As a father of one, with another one on the way, I was curious to see how much being a Dad had influenced Hoy’s shift into children’s literature and whether it had impacted on the book’s content in anyway.

“I guess he [Hoy’s two-year-old son Callum] was a little bit late to the party as we’d already started the books before he was born. But what’s fun now is I’m telling him the stories, or my own version of them at least. Not actually straight from the book, but little snippets. I’ve been introducing the characters to him, so hopefully by the time he’s four or five he’ll be old enough to actually sit and read the books with me.

“The whole experience has just been a really fun thing to do, because you suddenly realise how fertile kids’ imaginations are. You know, there are no rules with kids’ books. With adults’ books there are so many things you can’t write about, and the whole approach is just much more rigid. Whereas with kids’ books, you can write about anything. You can have your main character jump on a bike, back pedal three times, and be transported to a magical kingdom. And kids are just like, ‘Yep. Yep. That sounds plausible. We’ll go with that.’ They love it,” Hoy says, before throwing in the all-important caveat that “…kids are also your toughest critic. If they don’t like something, they’ll tell you.”

“Well, I’ve got a lot of things I’m doing now. I’ve got my own range of bikes that I make, I’ve got the kids’ books, and I’ve taken up motorsports. The motorsports have kind of taken over the competitive element of my life nicely, but it’s not like the cycling days when that was my sole focus. Motorsports is just a part of my life. It’s quite a nice leveller. When you’re racing, it’s everything. But as soon as you step out the car, you can switch off from it,” says Hoy.

“I haven’t completely given up on my bike either. I still ride an average of five or six times a week anyway. Just for fun. Just to get out, and stay fit and active. I enjoy it. Cycling will always be a part of my life. It’s one of those activities that if you’re enjoying it, and want to carry on enjoying it, you can do it almost indefinitely,” he adds.

“…I never thought I was going to get a gold medal at the Olympics let alone six.”

Winner of two gold medals at London 2012, three gold medals at Beijing 2008, one gold medal at Athens 2004 and a silver medal at Sydney 2000, Hoy stands alongside track cyclist Jason Kenny as the joint most successful British Olympian in history.

As someone with a handful of swimming certificates and a Woodham Athletic FC Under 14s’ ‘Player of the Year’ trophy to their name, you might think I could easily imagine the reality of living your life as a sporting titan. But you’d be wrong. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend how surreal it must be for Sir Chris to walk around with the ‘most successful British Olympian’ tag day-in, day-out.

“It’s still so weird because when I first started and won my first Olympic medal – a silver medal in Sydney, I never thought I was going to get a gold medal at the Olympics let alone six. So to be mentioned alongside Sir Steve Redgrave, and people like that, it’s a strange one. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” Hoy says.

The first two decades of this century have seen Team GB take an iron-like grip on Olympic track cycling. But with various international rivals determined to knock us off our pedestal, how much longer can the UK’s cyclists be realistically expected to own the podium?

“It happens every four years. After the Olympics, other nations really make a huge fightback and Britain hasn’t dominated between the Olympics in the last two Olympic cycles. In those periods, the Australians and the Germans were probably stronger and had more success. But by the time the Olympics have come around, the British team have really focused on that one event. And they time it right,” say Hoy.

“There will always be other nations that come back and raise the bar,” he adds, “but that’s what sport is all about. It’d be boring if we won all the time. It would be quite nice if we did, but the point is that Britain might not dominate to the extent where we’re winning 70% of the gold medals at the Olympics. I think we’ll always be a force to be reckoned with and hopefully be in the top two or three nations at most events although, but obviously, things change.

“Every time you got on the track, there was this gladiatorial atmosphere.”

“Athletes retire. Coaches move on. It’s a constantly evolving thing but what we do have, the huge advantage we do have, is this huge interest in the sport with lots of kids coming in at the grassroots level. This doesn’t guarantee success but it does give you great potential for success in the future.”

After my time talking to Sir Chris Hoy has come to an end, I can’t help but think about how nice the symmetry would be if thirty years from now a new legend of British track cycling was explaining to some journalist over the phone that it was the fictional adventures of Hoy’s universe-hopping protagonist and his magical bike that planted the seed of their Olympic success back when they were at school.

While we wait to see whether or not this particularly fitting scenario plays out, let’s all petition to make regular screenings of E.T a part of the national curriculum.

To read the rest of Mpora’s ‘Back To School’ Issue, head here.

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