Saddled off to another planet

ET-inspired cyclist Chris Hoy has pushed himself beyond his own limitations.

Chris Hoy of Britain is out on his own because he finds fulfillment in competing with himself rather than with his competitors.

The teenaged Nick Faldo was moved to take up golf after happening upon television coverage of the 1971 Masters tournament while idly channel-hopping. Andy Murray queued outside Wimbledon as a six-year-old in the (vain, as it turned out) hope of securing Andre Agassis autograph. As a small lad on the terracing at Goodison, Wayne Rooney idolised Evertons Swedish winger, Anders Limpar. Every hero, it seems, needs a hero.

So which cyclist can claim credit for capturing the youthful imagination of Chris Hoy? "I don't know if it makes it a more romantic tale or not but the cyclist who made the biggest impact on me was ET", reveals Hoy, who was a spellbound laddie of six sitting in the stalls of his local cinema when Steven Spielbergs loveable alien cycled through the skies in 1982. "I loved all the BMX scenes the car chase with Elliot and ET wrapped up in a blanket in the front basket was fantastic so the following weekend I went on and on at my dad until he agreed to take me to the local BMX track at Danderhall. They were all having such terrific fun that I was hooked and it just spiralled from there."

When the time came for Hoy to put away his BMX in 1991 at the age of 14, he had competed across the length and breadth of Europe, become Scotland's No 1, the British No 2, the European No 5 and the world No 9. Even so, it is a giant step from bunny-hops to the top of Olympic podium in Athens where he won his first gold medal in the 1km track time trial four years ago. Having added further golds in the individual and team sprints plus the keirin, Hoy will almost certainly be pronounced "Sir Chris" by the Queen on his return to the UK.

"I suppose my interest in track cycling was sparked when the Commonwealth Games came to Edinburgh in 1986 and I saw the velodrome for the first time on television. I can still remember watching Eddie Alexander win the bronze medal ride-off for Scotland which was really exciting. I didn't experience an epiphany or anything like that; I certainly didn't think to myself '...one day Ill ride on a track like that and win a gold medal' but it did have a certain appeal which is why, I suppose, I eventually swapped my BMX for a racing bike."

We can but imagine the agony Hoy puts himself through in his quest for glory, every training session leaving him "feeling like death" for up to half-an-hour sprawled out on the floor. "I always find it hard to describe just how intense the pain is to someone who's never experienced the feeling. It's like climbing into a bath full of acid, I suppose. You think its never going to end but gradually the searing agony does begin to wear off. You could always slacken off, of course, but you won't win medals of any colour that way. The more it hurts, the faster you go, thats the sprint cyclists' mantra. To me, the great challenge of cycling is not in beating other people but lies in discovering exactly how far I can push myself. As soon as I became Scottish champion, I wanted to be the British champion, then European, then world, then the ultimate the Olympic champion. Every time I achieved an ambition, I put the bar on a higher level."

At 32, he remains one of the fittest men on the planet but how much longer can he continue plunging into that acid bath? "Well, under normal circumstances, this might just have been my last Olympics but how can I cycle off into the sunset when London 2012 beckons?" And what of his liking for a curry washed down with a beer or two? "You've got to have a balance in your lifestyle. Being happy is the most important thing in life whether you're an architect or an athlete. If you're happy when you're in the saddle then it will show up in everything you do. But, yes, although you need to treat yourself occasionally, by the time I arrived in Beijing I hadn't touched alcohol or an Indian takeaway for maybe five months or more. I didn't deny myself something if I really wanted it if I deserved it and if it wasn't going to affect my training but this is the Olympics were talking about and I did everything I possibly could to prepare in the best manner possible. The last thing I wanted was to find myself standing with a silver round my neck and thinking, Maybe if I hadn't gone out that one night, I wouldn't have been second."

There are nine million bicycles in Beijing, thats a fact. And Chris Hoy was aboard the swiftest and that's another fact. @email:[e-mail]