Most cyclists can point to a moment of revelation when they realise what riding a bike has to offer. For six-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy, it came at the age of seven or eight, when he set off down the cycle path behind the family home in Edinburgh. "It was an old railway line they'd tarmacked over that went to the other side of Edinburgh. I was too young to go by myself, so my dad came with me and wow, it was cool, you'd pop up out of this bike path on the other side of the city and realise you'd got there under your own steam. It's a nice feeling the first time you do it."
Later in his cycling career, in his brief flirtation with mountain bike racing, Hoy would train in the Pentland hills, another place he recalls affectionately. "That was where I first went off road, out beyond Hill End where the ski slope is, due south of Edinburgh. And it was amazing. Within an hour you could be in the middle of nowhere, feeling as if you're a thousand miles from civilisation – it's an incredible spot. I used to go there whenever I could. Eventually, my dad began organising mountain bike races up there."
Although it was BMX that initially got him hooked on cycling, and track cycling where he made his name as Britain's most successful Olympian, Hoy loves mountain biking. "The feeling of escapism is greater off road. You can really get away from it all: no cars, no people." Hoy recently had to test a mountain bike he was looking at as a potential addition to his personal range of cycles, and ended up first in Cannock Chase, then in the Pentlands, reliving his youth.
"I'd forgotten how incredible it is, all the skills it takes riding singletrack, going down drop-offs, riding up hills in the granny ring. I hadn't done it for so many years and I'd really missed it." After 1993, when he last competed seriously in mountain biking, his commitment to track racing restricted him to just one or two mountain bike outings. "There was always an element of it's not specific training for the track so you don't do it; it might take away from your performance there. But now I can ride for fun, just for the sheer enjoyment."
Back in his mountain biking days, Hoy was obsessed with the technical side of the sport, as most of the fraternity were and still are. "I could tell you every item on some of those bikes, and the amount of weight you would save by putting it on – a titanium quick-release wheel skewer, a Flite saddle, latex inner tubes. It was all about getting a bike under 19 pounds, within a budget."
He can still detail, line by line, the first bike he ever built for himself when he was working part-time in a local shop.
"I trawled through the ads in the back of Cycling Weekly and bought a Cannondale second hand for £250. STI gears were just coming out, but I couldn't afford Dura Ace, which was top of the range, so I used the discount I got from the shop to get Ultegra, which was the next one down. I built my own wheels, on Mavic Open C rims, which are slightly deepened, on Dura Ace hubs, with a Flite Italia saddle, Time pedals." The bike was black, picked out in gold, and his father, David, bought a transfer for his son with Chris's name on – "I was so proud, having my name stuck on the top tube."
Not surprisingly, Hoy has enjoyed translating that slightly nerdy teenager's love of lightweight widgets into having his own bike brand. "It's what I really love doing. For each model you have to make the best possible bike you can within the budget. It's just a lot of fun. We're working on carbon bikes, kids' bikes, mountain bikes, track bikes. It's a way of keeping myself involved in cycling, because I get to ride the bikes. I try the bikes, the components, the geometry. The bikes aren't competition bikes that you'd see Mark Cavendish or Bradley Wiggins on – its about tapping into that part of the market in which people are getting back on their bikes and trying to make them something they will genuinely enjoy and take pleasure from riding."
Even as an Olympic champion, Hoy kept riding the road as well as the track, spending up to eight of the 30-plus hours a week he would spend on his bike or in the gym on the road. He worked out a way of getting out of Manchester (where he and British Cycling are based) as quickly as possible with the minimum of traffic lights along the way, and tended to end up on Cheshire Cycleway 70. "It's quiet and you feel as if you're miles away from anywhere. It's a clever route because it actually goes close to places but you hardly notice it."
Like all those of his generation, Hoy has seen the roads around him get busier in the past few years: not with motor traffic, but with a whole new breed of cyclist. "I have to pinch myself because I can genuinely remember when it was a real minority sport. No one knew about it, and the one guy in the office who was cycling to work would be almost mocked for wearing Lycra, a fluorescent top or cycle clips.
"People used to ask: 'Why would you ride a bike? It's busy, it's hard work, it rains.' They might have heard of the Tour de France but they wouldn't know about the velodrome or the Olympics. You think about how much that's changed, how much it's now in the public consciousness, how many cyclists most people can name now. But the best thing – when you're out and about anywhere, town centre or countryside – is how many people you see on bikes. For a lifelong cyclist, that's just brilliant to see."
