NO ESCAPE FOR CHEATS

WHEN you've won four Olympic gold medals, received a knighthood, been crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year and are regarded as Britain's greatest ever cyclist, struggling to get in your car is certainly not cool.

Fighting to put on your jeans becomes decidedly chilly. But Sir Chris Hoy has had to endure both as he recovers from the worst injury of his career.

The Flying Scotsman has been pained by a huge lump on his right hip following his horrific 40mph World Cup crash in Copenhagen three months ago.

He has been to hospital five times to have a litre of fluid drained from the swelling and was unable to defend his two world titles in Poland.

But, far from cursing his luck, Britain's two-wheel gladiator is already focusing on his next big challenge - winning another three Olympic golds at the London 2012 Games when he will be 36.

"The injury has been painful," said Hoy. "There was a huge ball of fluid on my hip which collected between layers of muscle and tissue and I kept having to get it drained.

"Any exercise made it worse and anything that involved bending my hip more than 35 degrees caused me pain. The lump was that big I couldn't get my jeans on and I had trouble getting in and out of my car.

"I've had several scans and doctors advised complete rest. It's the worst injury I've ever had and the longest I've ever been off my bike in my whole career. But now it's getting better and I've just started physio.

"And you have to keep your perspective. This is not the most important year to perform. The Olympic year is the one that really counts."

Too true. In Beijing last year, Hoy won an incredible three golds to add to the gold he claimed at the 2004 Athens Games and the silver in Sydney eight years ago.

Britain's cycling team destroyed the opposition in China, winning an amazing 14 medals: Eight gold, four silver and two bronze.

"Everything went my way last year," he added. "So to get this bit of bad luck now is not the worst thing that can happen. You have to accept it."

AGONY - Chris Hoy after his 40mph crash in Copenhagen

What he can never accept, however, are the drug cheats who have tarnished his sport.

Last year's flagship Tour de France race caught another four cheats, with Spaniards Moises Duenas and Manuel Beltran, Italian Ricardo Ricco and Kazakh Dmitri Fofonov all testing positive for banned stimulants. But cycling is leading the world in the fight against the cheats.

It pioneered the 'biological passport' - a regular analysis of a competitor's blood and urine which detects when chemical ratios have been altered by illegal substances.

And the World Anti-Doping Agency have, from January, adopted cycling's stringent 'availability for testing' procedures for all other Olympic sports.

It involves athletes logging on to an Anti- Doping Administration and Management System website and listing for the testers exactly where they will be for a specified hour every day, 365 days a year.

And, under the new WADA rules, any athlete who is not available during that hour is classed as having missed a test. Three of those in an 18-month period leads to a two-year ban.

Pyschopath

On top of that, any athlete who fails to fill in the forms adequately also faces a strike-out.

Hoy, 33, has been using the ADAMS system since July 2005 and is so determined to help stop the cheats he has become an ambassador for UK Sport's anti-drugs campaign.

He insists you have to be a "pyschopath" to take drugs and declared: "I am proud of what I have achieved because I have done it fairly and squarely.

"The important thing now is drug testing is getting so sophisticated. I have raced against four or five riders who later tested positive.

"And in previous years athletes could go 'missing' for months and evade the drug testers. But now, with this new system - where they have to log their whereabouts for an hour a day, 365 days a year, nobody can escape.

"It's fantastic for the sport because we now know we are competing on a much more level playing field and you have a fair chance of winning a gold medal. If someone is going to cheat, it's going to be very difficult for them.

"Cycling has not been afraid to name and shame the drug cheats. It doesn't matter whether you are a Tour de France winner or a club rider - if you take drugs and the testers catch you the sport will name and shame you.

"It's a brave thing to do because a lot of other sports might be frightened of the repercussions.

"There has been a lot of negative publicity about cycling, so the sport is doing everything it can to eradicate the cheats."

GOLD medal hero Chris Hoy spoke to Sport Of The World after taking part in a series of commemorative hand and footprint casts (right) commissioned by The National Lottery to honour British Olympic and Paralympic Games competitors, with the aim of exhibiting them in the build-up to London 2012.

National Lottery players have raised more than £3billion for British sport at grass roots and elite level.

The National Lottery is contributing up to £2.2bn to the funding of the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

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