Sir Chris Hoy has said his “selfless” wife, Sarra, kept her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis a secret as they dealt with his prostate cancer treatment.
Sir Chris, 48, one of Britain’s most successful Olympians, revealed last weekend that his prostate cancer, which he disclosed in February, is now stage 4, and he has “two to four years” to live.
In an extract from his memoir, All That Matters: My Toughest Race Yet, published in The Sunday Times, the track cyclist said his “selfless” wife, Sarra, had shown him unwavering support while facing “this absolute crisis in the midst of my own”.
Sarra went for a routine MRI scan a week after his cancer diagnosis after suffering a tingling sensation in her face and tongue.
Sir 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”.
She continued to support me “wholly and completely” after the scan and he thought no more of it, as her symptoms disappeared.
But he revealed his wife, who was “always so strong”, was “struggling to get the words out” when she broke the news of her diagnosis to him in December.
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With “tear-filled eyes”, she asked him if he remembered the scan and said “‘they think it might be multiple sclerosis'”.
The six-time Olympic gold medallist “immediately broke down”, he said, “distraught both by the news and the fact she’d received it without me there”.
She had known for more than a month, he writes in the memoir, saying: “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.”
MS is a chronic condition that affects the brain and spinal cord and cannot be cured, but medicines and other treatments can help alleviate symptoms that include extreme tiredness, vision problems and difficulty with walking or balance.
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Sir Chris wrote: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; Sarra, so fit and well, able and healthy, was facing this absolute crisis in the midst of my own.
Later that month, Sarra was told her condition was “very active and aggressive”, meaning she needed treatment “very quickly”.
He couldn’t understand how she “was able to take this news with such fortitude”.
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Sir Chris describes his wife as “the centre of my life”, and writes that he knew within minutes of meeting her in 2006 that “she was everything I was looking for”.
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The couple were married four years later and have two children, seven-year-old Chloe and Callum, 10.
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He said in his book: “Sarra has amazed me with all that she has faced. She has supported me and encourages me every step of the way, but rarely speaks about her own symptoms.”
On Thursday, Sarra posted on social media saying she was “completely overwhelmed” by the “kind, thoughtful and helpful messages” following her husband’s announcement and called him a “real-life superhero”.
