BORN in Edinburgh in 1976, Sir Chris grew up in the Corstorphine area of the city and was educated at George Watson's College.
He began his university career at St Andrews in 1996, before transferring to Edinburgh University where he graduated in 1999 with an honours degree in applied sports science. His interest in cycling dated back to childhood and he first competed as a BMX racer between the ages of seven and 14. He was ranked the second-best BMX rider in Britain, and ninth in the world.
He said he first became aware of track cycling when he watched television coverage of Scottish sprinter Eddie Alexander winning a bronze medal at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
In 1994, he joined the City of Edinburgh Racing Club.
His first competitive success came with a silver medal for the team sprint at the 1999 UCI Track Cycling World Championships.
He went on to win six Olympic golds, including three in Beijing and two in London.
Why are you making commenting on HeraldScotland only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereCommments are closed on this article