The Sunday Times and other British newspapers have claimed that Chris Hoy will get a knighthood in the New Year?s honours list after his amazing season on the track in 2008.
The newspaper reports that Hoy has been recommended for a knighthood by a sports advisory committee to the Prime Minister after winning three gold medals on the track in the Beijing Olympics and after recently winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year
The honour will top the MBE that Hoy received after winning his first Olympic gold in Athens in 2004, and will be the first ever knighthood for a British cyclist. Hubert Opperman, the first Australian to ride the Tour de France, was knighted in 1968.
Knighthoods are only usually awarded after retirement, but Hoy is determined to race perhaps until the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. However a rare exception was jockey Sir Gordon Richards who won the Derby in 1953 soon after becoming the first ever professional jockey to be knighted.
According to the Times, double Beijing gold medal winning swimmer Rebecca Adlington has also been recommended for an OBE.
Hoy has emerged as the symbol of the success of Great Britain at the Beijing Olympics and especially as the symbol of cycling?s amazing success at the Games.
Back in September Bradley Wiggins joked that Hoy deserved a knighthood saying: "It's got to be Sir Chris, hasn't it? The guy is a legend. We've got some exceptional men and women on the team but Chris did the business. It would be a knighthood for the whole of British cycling."
It seems that the gong will now arrive with the New Year and Cycling Weekly agrees with Guardian journalist William Fotheringham who back in August called for the 32 year-old Scot to bestowed the title of Lord Hoy of Meadowbank, the site of the open air track where Hoy first crafted his track skills.
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