the sheer tension and using every trick in my playbook to try and focus on what i had to do and not allow those negative thoughts or anxious thoughts or distracting thoughts get into my head.

58:26I was focused on the process, nothing else. I wasn't thinking about winning the gold medal. I was thinking about how do I do the best performance? If I do the best performance, I give myself the best chance of winning. And it was Steve Peters who really helped me to do that. And he'd only just joined the team. We were still skeptical of psychologists. You know, it was back in the day when it was unusual to have a psychologist in a sports team, not the norm. So it took a bit of time to trust him and to sort of trust the process. And actually, that was the one, that was the moment where I kind of the penny dropped.

58:58I realized, this guy's incredible. Look what he's helped me achieve. But no, Athens was the moment, I think. And if I had to pick one moment in my cycling career, I think it would be that. It was a magical night. Amazing. So not winning BMX races as a 14-year-old. Well, do you know what? It's funny you should say that because when you're a kid, you assume that it goes up exponentially, the feeling of the winning and the excitement. It's very similar, the feeling of winning that first race at Falkirk BMX track on a rainy Sunday afternoon, getting that first little gold medal or little trophy. I remember, I was so excited at that time and it's the same feeling.

59:39It's just that you're a grown adult and normally most of these things, you get used to new sensations and new experiences and that the novelty kind of wears off. But when you're stepping up on the start line to see if you can put your name in the history books and win a gold medal and put yourself alongside all the people that you've admired and followed for so many years, that is a special moment and a special opportunity. And if it's not too much of a stretch of the kind of imagination, how do those feelings then compare to seeing everybody line up this September and earlier this month for Tour de Four?

1:00:13you're raising money for cancer charities and it's the second year and last year it was 3.1 million and you're already at 2.7 million for this year and you've got Laura Kenny I saw being interviewed on BBC saying this is literally the first time she's ridden a bike in any kind of anger since she's retired and Jason Kenny's there and it's a bit drizzly but everyone's turned out how does that feel to know that you've taken something which is, you know, I can't begin to imagine how horrendous all of that other stuff is for you personally, and turn that into something so incredibly positive in such a short amount of time, that must be, that must just be incredible.

1:00:56It was, and I think when you're given an incurable cancer diagnosis, you can never imagine, you can't imagine that you'll ever feel joy again, you can't imagine there'll ever be any positivity, you have this, it's just the immediate shock and horror and grief of getting that news. And yet it takes time, you can't rush it. But if you wait, and if you work hard at it, you can get to a point where you can live your life again. And cancer isn't the first thing you think about in the morning, or the last thing you think about before you go to sleep at night. And it's looking for opportunities to try and do something positive from a dark situation.

1:01:31So that's, I recognize that I had this platform that I could create an event i could hopefully help other people by raising money but also by having an event a focus for other people living with stage four to come to and to train for or to exercise or to encourage them to exercise and to turn up and to do a ride up into the hills above glasgow and back around and not just talk a good game but demonstrate that life goes on yeah 190 people with stage four cancer took part um out of the three and a half thousand wow and myself and those 190 other people we had this gold armband with the number four on it and it was the the stage four writers were the rock stars everybody whenever they were in the bunch people were cheering them on and you know giving them encouragement and it was the atmosphere and that community feel at the tour of the four was beyond anything i've experienced anywhere so i was really proud that sarah my wife and i have managed to to create this event and to do something positive from a really difficult situation and you know we're still we're still raising funds we're trying to get past that 3.1 million target i think we can do it and if anybody listening wants to donate and support the cause it's tourdeford.com and there's a donate button on there and we're raising for five main cancer charities every pound goes straight to them prostate cancer uk breast cancer now maggie's mcmillan and cure leukemia and the final thing i would say on this topic is you know i try and squeeze it in whenever I'm doing any talks now or speaking to anybody any men over the age of 40 know your risk of prostate cancer I was 47 when I was diagnosed no symptoms no warnings at all and by the first thing I knew it had a pain in my shoulder and it was secondary cancer so it spread so if you're over the age of 40 and you're male go online just google prostate cancer UK risk checker three questions and you can assess your own individual risk takes 30 seconds if you're high risk go to your gp he'll give you a blood test takes five minutes and it could save your life and is there any way you can we can kind of push for government to have nationwide screening because i know that in scotland you've launched a campaign to do it but i think am i right in saying that's partnered up with a charity so it's not necessarily pushed by the kind of scottish health so we're still looking oh yeah the way that there's you know there's other types of screening as standard to get that on the agenda because it seems bananas because i think is it one in six or one in eight men may well be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetimes.

1:03:58It's exactly that. And it's the most common cancer in England now, prostate cancer. So we're doing nothing proactive to stop so many men dying. 10 ,000 men a year find out too late that they've got prostate cancer. So we need to do something about it. The Scottish government, I've spoken to them and they're yet to do anything. So we have done this private initiative with Sir Tom Hunter, who's a philanthropist up in Scotland and Sir Chris Evans, Professor Chris Evans, who's got a business, a company that make cancer drugs. And essentially, they've gone out to major businesses in the UK and said, we're going to offer free PSA tests.

1:04:37So I think they're testing 25 ,000 men this year. And from them already, there have been hundreds who've been found to have cancer and caught it early enough, saving hundreds of lives, but also getting data and information to show that actually a screening system would make a difference and it would be effective and it would save the nhs countless millions of pounds because treating someone with cancer stage one or two it costs thousands of pounds to treating someone with stage four cancer it's hundreds of thousands of pounds so it's a false if all your if all the government are concerned about is the bottom line it's the money yeah then even on that argument they should be doing it so it's yeah it's frustrating but i'm not going to give up and we're going to keep pushing and hopefully one day there will be a screening process in this country that helps men catch it early because there's so many ways to treat it if you get it early enough it's not that big a deal but if you leave it too late there's there's nothing you can do to cure it it's just a case of managing it yeah well chris thank you so much for your time i've massively um taken up too much of it overstayed my welcome but particularly the stuff at the end there.

1:05:45Really important. I'll put some stuff in the show notes, how you can support. Tour de Four as well, back next year. 60k, 90k routes. Go and ride it, but in the meantime, support. But yeah, for now, Chris, go and do whatever it is. Whatever hat you've got to put on today, because you're a busy, busy man. Thank you so much for your time. Getting out on the bike, thankfully. I'm going to get out and get ripped up. Get out on the gravel bike. I mean, now you're talking my language. That's where it's at, gravel riding. Well, thank you so much. Absolutely. Thanks a lot. Cheers. so chris hoy ladies and gents thank you again chris for giving up your time i don't think it's revealing too much to say that these things are always done through prs and you know kind of intermediaries chris is a very busy man obviously and i was officially given 45 minutes and i stretched that out to nearly an hour and chris was exceptionally decent about it despite that biting into the gravel ride that he said he was going to go on afterwards so hope you had a really good ride after that, Chris, and that wasn't too annoying being kept on the line.

1:06:46But particularly the stuff at the end, I thought it's really important. Please, please, please do head over to ProstateCancerUK.org slash risk hyphen checker and take the 30 second test to see about your prostate cancer risk and do anything off the back of that. And something else completely unrelated, related, but not related to that. It comes up to me in my brain time and time again, And it turns out there's a phrase for it. It's a French phrase. It's called l 'esprit de l 'escalier, which I've completely murdered saying that. L 'esprit de l 'escalier, which means the spirit of the stairs or the spirit of the staircase.

1:07:22And it's that feeling of walking out of somewhere down the stairs and being like, damn, I should have said it. I should have said that thing. When that person said that thing, I should have said that thing. And when Chris was talking about why, you know, track cycling was sort of so popular, and particularly maybe he ended up being so popular. I was thinking actually afterwards, it's because they all look like bloody superheroes, isn't it? Especially Chris. Incredibly square jaw, handsome guy, big, not big, but like in the days where TT helmets didn't look absolutely ridiculous, they looked fast and slick and cool like something out of an 80s sci-fi movie, not like something out of Little Boy Peep.

1:07:59And he's a big guy as well, big up top, muscular, skin tight suit. These bikes that looked, you know, at that time, like absolute weapons again from the future and he's riding against people that look similar everyone just kind of looks like i mean you can imagine track riding happening in like a couple of millennia um on mars right that's exactly what it would look like they look like absolute superheroes that i think is what captured the public imagination when your superhero from team gb who looks like chris hoy and also sounds like such a bloody nice bloke which he is ends up winning, that's going to steal hearts and minds.

1:08:36It just looks absolutely filmic. So there you go. That's what I should have said. I'm saying it now. I'm going to leave you guys to it. I should go. I've taken up far too much of your time too. So thank you for humoring me, for listening. And like I said, at the top of the show, please do get in contact, james.spender at metropolis.co.uk with any feedback about the podcast, what you like, what you don't like, what you'd like us to do, where you'd like us to take it or maybe where you'd like us to just jog on. There we go. In your own time. Take it away. Toodaloo.