--- title: "Sir Chris Hoy and HOY Bikes: from velodrome to shop floor" description: Six Olympic golds, then HOY Bikes with Evans Cycles. Why Hoy called it a project, not a product, and what that teaches a board about launches. url: https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/chris-hoy/ language: en-GB type: article author: Linus Murphy author_url: https://linusmurphy.com/about/ published: 2024-01-25 modified: 2026-11-06 --- [Peloton to boardroom](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/) # Sir Chris Hoy: six golds, then a bike with his name on the downtube By [Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/) • 11 min read United Kingdom · HOY Bikes (with Evans Cycles); Hoy Vulpine clothing · Consumer bicycles and cycling apparel ![Sir Chris Hoy at a prostate cancer roundtable](https://linusmurphy.com/images/peloton/chris-hoy.webp) ## Achievements - [Olympic team sprint gold, Athens 2004](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hoy) - [Three Olympic golds at Beijing 2008, in the keirin, team sprint and sprint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hoy) - [Olympic golds at London 2012, in the team sprint and keirin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hoy) - [BBC Sports Personality of the Year, 2008](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hoy) - [Motorsport career, including British GT and the Le Mans 24 Hours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hoy) Sir Chris Hoy’s most useful business sentence came before he had a product. In November 2012, three months after London, he announced HOY Bikes with Evans Cycles and told [BikeRadar](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/sir-chris-hoy-launches-bike-range) it was “a launch of the project and not the product”. There were no bikes in the room. Most famous founders skip that sentence. The project ran from the 2012 announcement to the 2018 children’s range and the sale of Evans later that year. What a chair or chief executive can take is how Hoy handled his name, his partner and his timing. ## What did Hoy win before he built anything? Six Olympic gold medals and a silver, plus 11 world titles on the track. By the end of London 2012 he was Britain’s most successful Olympian. [BBC Sport](https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/18903411) recorded the moment on 7 August 2012. Keirin gold, after team sprint gold earlier in the week, took him past Sir Steve Redgrave’s five golds. With a silver from Sydney 2000, he had seven Olympic medals. [BikeRadar](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/sir-chris-hoy-visits-hoy-bikes-factory-in-taiwan) lists the events behind the six golds, the team sprint, the 1km time trial and the keirin, and counts 11 world championship golds alongside them. For a board, the relevant fact is duration. His first Olympic medal and his last were 12 years apart. Track sprinting gives you one chance every four years, measured in fractions of a second, with nowhere to hide a bad block of training. That is planning under public scrutiny, and it is closer to a long capital programme than most executives assume. He was also clear about where it would end. Straight after the keirin he told the BBC: “I’m 99.9% sure I won’t be competing in Rio.” Glasgow 2014, he said, was “another question”. Keep that second answer in mind. It matters later. ### Career-to-business timeline | Year | Racing | Business | | --- | --- | --- | | 2000 | Olympic silver in Sydney | None | | 2012 (August) | Team sprint and keirin golds in London; six Olympic golds in total | None | | 2012 (November) | Still racing; Glasgow 2014 is the stated target | HOY Bikes announced with Evans Cycles after 18 months of prototyping | | 2013 (March–April) | Retirement announced in Edinburgh on 18 April | Visits the Taiwan factory producing the aluminium frames | | 2013 (June) | Retired | Seven-bike range on sale at Evans, £550 to £1,300; UK launch tour | | 2014–2015 | Retired | Hoy Vulpine clothing announced in December 2014, launched in February 2015 | | 2016 | Le Mans 24 Hours in a Nissan-powered car, 12th in class | None | | 2018 (April) | Retired | Redesigned HOY children’s range, claimed lightest in the UK | | 2018 (October) | Retired | Evans Cycles enters administration and is sold to Sports Direct | ## What was HOY Bikes, and who actually built it? HOY Bikes was a collaboration with Evans Cycles, a UK bike retailer. Hoy shaped the bikes with Evans’s design team, and Evans sold them exclusively. [The Retail Bulletin](https://www.theretailbulletin.com/general-merchandise/evans-cycles-to-launch-bike-range-with-sir-chris-hoy-28-11-2012/) set out the deal on 28 November 2012. Three road bikes and four city bikes would launch under the HOY brand in spring 2013, sold only through Evans stores and online. There were plans to add other types of bike and a limited-edition track bike. Hoy was working with the Evans design team, giving technical input on frame geometry, tubing, aesthetics and specification, and road-testing the models himself. [BikeRadar’s launch report](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/sir-chris-hoy-launches-bike-range), a day earlier, added the development arc: 18 months of prototyping and testing, with alloy, mid-range bikes expected. The deal made Hoy an ambassador for Evans in its 90th year. Nick Wilkinson, then chief executive, called the partnership “a perfect way to build on the success of the Olympics and inspire people to get into cycling.” Hoy also took advice before he started. He told BikeRadar he had spoken to [Chris Boardman, who had already turned a British track career into a bike brand](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/chris-boardman/): “Chris is a role model and has been successful in his own ventures, so it made sense for me to speak with him.” He mentioned input from the frame builder Terry Dolan as well. Then came the line I like most: “I’m 36 now and I haven’t really ever had a proper job.” It is self-deprecating, and it is accurate. A founder who knows what he does not know will ask. Hoy asked a peer who had done it, a frame builder, and a retailer with a design team and shops. He was also specific about the customer. “I want to reach first timers, experienced riders and reborn bikers,” he said. A sprinter’s first range was mostly city bikes. That is a founder designing for people who will never be him, which is harder than it sounds. ## Why did he call it a project and not a product? Because it was true: the bikes were not ready, and he said so. The same launch also carried a forecast about his racing that did not hold, and that contrast is the more useful part for a board. At the November 2012 launch Hoy was firm on two points. On the product: “I have to make it clear this a launch of the project and not the product.” On his career: “I have to stress this does not herald the end of my career. The intention remains to train and race the Commonwealth Games at my own track in Glasgow in 2014.” Five months later he retired. [BBC Sport](https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/22205804) reported the announcement at Murrayfield in Edinburgh on 18 April 2013. He was 37, his training since London had not produced the results he needed, and he would not ride Glasgow 2014 in the velodrome named after him. He had reached the decision on a two-month holiday. I do not read that as a broken promise. He called it an intention, and intentions change when the evidence changes. The point is the difference between his two statements. One described the present state of the work, accurately. The other was a forecast, and forecasts move. In a board pack, the expensive sentences are forecasts written as facts. Hoy’s launch kept the two apart, which is rarer than it should be. If you want a working method for that, start with [goal setting that separates the plan from the promise](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/vision-to-execution/goal-setting-successfully/): an owner, a measure and a date for each goal, and an honest label on anything that is still a hope. ## How did the bikes get from prototype to shop floor? Through a factory in Taiwan, a staged reveal and a deliberate decision not to rush. The range went on sale in June 2013, later than it could have. In March 2013 Hoy visited the factory in Taiwan where the frames were being produced in aluminium, as [BikeRadar reported on 17 April 2013](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/sir-chris-hoy-visits-hoy-bikes-factory-in-taiwan), the day before his retirement. His hands-on involvement had led to several alterations to the early sample frames, and he said he was impressed by the factory’s quality control. “It’s a childhood dream to have not just your name on the down tube but your own bike,” he said. A track bike and two children’s models were expected that autumn, and a carbon road bike later. [road.cc published the full range on 4 June 2013](https://road.cc/content/news/84865-hoy-bikes-initial-range-launch-tour-announced). There were two alloy frames. The Shizuoka city bike came in four builds from £550 to £900. The Sa Calobra road bike ran from £850 to £1,300. Track and children’s bikes were due later in the year, and a launch tour was set for 17 to 22 June. The piece also mentions a write-up by James Olsen, an Evans designer, on working with Hoy. The most useful document in the file is [BikeRadar’s interview from that tour](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/chris-hoy-delayed-hoy-bikes-until-after-london-olympics), published on 20 June 2013. Hoy said: “We could have rushed it through and got them out before the Olympics, which would have been the short term, financially successful thing to do, but I wanted to be able to commit to it the way that I have done. I’ve got involved at every single stage and we’ve got a product that I’m really proud of.” The same report says Evans had brought “a few thousand” HOY bikes into the country, and that the early objective was customer reviews rather than volume targets. That was Evans’s stated goal, not Hoy’s alone, but the two choices fit together. This is the section I would put in front of a board. Two decisions were made on purpose. First, give up the easy launch window to protect the founder’s involvement. Second, judge the first season on what customers say before judging it on units sold. Both buy learning before scale. The common alternative is the reverse: lock the date to the publicity and treat feedback as something to collect after the volume target is hit. ## What did he add to the brand after the first range? Clothing and children’s bikes, plus a separate season of motor racing. The clothing and the children’s range extended HOY; Le Mans was a personal project. [BikeRadar announced Hoy Vulpine on 8 December 2014](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/hoy-vulpine-cycling-clothing-brand-revealed): a clothing collaboration between Hoy Bikes and Vulpine, covering performance road, commuting and casual lines in men’s and women’s versions. It was to launch at the London Bike Show on 12 February 2015 and sell through Evans and Vulpine’s own website. Bib shorts were priced at £79.99. Nick Hussey, Vulpine’s founder, set the terms in one sentence: “I said from the beginning I wanted to create a new brand and an innovative but classic new range, not just plonk a famous person’s logo on some stuff.” Hoy said: “I love the design process, with both the bikes and the clothing.” That is the same position he took in 2012. The name opens the door; the work has to be in the product. The children’s bikes followed through on the 2012 launch, where he had said a children’s range was possible. [In April 2018 Evans released a redesigned HOY children’s range](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/hoy-bikes-2018-kids-range): the Bonaly, a rigid mountain bike, and the Meadowmill, a drop-bar bike, in 16-, 20-, 24- and 26-inch wheel sizes. Evans claimed they were the lightest children’s bikes in the UK and pitched them against Islabikes and Frog. The Bonaly 16 weighed 5.95kg and cost £260. Le Mans sits outside the brand. In June 2016 Hoy finished the 24-hour race on his debut, 12th in class in a 60-car field, driving a Nissan-powered Ligier LMP2 for Algarve Pro Racing, as [BBC Sport reported](https://www.bbc.com/sport/motorsport/36572186). He was frank about the limits: “As we know, racing costs money, but I’d love to come back and race again.” I include it because it shows how he approached a new discipline. The BBC describes him being thrown in at the deep end with a stint of 2 hours 40 minutes. He accepted the funding reality and described the result for what it was. ## What happened when the retail partner ran into trouble? Evans Cycles went into administration in October 2018 and was sold to Sports Direct. The partnership that let Hoy launch without his own shops also tied his brand to someone else’s balance sheet. [BBC News reported the deal on 30 October 2018](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46037259). Evans had 62 shops and 1,300 staff, and Mike Ashley said only half the stores were likely to stay open. The joint administrator blamed a difficult year, including a cold snap and a lack of cash to invest in stores and online. I could not find a public statement that set out what the sale meant for HOY Bikes: its terms, its volumes or its future. I am not going to guess. Nor could I find a reliable revenue figure for the brand in any year. What I can say is structural. An exclusive channel gives you reach on day one, and that same exclusivity is your single point of failure. Compare [Greg LeMond, whose name sat on bikes a much larger partner built and sold](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/greg-lemond/). The details differ, but the question a board should ask is the same. If the partner is sold, restructured or loses interest, who owns the trademark, the designs, the tooling and the customer relationships? Ask it while the partnership is healthy, because nobody asks it calmly once a sale is under way. ## What transfers from Hoy’s career to running an organisation, and what does not? The precision transfers: say exactly where the work stands, and stay involved at every stage. The medal does not: it opens the door, but the customer in the shop judges the bike. What transfers: - **Accurate status reports.** “Project, not product” is a status report, and it was correct. Most damage in organisations comes from status reports that are a stage ahead of reality. - **Involvement in the detail.** The factory visit and the altered sample frames show a founder in the work, not just on the poster. - **Patience with timing.** A sprinter is trained to wait for the right moment. Hoy waited for the bikes rather than the Olympic publicity. What does not transfer: - **The authority of the result.** Six golds earn a meeting with a retailer. They do not earn a sale to a commuter who has never watched a keirin. - **A single, fixed peak.** A Games has one date. A business has seasons, cash cycles and a partner’s financial year, all moving at once. - **Control of the system.** On the track, Hoy’s team was built around his performance. In retail, his brand sat inside a partner’s business, and he did not control what happened to it. If you are coming off a championship and someone wants your name on a product next quarter, Hoy is a useful brake. It is the transition I work on in [my coaching for athletes moving into business](https://linusmurphy.com/services/from-elite-sport-to-the-boardroom/). I raced as a junior in Ireland, not at the Olympics, but the question is the same at every level: is the medal doing the work, or is the product? The other riders in [From the peloton to the boardroom](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/) show the same test from different angles. What leaders can take from this - Say in public whether you are launching a project or a product, and keep the two apart. - Label forecasts as forecasts. Hoy’s product statement held; his racing plan did not. - Give up early revenue if it buys you involvement at every stage. - Measure a first season on customer reviews before you measure it on units. - A partner’s shops are a channel, not a guarantee. Know what happens if the partner is sold. ## Questions I am asked **Did Chris Hoy manufacture the HOY bikes himself?** No. He worked with Evans Cycles’ design team, and the frames were produced in aluminium at a factory in Taiwan. Hoy gave technical input on frame geometry, tubing, aesthetics and specification, and road-tested the models himself. **What did Hoy say when he announced HOY Bikes?** He told BikeRadar in November 2012: “I have to make it clear this a launch of the project and not the product.” There were no bikes at the launch. **When did HOY bikes go on sale, and at what price?** In June 2013. The first range was seven bikes, four Shizuoka city models and three Sa Calobra road models, priced from £550 to £1,300 and sold through Evans Cycles stores and online. **Why did Hoy delay the bikes until after London 2012?** He said the bikes could have been rushed out before the Games, which would have been the short-term, financially successful option, but he wanted to be involved at every stage. He chose commitment over an earlier launch. **Did the HOY brand go beyond adult bikes?** Yes. Hoy Vulpine clothing was announced in December 2014 and launched in February 2015, and Evans released a redesigned HOY children’s range in April 2018 that it claimed was the lightest in the UK. **What happened to Evans Cycles, HOY’s retail partner?** Evans Cycles went into administration in October 2018 and was sold to Sports Direct. I found no public account of what the sale meant for HOY Bikes’ terms or volumes. ## Sources 1. [Sir Chris Hoy wins sixth Olympic gold medal with keirin victory](https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/18903411) — BBC Sport, 7 August 2012 2. [Sir Chris Hoy launches bike range](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/sir-chris-hoy-launches-bike-range) — BikeRadar, 27 November 2012 3. [Evans Cycles to launch bike range with Sir Chris Hoy](https://www.theretailbulletin.com/general-merchandise/evans-cycles-to-launch-bike-range-with-sir-chris-hoy-28-11-2012/) — Retail Bulletin, 28 November 2012 4. [Sir Chris Hoy visits HOY Bikes factory in Taiwan](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/sir-chris-hoy-visits-hoy-bikes-factory-in-taiwan) — BikeRadar, 17 April 2013 5. [Sir Chris Hoy retires, assured of his place in British sporting history](https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/22205804) — BBC Sport, 18 April 2013 6. [HOY Bikes initial range + launch tour announced](https://road.cc/content/news/84865-hoy-bikes-initial-range-launch-tour-announced) — road.cc, 4 June 2013 7. [Chris Hoy delayed HOY Bikes until after London Olympics](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/chris-hoy-delayed-hoy-bikes-until-after-london-olympics) — BikeRadar, 20 June 2013 8. [Hoy Vulpine cycling clothing brand revealed](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/hoy-vulpine-cycling-clothing-brand-revealed) — BikeRadar, 8 December 2014 9. [Chris Hoy joy after 'amazing' Le Mans 24 Hours debut](https://www.bbc.com/sport/motorsport/36572186) — BBC Sport, 19 June 2016 10. [HOY Bikes 2018 kid's range](https://www.bikeradar.com/news/hoy-bikes-2018-kids-range) — BikeRadar, 24 April 2018 11. [Sports Direct to close Evans Cycles stores in rescue deal](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46037259) — BBC News, 30 October 2018 ![Portrait of Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/images/portraits/linus-headshot.jpg) **[Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/)** Elite executive coach [Book a 30-minute strategy call](https://calendly.com/linusmurphy-coaching/30min) Other riders: [Eddy Merckx](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/eddy-merckx/); [Greg LeMond](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/greg-lemond/); [Sean Kelly](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/sean-kelly/); [Chris Boardman](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/chris-boardman/); [Alberto Contador](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/alberto-contador/); [Fabian Cancellara](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/fabian-cancellara/); [Tom Boonen](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/tom-boonen/); [Jonathan Vaughters](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/jonathan-vaughters/); [Pat McQuaid](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/pat-mcquaid/). ## The jersey is not the strategy If you raced at a serious level and now hold a chair — or you are about to — I will work the identity and the operating system. 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