WHEN Sir Chris Hoy announced the devastating news that he has terminal prostate cancer and has only a few years to live, everyone was aghast. How could one of the greatest and most popular sporting figures of our times fall victim to this savage disease? Why had medical treatment not overcome it? And how, in the face of such a prognosis, does he remain so positive, seeming to think more about others than himself?

Cancer, as Sir Chris’s story shows, does not defer to age or fitness. Tragically, it can affect anyone, in their prime as well as in their dotage. In Hoy’s case, even though he is only 48 and super fit, it was caught too late. Who knows what the outcome would have been had it been detected five years earlier. That, no doubt, is one of the reasons why he recently spoke passionately about the need for earlier screening for prostate cancer for men with a family history of the disease.

In a BBC interview Hoy, whose grandfather and father had the condition, said: “If you’ve got family history of it like I have, if you’re over the age of 45, go and ask your doctor. Maybe people seeing this [interview] or hearing about my story – 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 save potentially millions of lives.”

Statistics show that a man with a brother or father with prostate cancer is at 2.5 times greater risk than average, that figure rising if his relative’s cancer was........

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