Sir Chris Hoy to receive BBC Sports Personality lifetime achievement award

Sir Chris Hoy, Great Britain’s most successful Olympian, is to be honoured with a lifetime achievement award at Sunday’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year in Glasgow, says BBC Sport.

During his career, the 38-year-old from Edinburgh won six Olympic gold medals, two at the Commonwealth Games, and 11 world championship titles.

His three gold medals at the Beijing Olympics – in the individual and team sprints and the Keirin – resulted in him being named BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2008.

The Scot retired last year, having taken his Olympic gold medal haul to six with wins in the team sprint and Keirin in London the previous summer.

His first Olympic success came in the Kilo at Athens in 2004, having taken silver in the team sprint in Sydney four years earlier.

He will receive his lifetime achievement award at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro on Sunday evening, with the event being held in Scotland for the first time.

The venue, which opened last year, hosted netball and gymnastics at this summer’s Commonwealth Games. The track cycling events at the Glasgow 2014, for which Hoy acted as ambassador, were held in the velodrome named after him.

Speaking of his lifetime achievement award, Hoy said: “It’s a huge honour… I never thought I’d see my name alongside the likes of Sir Steve Redgrave, David Beckham and others who’ve received this incredible honour, and it makes it even more special to be receiving the award in Scotland.”

BBC Sport director Barbara Slater added: “Sir Chris Hoy has been a tremendous ambassador for sport and continues to be an inspiration to young athletes

“It’s fantastic he is not only being recognised for his exceptional achievements, but also that it is being awarded to him in his home country.”

Sir Bradley Wiggins, winner of BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2012 after his Tour de France victory and gold medal in the time trial at the London Olympics, paid tribute to Hoy.

He said: "He is the marker for everybody else because he was, in some ways, the model athlete off the bike as well as on it.

"I think he's right up there, not only for British athletes but in terms of world athletes. I put Chris up there with the Usain Bolts of this world."