Turning setbacks into strategy: Sir Chris Hoy on business, health and hope

A small bike shop tucked away in the sleepy village of Knutsford near Chester might not be the kind of place you expect to find an Olympic champion. But Sir Chris Hoy is at Bikes N Gear on a business matter.

“They’re just as passionate about bikes here as I am,” says Hoy. He has a garage at home with bikes in “various states of disrepair” and says he “loves tinkering with components”, but this is still where he comes to get them serviced.

The shop is also the latest retailer to stock an invention he’s been closely involved with as an adviser and backer. Skarper is a removable, battery-powered attachment that can turn a pedal bike into an e-bike by fitting a disc brake at the back. Hoy’s local bike shop is one of the official stockists, as part of a national rollout.

Skarper was founded in 2020, with co-founder Ean Brown approaching Hoy in the very early days. Hoy says lots of people come to him with business ideas connected to cycling, but with this one, he immediately felt “a lightbulb moment”.

Although he won his sporting accolades with human pedal power, he believes e-bikes are important for society. They will encourage more people to choose bikes over cars, which is good for their personal health and the environment, he says.

There are practical benefits to e-bikes too. “I’m a professional cyclist, but I don’t necessarily want to turn up at a business meeting hot, sweaty and flustered,” says Hoy. He used shared e-bikes to get around Paris during the Olympics in 2024, he points out.

Skarper has an “eco mode” for efficient use of battery energy, or “turbo mode”, which Hoy describes as “almost a party trick”. Both are useful for pedalling up hills. Eco mode gives a range of around 50km from the built-in 240Wh battery. You can switch off the electric assistance by pedalling backwards three times.

Funnily enough, says Hoy, this is also an imaginary feature he wrote about in his children’s book series Flying Fergus, where pedalling backwards allowed the main character to travel to another world on his magic bike.

But he doesn’t think the engineers were necessarily inspired by that. The other unique selling point (USP) of Skarper is that people who love their current non-electric bike can gain the electric option without sacrificing their original one.

Current alternatives involve buying an e-bike conversion kit, which is not reversible, or simply buying a brand-new e-bike. The Skarper unit is about the size of a shoe box.

One benefit of it being detachable is that you can carry it away with you when you are out and about, so bike thieves can’t grab it.

It’s an “e-bike in the palm of your hand”, according to Uri Meirovich, chief operating officer at Skarper, who was also at the shop, teaching the mechanics how to fit the device. It takes two and a half hours to charge from mains electricity.

However, a Skarper unit is a significant investment, costing around £1,500. That makes it more expensive than a new e-bike at the lower end of the market. You can buy it on the Cycle to Work scheme for a discount, though.

Hoy is, of course, one of the UK’s most celebrated Olympians. He won six Olympic gold medals in cycling, as well as one silver medal and 25 world championship medals, including 11 golds. He was one of the stars of the 2012 London Olympics. Off the track, he has shown a keen interest in business. He will soon be relaunching Hoy Bikes, the range he unveiled in 2012 with Evans Cycles.

So, what skills and insights has Hoy been able to take from the world of Team GB Olympic training to the world of business?

“I guess if I’ve learnt any lessons from cycling and sport that I’ve applied to the world of business, it’s that it’s all about finding the right people – and you all have to buy into the same goal,” he says.

“The team that you’re working with must all believe in the same vision. And if everybody focuses on their role and their remit and does it to the best of their ability, then you come together and create great things.

“Within the British cycling team – and all the teams I’ve been part of – everybody knows what we’re aiming for and how we’re going to do it, and [each individual] understands they have an important role to play within that. In the cycling team, everybody tried to be world-class in whatever thing they did, whether they were a rider, a mechanic or a physio, or the person booking the flights in logistics.”

It’s important, he thinks, for anyone in a business to aspire to be the best in their field, to want to be world-class and to feel that their individual contribution is vital to the ultimate success of the project.

He also draws some lessons from his experience with Hoy Bikes: “You’ve always got to look at the existing market – you’ve got to learn from other companies, what they are doing right and wrong. And with kids’ bikes, there is a simple remit: you’re trying to make the lightest, highest-quality bikes you can, for a reasonable price point.”

Sport has also taught Hoy that you need the personal qualities of grit and determination to succeed. “You know, sport isn’t easy, it doesn’t just happen,” he says. “The gold medals don’t just appear out of nowhere. There are times when you doubt it, when you doubt yourself. There are days when it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out. And it’s the same in business.”

The same is sometimes true in life as well.

In 2024, Hoy revealed he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and was undergoing treatment for stage four prostate cancer. In May, he said he had entered a “bit of a stability period” in his treatment, but doctors had given him between two and four years to live.

He has thrown his energies into a new event, the Tour de 4, which was held in early September to raise awareness of stage four cancer and change perceptions of what it is like to live with a diagnosis.

The event offered four bike rides, starting at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow. Anyone affected by cancer, either directly or indirectly, could take part. The rides aimed to raise £1m for cancer charities. Of course, e-bikes were allowed.

“I was diagnosed almost two years ago,” says Hoy, “and I’m lucky that I’m still physically able. I’m still riding my bike and so I want to show that it’s possible. There are a lot of people like me in the UK, in a similar situation, so we’re creating a community of people [with this event] who still enjoy riding their bikes.”