Take one British track star.

Add a sprinkle of gold medals in World Championships, European Championships, Commonwealth Games, and, the prize of the bunch, the Olympic Games.

Mix in a solid run through the current Worlds, and the push for selection for Beijing 2008, and what do you get?

The owner of some of the biggest thighs in sport: Chris Hoy.

And, as it happens, a very nervous interviewer in the face of such achievement. But I need not have worried as Chris quickly strikes you as someone who really does love cycling and is interested in more than just sprinting round a velodrome very very quickly.

But before we get on to cycling in the wider world I have to find out how things are going on the track. Chris had to pull out of the Rotterdam Six Day on 6th January when leading comfortably in the sprint competition, with a mystery virus laying him low for the next two weeks. I'm speaking to him another week or so on, and he's just had his first full-on training session since Rotterdam.

Two weeks laid up off the bike is hard enough for any regular cyclist, and daily commuters will know how difficult that first ride back to work is. Add in the expected high performance levels of a top athlete and that first training session must have been as difficult as any he's ridden. But hving concentrated on riding on the track since 1994 he's been there, seen it, got the t-shirt and still won the medals.