SIR Chris Hoy has revealed the moment he was told his ache was a tumour in a candid interview about his cancer diagnosis.
The six-time Olympic cycling champion announced last month in a Sunday Times interview that his cancer is terminal.
The 48-year-old first made public in February that he was undergoing treatment including chemotherapy.
A tumour was found in Hoy’s shoulder and a second scan found primary cancer in his prostate which has metastasised to his bones.
In his first TV interview since then, Sir Chris told BBC Breakfast’s Sally Nugent how a scan revealed it was a tumour.
He said: “It was the biggest shock of my life. I remember the feeling of just absolute horror and shock.
“I just basically walked back in a daze. I couldn’t believe the news and I was just trying to process it, I don’t remember walking.
“I just remember sort of halfway home thinking ‘where am I?’ And then I was thinking ‘how am I going to tell Sarra? What am I going to say?’.”
Sir Chris also called for a change to the current screening in England.
The NHS has no national screening program for prostate cancer, but men aged 50 and over can ask their GP for a free prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test.
“I believe that the screening for men with a strong family history of prostate cancer, should be a lot younger, a lot,” Hoy said.
“It’s logical to me why would you not just get the test a little bit earlier, catch it before you need to have any major treatment? So to me it seems a no brainer.
“Why would they not reduce the age, bring the age down, allow more men to just go in and get a blood test?”
Asked if that was something he could change, Hoy replied: “I hope so.
“I hope, well maybe not, maybe people seeing this or hearing about my story and then just by them asking their GP will create enough of a surge of interest, that people that make the decisions will go ‘you know what, we need to address this’.
“And in the long term this will actually, even from a logistical point of view would save potentially millions of lives in the long term.
“And why wouldn’t you, you know, why wouldn’t you?!”
