How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Sir Chris Hoy - ‘There’s no cure but I still find hope’

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

It was an honour to record this episode. We overuse words such as ‘hero’ and ‘inspiration’ but Sir Chris Hoy is both. Not only is he one of Great Britain’s most successful Olympic athletes (during a record-breaking career as a sprint cyclist, he won six gold medals, one silver medal, and 11 world championships) but he’s currently living with a Stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis. In September 2023, a seemingly routine trip to the doctor’s turned into a waking nightmare when he was given between two and four years to live. His beloved wife Sarra was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis a month later. And yet, these two extraordinary people say they are lucky. Listen to this episode if you want to feel joy, hear wisdom and learn how to live with love in the face of death. Sir Chris - you’re an amazing human being. Thank you for spending this precious time with me. If you or someone you love is going through a mental or physical health challenge, as Sir Chris Hoy says: you are not alone. You can call the Samaritans 24/7 on 116 123.` All That Matters by Sir Chris Hoy is out now. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Lawrence-Tickell and Matias Torres Sole Senior Producer: Selina Ream Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm here with our executive producer, Stephanie Karayuki. Hi Laleh, so good to be here. Stephanie and I, we've been talking a lot about the new twists and turns the show is taking. The team has been working really hard at hon about the new twists and turns the show is taking. The team has been working really hard at honing in on the heart of the show. Travel stories from women that make you feel something. Stories that change your perspective, that have depth, and sometimes stories that just make you laugh really hard.

A big part of Women Who Travel has always been to claim space that has traditionally been taken up by male voices. And that's still true today. And our mission moving forward with this show is to bring to life the travel experiences that you might not have heard while helping you figure out where to go next. So when you listen to Women Who Travel you not only support our show you support the vision behind it to make travel accessible and exciting for all. New episodes come out every Thursday, so make sure you follow Women Who Travel wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to How To Fail, the podcast that truly believes that in every failure, there's a

lesson that we can learn to make our life more meaningful. Before we get to the main event, I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing With Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions and offer advice on some of your failures too. Here's a bit of Sir Chris Hoy to get your wheels spinning. The aim has to be, be better than you were yesterday. That's the only thing you have to do, and then that's an actual measurable thing. If you want to send me one of your failures for us to give advice on, follow the link in the podcast notes or look out for my call-outs once a month on Instagram for quickfire questions. Thank you so, so much.

Instagram for quickfire questions. Thank you so, so much. The retired cyclist Sir Chris Hoy is one of Great Britain's most successful Olympic athletes. During a stellar career, he won six gold medals and one silver, scooped 11 world championships, and was knighted in 2008. His passion started age seven seven when growing up in Scotland he was inspired by the cycling scene in the film E.T. After graduating in Applied Sports Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1999, he competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics where his silver medal marked the beginning of a renaissance in British track cycling. So Chris retired in 2013, but not content with one impressive sporting career, he promptly took up motorsport racing, finishing the world's most demanding endurance race Le Mans 24 Hours

on his debut in 2016. An elite athlete then, by any measure. But last September, he encountered a challenge of a different magnitude when he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. His condition was terminal, and he was given between two and four years to live. In the six months following his diagnosis, Sir Chris wrote a book, All That Matters, which became an instant Sunday Times number one bestseller. Living with terminal cancer, he writes, stops you taking things for granted and makes you understand more about love because you suddenly know what it costs. It has enriched me. I love like I've never loved before. So Chris Hoy, welcome to How to Fail.

Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. It was my wife who first put your podcast in front of me many, many months ago, actually. And so when we had the chance to talk about the book, yours was very much at the top of the list. So thank you for having me. Well, thank you, Chris, and thank you, Sarah, who emerges as a real hero through the pages of your book. And first of all, I want to say your book is written so beautifully and it doesn't shy away from the savagery of what you've been through. And it also has this extraordinary hope running through it. And I wanted to end with that quote about love because it seemed to be really the most important thing to take from all

that matters. Can you tell me about love and what you've learned about love through this process? The terminal diagnosis or any serious health diagnosis that brings into focus your own mortality, it really does help you to strip away all the stuff that's not important and to focus on all that matters. You know, that was the reason we chose that title for the book. It's, you know, stepping back, looking at the situation

and realizing actually it's the people in our lives that matter. And the intensity of that love, it just, it goes to another level when you suddenly feel like it could be, it could all be ending at some point. Yeah, I think in the last year, I have a whole different perspective.

The stuff that I used to get worried about, the stuff that I used to stress about, the small stuff, you kind of look at now and you think, what was I wasting all that time for? And most of the time, the things that we worry about, the things we have anxious thoughts about, the things that wake you up at two or three o'clock in the morning, they're not gonna happen.

Yeah, writing the book, it's helped me process it all. When I started writing the book, I was in a very different place to where I am now, physically and mentally, and I believe that the writing process has helped me to get through that and now genuinely feel incredibly positive. The number of dark days are few and far between now. And yeah, I think you just kind of think I wish I could have had this perspective, you know, a few years ago and but you can't look back, you

got to look forward. As you mentioned there, a year and a bit on from your diagnosis, how are you feeling physically right now? Remarkably well. I mean, you look fantastic. Well, thank you. It's a hard one because I was still exercising fairly intensely.

I retired in 2013, so I was still riding my bike regularly. I was still lifting weights in the gym. I still had that kind of athletes mentality of pushing myself hard when I was exercising. I had maybe half an hour or an hour a day to squeeze some training in, if you can call it training. So I would push myself hard in that time, and that was just the way I did it. And therefore, when you start to pick up aches and pains,

you assume it's because you're getting a bit older and it's just the way I did it. And therefore when you start to pick up aches and pains, you assume it's because you're getting a bit older and it's just the body's way to tell you to slow down. But in reality, it was actually secondary cancers. It was tumors all over my body, which had gotten to the bones. And so that instinct to push through pain was a bad one really.

But now having had, you know, I've had chemotherapy, radiotherapy, various medication, you know, I'm not on any painkillers now, but I've got no pain, but feeling really good. Like by far the best I've felt in the last year, probably the last two years really. And as I say mentally, I've got through that initial grief and shock and horror of a diagnosis, you know, and you

realise that it's not unique. This is happening every single day around the country, around the world. Countless families are going to do exactly the same thing. So my thoughts are with them because there's no way to fast forward through it. You have to basically accept it and grind your way through and it feels like it'll never get better. But yeah, I hope that what the book was written to show that even when you don't believe it, you can find hope eventually. It takes time, but it's,

you gotta be disciplined with the way you approach things. You gotta choose to not engage with the negative, which is impossible sometimes, impossible some days. But on the whole, if you can keep leaning into your family, into your friends, the people that are there for you, your loved ones, then you can get to a point where you can laugh again, you can enjoy music, you can have fun again.

And it's, I couldn't even listen to music. It was too triggering. I couldn't, nothing was a relief. You couldn't escape it. It was just this constant thought. It was the first thing you thought about in the morning when you woke up. You dreamt about it. It consumed every waking thought and sleeping thought. So to get from that stage and glad to be here in the here and the now. That book does take you very much on that journey as a reader. And I mean this as a compliment. I had to put it down several times when I was reading it, because the emotions that you provoke are so overwhelming.

I can't even imagine what they must've been like actually to inhabit for the person going through them. And you describe the moment you got the diagnosis and sort of squatting on the floor, just not being able to breathe because there was just this boulder of grief it felt like. And then by the final chapter, what I love about the final chapter is that you talk about how Sara, your wife has started hearing you hum again. That shift, that imperceptible shift over the space of those few months to going from this just absolute shell to coming back to being myself again.

And so stage one, two, and three, there is hope that you can cure it. Stage four, you're told this is incurable, but it is treatable. Those words stick with you. In the space of a sentence, your world has changed. Everything that I had done in my sporting career mentally, the tools in your toolbox to cope with pressure

or to deal with difficult situations, at the heart of it was the notion that this isn't life and death, this is riding bikes in anti- and death. This is riding bikes in anti-clockwise circles. This is fun. And if you win or lose this race, nothing's going to change. No one's going to die. This is just basically a hobby. And that's what I always used to lean into. But here was a situation where it very much was life and death. And then that you're kind of scrabbling around, trying to find some solid ground to grab onto to think, well, how do I process this?

How do I cope with it? Incredibly lucky with the support I've got. I mean, Sarah is, well, she's a Samaritan, so she's a listener. So she's, she is an amazing listener in general, but she has the skills to kind of let you vent, to let you express your fears and not offer solutions, but just be there to take it all. But at the same time, you're realizing this isn't her talking to an anonymous person on the end of a phone. This is her husband that's talking to her. And so the strength that she showed during that time was quite incredible. And yeah, you know, I had Steve Peters, our psychologist from the cycling team.

We'll get onto him. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, he was, he has and always has been, you know, since the first time I met him has been a really important person in my life. Yeah. He was very quick to try and help me stabilize the ship. And Sarah's support is all the more extraordinary when you consider her own diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, which you reveal in the book that she kept from you for a month because she wants to protect you. And yet she seems to embody so much of what you're talking about,

that sense of being lucky. Can you explain that? Yeah. Or she had this tingling on her face, this numbness, which had been there for a while, and she'd been to the doctor and the GP and back and forth. And she found out that she has multiple sclerosis and she didn't tell me about it because for that first month, it was just, I think her logic was there's nothing that I can do or we can do at that time. She was going to receive treatment and but telling me that at that stage where I was absolutely hanging on by a thread, I think she thought this, you know, it's not going

to help in telling me the news. So yeah, I think it was late December or mid-December when she told me and that's the point where it felt like, hang on a minute, what is going on? It felt nightmarish. Even when she told me, she never had self-pity or there was no who are me or how awful this is. She was would just like this is what's happened. This is how you know I've got an appointment with the doctor for this. We're going to find out treatment options. Her strength was what kind of kept me going at that point. And the fact that she says you know she constantly reminds me how lucky we are because we both have a disease which there is a treatment for you know you could so many other things can happen where there's nothing you can do, there's nothing you can treat it with and it's going to be a very quick and you know,

a quick and sudden end. And when you have those dips, you remind yourself to hear and then now you bring yourself back to the present. You don't think too far ahead. You don't try and predict the future. You just go, well, right here, right now. When it was awful in the first few weeks, and you'd wake up in the middle of night and you'd wake up in the middle of the night or you couldn't sleep in the middle of the night, you know, it was just this feeling of, well, the kids are next door, they're warm, they're comfortable, they're sleeping, they're fine, they're safe. We are in a warm, comfortable, dry bed. We're okay. And I think that was, it was just this feeling of, can I grab on and hold tight and it will, it will settle. You'll get through the turbulence.

But yeah, it was a, it was a tough time, but reminding yourself how lucky you are, how we all, you know, how lucky all of us are. It's not about being positive and every day jumping out of bed and saying everything's great, but just trying not to engage with the negativity and choosing, you know, not choosing that, that kind of mourning, complaining, worrying, just steering clear of that. Now, your first failure pertains to cycling and it is losing at the world championships

in 2003 in Stuttgart. So you were performing the Kilo. Yes, that's right. Which no longer exists. It exists in a world championship, but not in the Olympics. Okay. So I was training for championship, but not in the Olympics. Okay. So I was training for, I was aiming for the 2004 Olympics as my first, aiming to become Olympic champion

for the first time in that event. And I'd won my first world title the year before in 2002 in Copenhagen. And I think in winning the world, so I was 26, relatively old, it was a very long and steady sort of chipping away to get to that point and became world champion. And we also won the team sprint as well in Copenhagen.

So a double world champion in 2002. Amazing, achieved a lifetime dream. Two years to go to the Olympics, it's all looking great. I had the winning formula or so I thought, the training program to so I thought this, you know, the training program to win the Worlds, all I've got to do is replicate that in 2003 and the same result will come. So I was obsessive about doing exactly the same thing as I did in 2002. I prepared for the Worlds in 2003 in Stuttgart, got to the Worlds and two things, well first of all copying exactly what I did

the previous year and second of all I reacted to the people around me. I was the last person to go in the kilo it's done in reverse order, one rider on the track at a time. It's a time trial event just you got one ride 1,000 meters as fast as you can and as I was waiting to get on the track and I was watching all the rivals, all my rivals post their times, I was reacting to their performances. So I was looking at the times they were doing, there were some incredible times that the sea level world record had been broken. And I thought I've got to change my game plan. I've got to come out the start gate like a scolded cat. I've got to get up on the time

and I've got to really attack this. And what happened was, first of all, I went around and every checkpoint you get a time split, you don't hear or see what it is, but the crowd see it. So every checkpoint as I went around, there was a massive cheer. And I remember coming around at the last lap thinking they're cheering really loudly, you know, I must be doing well here. Across the line. I looked up at the scoreboard and I was fourth. And the reason they were cheering was because my time was down on the German riders time. So they were cheering because I was failing and I didn't know that. And, you know, I reflected on that world championships and I remember thinking, well, I reacted instead of sticking to my plan

and focusing on what I needed to do and focusing on the process of trying to do the best performance, I was looking at everybody else and not focusing on myself. And second of all, I thought that if you just replicate what you did previously, you'll get the same result. You'll get the same performance, but you don't get the same result because everybody else is constantly trying to find ways to improve. And was an important lesson because I think if I'd won that year I would have absolutely have stuck with the same formula the following year going into the really

important one which was the Olympics and I would have lost there but instead I thought well you're not the best anymore there's nothing to lose. You have to change parts of this program to find a way to squeeze a few more hundreds or tenths of a second out of your performance. So yeah, it's understanding that you've got to constantly change to improve and focus on yourself. You know, it was such an important lesson. And the other thing was when you get to that age,

when you get to sort of mid to late 20s as a sprinter, whenever you, you know, that's the kind of, the optimal age is really early to mid 20s. So when you're in your late 20s, every time you lose, journalists were saying, so is this, you know, have you peaked? Is this the start of the decline? Which seems ridiculous now looking back,

but at the time you're always questioning yourself. And yeah, it was a really difficult time, which seems ridiculous now looking back, but at the time you're always questioning yourself. Yeah, it was a really difficult time, but it was the kick up the backside that I needed and ultimately led me on to success in Athens. And was it that experience that also led you to Steve Peters? Exactly that. So Steve was brought onto the team because of one rider who was looking for that kind of support and he was a really high profile rider within the team. But even with that rider being brought on for him, there was still a stigma attached to seeing a psychologist, which seems ridiculous now because every professional sports team in the world has a psychologist to help get the best out of the athletes and from the mental side of things. And if you had an injury, you go and see the physio. If you had a broken bike,

you go to the mechanic. So why would you not go to see the psychologist if you were looking to try and optimize your mental side of your performance? But there was still that stigma. So it took a few riders to go and see him. And then eventually I started to engage a little bit with him, but there was definitely a distrust or just a, I don't know, it was this fear of, I don't know what we're going to do, what are we going to talk about? Is he going to try and read my mind? Is he going to hypnotize me? All these ridiculous things. He's going to try and blame my parents. So I'm gonna lie on a leather sofa

and talk about my childhood. And it's, but actually Steve, when I first met him and once I started working with him, he's so incredibly practical, very logical, very applied. It's just really simple things and tools and ways to recognize how your brain or the default setting your brain's going to in certain situations and trying to change that and trying to move away from

reacting emotionally, being able to have a plan in certain situations, not becoming a robot and not living life and not enjoying your emotions. Emotions are great, but in certain situations, you don't want to be hijacked by your emotions. So it's recognizing A, how you want to behave and how you want to operate in certain key situations and B, having a plan for how you make that happen. LW There are two things that I find really interesting about Steve Peters' technique that I know you applied to your cancer diagnosis, that idea of controlling the controllables and the helicopter technique. Could you explain what they are and how they've helped you?

Well, the helicopter technique was something I used a lot during or leading up to London in 2012 because I felt huge pressure and huge, mainly for myself, but also externally, this was home games, way more media attention than ever before. I'd had a really successful Olympics in Beijing. So as an individual, I was high profile within the team. So there was this expectation, you have to, it's win or lose.

A silver medal is not going to be enough here. I was 36 in London, so that was perceived to be way past my best physically. So dealing with that expectation, that additional attention and pressure, Steve was like, look, you know, imagine yourself in any situation, but for me at that time, it was about, you know,

in the track center, on the day, the pressure. Imagine yourself in that situation, but for me at that time, it was about, you know, in the track center, on the day, the pressure. Imagine yourself in that situation, getting into a helicopter and just going up and up and up and looking down on the situation you're stressing about. And the higher you go, the smaller, the further away you are from that problem, but the smaller you become.

And also the more you see around you, you start seeing the buildings and the, you know, the streets around you, and then you more you see around you, you start seeing the buildings and the streets around you and then you keep going up and up and then you see the whole town or the city and you see how many people there are and you realize actually I'm a tiny, tiny part of this much, much bigger thing and my problems are insignificant

in terms of the world that's happening around us. It's really nothing at all. And to gain that perspective and to understand, you know, most of the things we worry about are genuinely pretty irrelevant, but we blow them up in our minds. They're bigger than they, or they seem bigger than they are. Controlling the controllable is just focusing on what you can genuinely control. Anything that's out with that, people's opinions or, you know you know other riders what performances they're going to do The weather the media anything anything at all. You can't control that. So so why worry about it

Focus on what you can do focus on how well you do it And focus on the process of of you doing that. Don't think about the outcome. Don't think about the fear of failure Don't think about what it might be like to win. Don't think about the outcome. Don't think about the fear of failure. Don't think about what it might be like to win. Don't think about the gold medal. Just focus on what you need to do and how you need to do it. And how has that helped you with this particular challenge of living with stage four cancer?

You know, when you have a cancer diagnosis, one of the first things you'll find is that there's so many people giving you advice. You know, eat this, don't eat this, do this, don't do that. it's one of the first things you'll find is that there's so many people giving you advice, eat this, don't eat this, do this, don't do that, go for this medicine, don't go for that medicine, a friend of mine did this and that helped, et cetera. Everybody has, it's coming from a place of kindness,

they're trying to help you, they're trying to offer you advice and support, but actually it's overwhelming and you get all this conflicting advice and conflicting information. So to have somebody like Steve who would go out there and he would try and filter through it. And obviously you've got your oncologists

and the people who this is what they do on a daily basis. They know what they're talking about, but actually it's trying to combine everything together and have a plan for you that's right for you, that optimizes everything you, that optimises everything you're doing and trying to give yourself the best possible chance to have as much time as possible. It's so interesting that so much of your cycling career was about beating the clock, racing to the end, and now you're embracing the same mindset that helps you get there, but almost slowing time down

and being in the present. I wonder if I could ask you if that mindset, has it helped you feel, this is such an odd question, but I know that you'll get it. Has it made you feel more positive about death? I genuinely haven't thought about, in the early days I thought about death a lot and that was terrifying. But then actually you sort of realize, well, it's not here yet. It's an inevitable thing for all of us. Nothing has changed. And I remember, well, there's a friend of ours who had had his cancer diagnosis a few years ago and he's doing really well now, thankfully, he's doing fantastically, but it was a scary diagnosis.

And when the doctor told him, he said, well, give it to me straight, what's the worst case scenario here? And the doctor said, the worst case scenario is you're gonna walk out of here and get hit by a bus. And he said, I'm being serious. And he said, I'm being serious. And he said, I'm being serious. This is a scary diagnosis and it's not what you want to hear. But anything can happen at any time.

None of us are going to live forever. We're not all going to live to 85 or 90 or whatever. It's about bringing it back to the here and the now. You can't live as if this is your last day. You still want to plan for tomorrow. You still want to have goals in the future. You still want to work towards something. But it's also remembering today is what counts. Today is the only thing we actually have. A good friend of mine, David Smith, I mentioned in the book, his favorite line is, you know, be where your feet are.

That's his mantra. And I've tried to be where my feet are more. You know, this is something you actively have to work on and it's not easy and it doesn't happen overnight and it's not like a switch has flicked in my head and I'm able to do it easily, but I'm working at it and I'm getting better at it. And it has helped me immeasurably.

There's absolutely no way I could have sat here six months ago and talked about all this without completely folding. I can see a difference in myself and I believe that's come from, first of all, the support around me, but mainly because I'm choosing to appreciate the here and the now. LARLEY Just finally on this failure, the thing that I find so amazing about it is that the year after this defeat in Stuttgart, you competed in Athens 2004 and you were in a situation where you watched three riders go ahead of you, each of whom broke the world record. And then what did you do, Chris? Chris McAllister Without that experience in Stuttgart,

where I got it horribly wrong and reacted to everyone around me. I don't think I would have necessarily had the concentration, the mental focus, the strength to deal with that situation. And again, it was Steve Peters who helped me. So he, about three weeks before the Athens Olympics, he sat me down and he said, just, you know, I want to pose a potential scenario to you that might happen. He said, you know, what are you gonna do

if somebody breaks the world record before you get on the track? And I said, well, I just won't think about it. So he said, okay, well, if I say to you right now, don't think about a pink elephant, what's the first thing that pops into your head? So of course this image of a pink elephant popped into my head and he had my attention.

And I said, well, what should I do then? And he said, well, you can't say you're not going to think about something because you're actively drawn towards that thought. He said you have to choose what you want to think about and that will displace the distracting thought or the negative thought or the anxious thought. So he said basically just visualize that perfect race whenever you feel anxious whenever you have any negative thoughts between now and the race itself, focus on what you need to do and what you want to do and how you're going to do it. Don't think about the outcome, just think about the

process and that will displace that distraction. And so on the night I was able to basically press play in my head on this video of how I wanted it to play out. And the race itself was so like that visualization that I'd gone through so many times before. I wasn't focusing on winning the gold medal. And I wasn't focusing on these three guys that had broken the world record because I had no control over that. All that matters and all that I can have any impact on is what I'm about to do. So that technique, that one little trick

really I believe helped me to win that gold medal. Yeah, it worked out well. Today's episode of How To Fail is brought to you by Masterclass. This season we're all looking for gifts for people who seem to have everything. And that's where Masterclass comes in. Your loved ones can learn from the best to become their best. With over 200 Masterclass instructors you can access on a smartphone, computer, smart TV or even in audio mode. There's Winning Mindset with Lewis Hamilton, a dream hair to fail guest, just putting it out there, singing with Christina Aguilera, skateboarding with Tony Hawk or producing and beat making with Timbaland, which would make the perfect

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Masterclass always has great offers during the holidays. Head over to masterclass.com slash fail for the current offer. That's up to 50% off at masterclass.com slash fail. Hello, I'm Edith Bowman and on my weekly show Soundtrack and I sit down with the world's greatest filmmakers to talk music. Whether it's a director, composer or actor, there's one thing all my guests have in common. They love the opportunity to dive deep into the magical relationship between movies and music. But don't take my word for it. You can probably tell how much in love with movie scarves I am and how much more there's left to be said. So let's definitely do this again. I'd love to do your show again.

Thanks Mr Spielberg. Soundtracking with Edith Bullman, wherever you get your podcasts. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder? That took you away from your desk or your car in traffic or your sink full of dishes? As an actor, it's very free being part of these shows. You can step in the booth and kind of be anything. Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime!

Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee-Ally Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents, The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. I literally, when I saw it, when I found out about this, to Crunchyroll presents the anime effect. It's a weekly news show. I literally, when I saw it, when I found out about this,

I literally had like a nervous breakdown in a good way. What's the best celebrity guest? I've never pirated anything, but I'll steal it if I have to. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler. Oh, it's coming back. It's coming back.

So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Your second failure is turning around halfway up the hill to the big Buddha after chemo. Yes. So you were in Thailand. Mm-hmm. You'd completed your chemotherapy.

That's right. Yeah. Tell us about the Big Buddha. I was just keen to get out on the bike. I'd been on the indoor bike every day in the gym, just doing very short, very gentle sessions, just turning my legs over. But this was the first time I was going to go out on the roads, fresh air. You know, I was going to get back to fitness

and I was really looking forward to it. I find myself at the bottom of this big hill and there's a Buddha on top of the hill. It's called the big Buddha. This big white, massive big Buddha that sits on top of this fairly high hill, about 350, 380 meters, I think it is, above sea level. And I set off trying to get to the top I thought this seems like a sensible option, you know first day back on the bike I'll ride up a

massive bloody great hill you know, I mean just come out of chemotherapy. And I was struggling, really struggling at the bottom of the hill. I thought maybe I'll settle into it. But as I got higher up the hill, it got worse. And then, you know, I was getting chased by these stray dogs and it was just, everything was just stressful. And I got halfway up and it got so steep that I literally couldn't keep going. I was just, the heart rate was at maximum.

I felt like I was just, you know, utterly deflated and I stopped and I turned around and went back down the hill. And I've never quit halfway up a hill before. I'm not a mountain climber, I'm a track cyclist, but we still did a fair bit of training on road and on hills. And it was so symbolic that I'd given up

and I just felt utterly deflated. And I came back to the hotel at breakfast. The kids were up, we were going down to get some, you know, get breakfast. Beautiful day, beautiful hotel, nobody pool, sitting, eating breakfast. But my head was down, my morale was down. And Sarah was, you know, obviously could tell

and she's, you know, what's up? And I said, oh, nothing, you know, I just didn't have a great ride. And I, you know, had to stop on this hill. And she's, oh, you know, you'll be fine. But she could tell that I wasn't. And then for the rest of the week, I tried to just get out every day, keep riding

and knowing that it wouldn't change anything physically. I'm not gonna get fit in a week. You don't change your physiology doesn't turn around in a week. But as I was, throughout the week and as I was doing more riding, I reflected back and I looked at the data on my little computer on the bike and it shows you your GPS and it shows you the route.

And I realized that on the hill to the Big Buddha, I'd stopped at the steepest part. So there was basically a hairpin that I came to and I stopped. But if I'd got around that hairpin, I would have realized the hill would have gone from a really steep gradient to a slightly less steep gradient, but I might have been able to hang in there. So it gave me just a confidence, I think, I'm going to have another go at this. I'm going to come back on the last day and see if I can get up it. So I did. And I came back and it was exactly the same. My heart rate was through the roof. I was struggling. I was suffering. It was awful. The stray dogs were barking and chasing me. And I got to that part where I gave up

and I just thought, I don't need to think about the rest of this hill. I just need to get around the corner here and it'll ease. And I got around this hairpin corner and it went from a one in five or whatever climate was to a one in six, just enough that it was bearable. And I kept going and I made it to the top and so insignificant.

There was no medals. There were no cries to cheer you. That didn't mean anything, but to me it meant everything. And ironically, it's called Mount Knackered. I mean, that is the best payoff ever. I was, I was, I was Knackered and it was, it was Mount Knackered. It was amazing.

And yeah, don't think too far ahead. Focus on right here right now can you do one more and one more minute. It's the same approach I had during chemo when I had the ice cap on my head and I was suffering with that. You don't think about the fact it could be four hours you just think can I do one more minute and if the answer is yes then you do one more minute and then you repeat that over and over again. And then before you know it, you've made it to the end and you realize, I didn't think I could do that, but I did. That mindset that you approached both to the bike ride

and to the chemo, the mindset of an elite athlete, I would love to hear a bit more about that because again, in your book, I think it's the first time I've read what the reality of chemo actually is. I mean you're very open about the fact that you're someone with a high pain threshold, you've won all of these gold medals, but chemo was one of the toughest battles you had to set that mindset to to get through it. Today people listening to this podcast may well be about to go through chemo themselves

or one of their loved ones. I don't want to scare people off. And there's so many different types of chemo, the different methods of, there's tablets, there's infusion, there's different strengths or different toxicities. You know, everybody's different and it's necessary and it's, and it does work well for me, it's worked really well, you know, so it really well, so it's important that I don't wanna put people off. In essence, chemo was difficult, but it wasn't necessarily the infusion of the medicine that was the hard part. It was this ice cap, this bloody ice cap,

which I didn't even have to wear. So essentially it's there to try and freeze the hair follicles and then minimize your hair loss or risk of losing your hair. And then you also have ice mittens and ice socks that go on to try and freeze your fingertips and your toes. And then that reduces the risk of neuropathy and losing the sense of touch in your fingers and toes.

I can't remember what the temperature of the ice cap is. It's minus 27, I think, Celsius for the hands and feet, which is pretty grim. But there's something about the ice cap is, it's minus 27, I think, Celsius for the hands and feet, which is pretty grim. But there's something about the ice cap, which it's not just the temperature, it's the tension that was strapped on and really tightened up. So it feels like your head's in a vice.

And immediately it's not just uncomfortable, it's kind of painful. And then they switch it on and this gel gets pumped through the whole cap and then out the other side. So it's kept to this, into machine, which is then refrozen back in again. So it keeps your head at this minus whatever. And as soon as it switches on, it's like,

oh my God, this is awful. And you're just trying to, right, okay, they say the first 10 minutes are the worst. So just hang in here. It's, you know, it will settle and it doesn't really, it just, it's just really uncomfortable. But the reason I did it, it wasn't,'t really, it's just really uncomfortable. But the reason I did it, it wasn't, it made, as I say, it made no difference to,

it wasn't for treating, it was purely to keep, try and keep your hair, which for two reasons. First of all, if you lose your hair suddenly, it was one of these things that we were trying to keep it out of the public eye initially. And that would have been an obvious indicator that something was up, that I was being treated for something.

But most importantly, it was Callum. So my little boy, we had a couple of friends who'd been through cancer treatment already and he'd noticed that they'd lost their hair and he was interested initially about that when it happened. And I think a little bit scared about it as well. So when we told Callum and Chloe about my diagnosis and that I was getting chemotherapy,

that was the first question he had was, are you gonna lose your hair? And it became quite a big thing for him. I think he was worried that it was gonna suddenly disappear. I'd have it in the morning as he went off to school and then he'd come back from school or I'd pick him up at school and I'd have no hair. And I said, well, there's things we can do. And so he was very

keen that I did use the ice cap and, but it was tough. It was really tough. Yeah. That was one of the lowest points, I think sitting in the chair, just feeling utterly miserable, feeling the pain of the hands and feet and the ice cap and just feeling really sorry for myself. And it was, ice cap and just feeling really sorry for myself. But at that point, again, like you're saying, the kind of sporting mindset, you have to snap out of that and you have to choose how you're going to approach it. And I thought about my uncle Andy, my great uncle Andy, who was a prisoner of war in Japan in the Second World War. Some of the horrendous things that he went through and he endured, it just made me think again, snap out of it and realize I'm sitting in a hospital

with we've got the right medicine, we've got amazing treatment, we've got amazing nurses and doctors. I've got treatment for this condition. I'm lucky to be here. I have to get through just one more minute. And then when that second's hand went round and got back to 12, one more minute.

And before you know it, there's bits within that four hour period that were, you were gripping the chair and it wasn't pleasant at all. And you were grinding your teeth, but by the end of it, the cap comes off and you're grateful that you got through it and you didn't give up. I know that this is partly why you are so passionate about early detection. And I think it's a measure of the respect and love with which you're held by this nation. That when

you chose to go public about your diagnosis, the number of men who saw a PSA test for early detection was up 700%. There's been a near eightfold increase in NHS searches for prostate cancer symptoms over the days after your diagnosis, after you went public about it. Why is this so important for you? Because I think lives can be saved. It's that simple. In this country, if you're under the age of 50 and you go to your GP and ask for a PSA test, the chances are they'll say, come back when you're 50. There's reasons for that and I understand it and I know it costs money

and I know that the tests aren't always conclusive, but it's better than nothing. And if you have, particularly if you have family history of any prostate cancer, so I had, my grandpa died from prostate cancer, my dad's had it. So it's a genetic thing for my family. So, you know, I should have tested myself earlier. I should have gone in for screening earlier. It's not by me. I'm not saying poor me or blaming anybody for my situation at all. But I just feel like you look at France and France, the age limit is 40.

Once you hit 40, then they start screening. I just feel like we could save countless lives. And also, if you catch it early, like a lot of cancers, it's actually quite treatable. But if you leave it until it's gone too far, there's nothing you can do. So it seems like an obvious solution. It's not just prostate cancer. It's just taking care of

yourself and instead of prioritizing, obviously we prioritize our families and work and other things, but put yourself on that list and make sure that you put time in your week or month or year to go and get checked out because it's it only takes, you know, it can take an hour or a few minutes. I mean a blood test takes, you know, literally a few seconds, but it could change your life. This week on This Is History In Conversation, join me, Dan Jones, for an interview with the man, the myth, the legend, Stephen Fry. We'll be talking about the impact of Greek myths on the Middle Ages

and get stuck into our favorite and least favorite heroes of legend. Aeneas is a very annoying hero. The word that's always attached to him is pious. Whatever the gods tell him to do, whatever a prophet tells him to do, he does it. Search This Is History wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast, Dinner's On Me, where I chat with some of my friends over food, like Catherine Hahn, who told me about working

with a Broadway legend on the Marvel and Disney Plus series, Agatha All Alone. I mean, it was nuts to be able to do all that, and Wigs, and Aubrey, and Patti LaPone and Aubrey and Patty LaPone. Patty the Wolf LaPone. Check out the full episode by searching Dinners on Me wherever you listen to podcasts. Your final failure, so now we're moving on to your second sporting career, is crashing the Nissan GTR into the hay bales at Goodwood 2014.

And yes, listener, I did have to read up on what this actually meant. It was a great video on YouTube. Oh, is that? I didn't even watch it. Yeah, basically. So I took up motorsport after cycling, not because I felt I had to replace cycling with anything, but I loved driving cars on track. It became a hobby of mine. I had a little track car that I took on to Alton Park at the end of every cycling season. You know, I'd do four or five track days in the off season and then I would get back to my training on the bike. But when I retired from cycling, there was an opportunity to start racing,

which I did. And then Nissan, after they'd heard about this, they then approached me and said, we'd love you to be an ambassador for the brand for this Olympic partnership for Rio. And we could give you some racing opportunities in the car. So I did a test at Silverstone and they said, we think we can get you to Le Mans in three years, which was ridiculous.

It's like saying, I don't know, it's like, we'll get you to the Olympics in three years and you've just taken up a new sport. It's, you know, the Le Mans is the, it's the highest race, the highest level you can get to as an amateur and you're racing alongside Formula One drivers, you know, the top level professional racers and it's 24 hours. It's incredibly arduous. It's for the car, for the drivers, for the whole team, the mechanics, everybody. But it's wonderful and it's an amazing historic and just iconic motorsport event. It's the biggest one out there.

So when they offered this chance to me, I was like, I don't think it's, even if it doesn't happen, at least I can try. I'll see how far along the line I can go, see how far along this journey I can go, see how far along this journey I can make and drive some great cars and have some great experiences. But whether I make it or not, I don't know. But let's go for it. So that first year I was racing in a Nissan GT3 GTR in the British GT Championship. And that's the biggest GT Championship in Europe,

straight in the deep end. And shortly after the start of that season I was at the Goodwood Festival of Speeds which is one of the biggest showcases of new cars for all the manufacturers they come down there it's one of the biggest in the world on this driveway that goes up through the estate, through the Duke of Richmond's estate and there was these these two new cars the Nissan Nismo GTR, two in the whole of the country, one of which belonged to the CEO of Nissan, Andy Palmer. And that was the one I was driving. And it's a non-competitive thing,

it's just a demonstration. You drive up the hill, it's on this really narrow track, it's not a race. There's like 100 hundred thousand people watching and there's this famous corner called Molcom, which if you wait until you see the corner before you break, it's too late, you won't make the corner. Having done it four times already throughout the week

on the Saturday afternoon, I came up to Molcom going way too fast and I saw the corner before I braked and I was like, oh no. And that was it. I was off the track. I went through four rows of hay bales, which was a record and completely smashed the car apart.

I was absolutely fine. You know, it was a road car. So it had airbags and I had my helmet on. And you know, that moment before you hit the hay bales thinking, oh my god, I've never done this before. I don't know what's going to happen in a crash. You know, time slows down and you see the barrier coming towards you and you realize that you can't do anything. The brake pedal is doing nothing. You're on the grass. You're

not slowing down. So you just brace for impact and think this is going to hurt. And thankfully it didn't. But once the dust settled, I sat there, I just thought, I don't want to come out. I don't want to get out of the car. I went, I'll happily sit here until everybody's gone home. I just can't face the embarrassment. And I was so ashamed that I just felt like people would think that I was just being an idiot and not taking it seriously. And I just trashed this beautiful car. You know, why do you let some idiot cyclist in, you know, driving these amazing cars?

And yeah, it was awful, awful. I got out the car and I gave a little wave to the crowd and just cringed for the rest of the weekend. And as I went back to the driver's club, I saw Andy Palmer walking towards me. And I was just, I'm so sorry, Andy. I'm so sorry. You know, I can't apologize enough.

He said, you know, we can replace cars. We can't replace people. You know, it's absolutely fine. And we've got some great publicity. He said, you know, it's all over social media. I was like, it's not really helping, but thanks, Andy. So I was at my lowest ebb then. And I thought, do you know what? Maybe this isn't for me. Maybe this is, you know, I've been a bit silly here trying to bite off more than I can chew, you know, this really steep learning curve to try and make it to Le Mans in three years. I was feeling the pressure to maybe just skip certain stages

and try and get into faster cars and jump up through championships too quickly. And then I went the next week, I was out to Spa for this, the next round of the British GT Championship. And Spa is one of the most fearsome tracks in the world. It's an iconic one, it's amazing, but it's terrifying. And I'd never been before and we turned up and it was a wet, wet weekend.

So the track was soaking wet. I remember just looking at this really famous part of the track called Eau Rouge. And it's this, it looks like a wall when you look at it. It's this hill that goes up, but it's a corner on a hill and I remember standing there looking at it and just thinking this is utterly terrifying, you know, what am I doing here? Maybe I need to have a rethink and I went out and basically got no practice in, there was a problem with the car, I only got about five laps in, had no confidence, everything was down, I was almost ready to pull

the plug on the whole thing. And then we had this race and it was a two driver race. So you take, you do half the race yourself. The pro driver starts the race, he jumps out, you jump in and you finish the race. And together with Wolfgang, Wolfie, we ended up coming second. We got in the podium, my first ever podium at the most terrifying track in the world. And it was just the ultimate bounce back from a complete, you know, the complete self doubt, the complete failure at Goodwood to making it onto the podium at Spa.

If you're gonna pick a track in the world to get on the podium, that would be it. It taught me not never to get too down on myself, but also never get too high. You know, always keep that perspective. You're never too far away from your fortunes turning either way. So it gave me the hope that maybe Le Mans could be a possibility, but that you're going to have ups and downs along the way. That's motorsport.

That's life. I want to do that embarrassing journalist thing where I quote what other people say about you now. So Mark Cavendish, your fellow record-breaking cyclist, has described you as a hero of a human being. Ali McCoice, the former footballer and TV pundit, has said that you're a superstar in every sense of the word. What does it feel like having those words hero, superstar, spoken about you? Yeah, it's overwhelming really. And it's hard to, I don't think you can really take them on board

because yeah, I mean, the hero, when people call you a hero, you think, oh, come on. Heroes to you are the people that you looked up to when you were growing up, and you can never see yourself in the same vein as them. I've kind of made it a rule with social media, certainly, that I try not to get too involved in praise because if you take on

the praise you've got to also take the criticism and you tend to focus on the criticism. So if you get one negative comment out of a hundred, you won't think about the 99 lovely comments, you focus on the one that was negative. So I try not to, the ego wants you to go in and read nice things about yourself, but equally I think it's not always a useful thing to do. But when it's from somebody like, you know, people that you have massive respect for, then it's a lovely thing to hear. Typically modest of you. And I said in the introduction that you were inspired to start cycling because you went to see ET, age seven. I wonder what Sir Chris Hoy, sitting here in his 40s, would say now to the seven-year-old Chris about how his life's going

to be. Well, I don't think the seven-year-old me would have been just absolutely staggered to think that I'd been able to do my passion for my whole life really. You know, I went straight from university into riding full-time. Sliding doors moments, national lottery funding started just when I finished uni, so I was able to become a full-time cyclist and not have to get a full-time job. The support along the way, everything seemed to slot into place. So when I started racing BMX, age seven, to think that would be the first step on the route towards becoming an Olympic champion, was it wasn't like it was a pipe dream.

It was just, it wasn't even a dream. It wasn't even a possibility because, you know, nobody was winning medals at that time in sprint cycling in the UK. There was no pathway. Now, if you're a teenager with the ability and talent and drive, then there is a clear stepping stone that leads you towards that ultimate goal. But back then, there wasn't. We're talking just before Christmas. I wonder how Christmas feels to you this year and

what your plans are with Sarah and the kids. Last Christmas was pretty grim to be honest it was just trying to hang on in there and try and you know live it through the kids and you know try and just we're doing it for them whereas this year it feels more normal it feels more settled again you know still looking forward to seeing if Santa's going to come down the chimney and all the presents for the kids and all the usual routine. We're just incredibly grateful that there seems to be a level of calm and stability and I don't know, peace at the moment, which is great.

Final questions for Chris. There will be people listening to this who have just received a cancer diagnosis or who are just about to start treatment and who are facing down the barrel of that dark Christmas that you experienced last year. I wonder what piece of advice you might be able to give them. That when you get a diagnosis, you feel like you've taken a step back from everything

and that you're no longer part of it. And it's terrifying. You try to predict the future. You worry about everybody, your family, your wife, your husband, your kids, your loved ones, people around you, whoever it is, but you're not alone. It's happening, sadly, it's happening every day all around the world, but you can find a place of hope. And it's, that doesn't's happening every day all around the world.

But you can find a place of hope and that doesn't mean that necessarily, a lot of people will not have, there's no cure for their situation the same way that I, there's no cure for mine. But I still find hope. It doesn't mean that the hope is that I'm gonna, I survive this because I'm not. But my hope is that I,

or my hope was and my hope has come true is that I'm back to living again. I'm back to enjoying each day because none of us know what's coming in the future. We have today and that's it. And I've been able to get back to living again which it seems so unlikely a year ago. So lean on your family, lean on your friends,

focus on what you can do, focus on what you need to do as well. But yeah, I think trying to let go of the necessary stresses and worries and just focus on the important ones and focus on everything that you can do today. And there's still a lot of life left to be lived. And you never know. You never know what's going to happen. There's these amazing stories all the time in different situations. My hope is I'm hanging in there for a few more years and then something

else will pop up, a new treatment, which might give me a few more years. None of us live forever, so make the most of today. We have today. I'll see you here this time next year, okay? It's a deal. It's a date. I think you're an incredible human. Thank you so much for making a difference. And thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. And happy Christmas. Thanks, Elizabeth. It's an absolute pleasure. We heartily recommend you follow us to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts,

Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.