Interview: Sir Chris Hoy, Olympian

Hoy got his first bike at the age of six and was competing in – and winning – national BMX championships at seven. By the time he was 14, he was ranked second in Britain and ninth in the world. He won his first gold medal in Athens in 2004 but it was his achievement in Beijing in 2008 – he won golds for the keirin, the men's team sprint and men's individual sprint – which earned him a knighthood. If he wins again in London next summer, he will be the most successful British Olympian for nearly 100 years.

Hoy is unexpectedly coy about all this. He's conscious London will be his last Olympics – he'll be 36 – and he knows if he's to harness the same explosive force that secured him four gold medals, he has to pull out all the stops and concentrate on his training. He'll be doing no more interviews or public appearances until after 2012, but there's a very good reason he has agreed to do this one.

When asked by one of the major Olympic sponsors to nominate an inspirational figure to take part in the 70-day relay to carry the Olympic torch through Britain next summer, he chose his great uncle, Andy Coogan, a Second World War veteran and former champion middle-distance runner who narrowly missed selection for the 1948 Olympics.

Coogan, a promising athlete in his day, is now a sprightly 94; he admits to hanging up his running shoes for good "only about four years ago", after a lifetime coaching youngsters in his home town of Carnoustie. It may have been his fitness that saved him when many of his pals and contemporaries died in the camps but when he finally came home in 1945, weighing only six and a half stones, he was in no state to compete in the Olympics.

"Andy could easily have achieved what I have but it was taken away from him," says Hoy. "Most people would be obsessed with the 'what ifs'. And you couldn't have blamed them, But he has never shown any resentment. Instead, he devoted his life to coaching others."

Hoy grew up listening to stories of his uncle's extraordinary feats on track and field. "It was all very Chariots of Fire. These were young men in their prime running for the sheer joy of competing. And the stories really bring it home to me. In a different generation, another age, I would not have had the chances I've had."

Hoy may be about to face the greatest challenge of his life – some would say there were signs last season that his super-human powers were finally on the wane as he picked up only a silver and two bronzes in the recent world championships in the Netherlands – but he's confident, "I know when I'm on good form there's no one in the world I can't beat," he says. Then he admits this is practised fighting talk. "Athletes are some of the most insecure people on the planet."

In fact, Hoy is driven by insecurity. He looks across at his uncle, who is nodding in agreement. "It's wondering whether I can do it that forces me on," he says, and Coogan finishes his sentence. "If you knew you could do it, you'd never want to race again."

Hoy doesn't seem at ease talking about himself. He'd rather leave the talking to Coogan, who's more than happy to pick up the baton. "Of all the sportsmen I've ever met, cyclists are the nicest," he beams.

"I wouldn't disagree with you there," laughs Hoy. "It's a very social sport."

Coogan remembers pushing the cyclists off at the start of a race at Ibrox stadium in Glasgow in the 1940s. "I weighed about ten stone; these lads must have weighed 14 or 15 stone. And as you pushed, the cinders would slip away under your feet."

"We still do that at the beginning of a race," says Hoy. "I used to get my dad to do it for me, he's a big lad."

Stories tumble from Coogan and Hoy and I listen in awe. "It puts me to shame really," says Hoy. "The way Andy just went for everything. I'd be thinking, 'How would this fit in with my training programme?' Andy just ran for the sheer joy of it."

In 1940, the world's greatest middle distance runner, Sydney Wooderson, nicknamed 'the Mighty Atom' came to race in an event at Ibrox stadium in Glasgow and the best in Britain came to race against him. War was looming and Coogan had already been conscripted, but he absconded from Edinburgh's Redford Barracks, entered the race, came a close second and quietly snuck back to bed. His identity was only discovered because a photo, 'The Rangers' Mile' was published in the Glasgow Herald the next day. He has it still; a fuzzy image of three skinny men in vests – Coogan leading the field with Sydney Wooderson (who finally won) behind him. "I got ten days CB (confined to barracks)," growls Coogan. Was it worth it? "Oh yes."

Hoy was privately educated at George Watson's College in the capital and then studied sports science at Edinburgh University. "There's a mindset around success in my family," he says. Though he admits that his parents insisted he got a degree "because you can't make a living out of cycling".

He says he's not "footballer rich" but has made more than he ever imagined he could. "I've just made the most of what I've got, and the mental side of it is half the battle." Training is relentless and punishing. "It's very, very tough," he says. "Unless you're training to the point where you think you can't do more, then going over and above that each session, you're not making improvements. The only thing that's important when you're training is getting across the line first, and you're totally dedicated to achieving that."

Hoy's programme is minutely tuned so his body can adapt and recover but he still occasionally wakes up sore. "But I was like that when I was 21," he insists. "You've got to be careful you don't start blaming everything on age."

For Coogan, sport was primarily a way of keeping out of trouble. Born in the Gorbals in 1917, he learned to run fast to get away from the police, joining Maryhill Harriers at 16, a running club that didn't even have a track. "Andy regularly competed in front of 90,000 people at Ibrox," says Hoy. "The most I've competed in front of is 10,000. What must the noise have been like?"

"I never heard it," says Coogan. "I blanked it out. We were all working lads, we trained regularly but we didn't even have a track. Sport was just a hobby."

Hoy's training programme is combined with complex mathematical calculations concerning the relationship between surface area and drag – skin-tight Lycra and arm and leg waxing are de rigueur among competitors. "You have to do it. Every hair, every tiny crinkle in your kit slows you down."

Coogan vividly remembers buying his first proper pair of running shoes, second-hand. "I got them off a stall in the Barras. I said, 'See those shoes with the nails in them.' I knew what they were but they had no idea. I paid 1/6 for them and I came second in the Albion Rovers mile and I won the Ibrox mile that year. My trainer used to say, 'The way you're going, you're going to get better and better.' I was just coming into my best, but I never found out how far I could go."

Coogan was taken prisoner in Singapore by the Japanese when he was only 22. He worked in the copper mines and railways on Formosa (now Taiwan) for two years and was a prisoner in a camp in Nagasaki when the bomb dropped. "So many never made it home," he says. "There was no food, we had dysentery and beriberi, constant beatings – the Korean guards were the worst – so many lads just gave up."

He believes his mental and physical training as an athlete helped him cope with the unendurable; in Kinkaseki camp at Jinguashi, where young lads were dying one after another, he lay desperately ill on a patch of filthy floor while a Jesuit priest walked back and forth whispering, "Come on Coogan. A lap to go. You'll make it."

In Okinawa camp, he looked after the pigs, but stole the scraps to share with his friends and was beaten for it. "The pigs were thin as whippets. I've still got the marks for that."

His grasp of Japanese has not faded and neither have his memories. Dressed only in a loin cloth, he went to sleep huddled with other men for warmth and woke to find them dead or dying. He used precious energy to dig graves for his friends and buried them deep when the guards refused. Some things are too awful to recall. "So many of my friends didn't have the strength to go on. It was too hard. I forgive," he says, "but I can't forget."

When he arrived home in Glasgow, he was no more than skin and bones. There followed marriage, to Myra – they've been together 64 years – three children, Andy, Christine and Jean, and a lifetime working as a painter and decorator while training innumerable children at his local club in Carnoustie, many of whom have gone on to compete at national and international, level. It helped, he says, to see so many young people coming on. But was he angry at never competing in the Olympics himself? He fixes me with a steady gaze. "It was enough just to be alive."

The Olympic flame will be lit in Olympia, Greece, and will arrive in the UK on 18 May 2012. A relay will then begin to carry the flame through the UK, arriving at the opening ceremony on 27 July. In all, 8,000 torch-bearers, including Coogan and his nominee – athlete Ronnie Mackintosh, a double amputee – will take it in turns to carry the torch through the UK, along a route that has been designed to come within an hour of 95 per cent of the population.

Hoy is cautious about discussing his chances for 2012, but every hour of his days between now and next year will be micromanaged to make sure there aren't too many demands on him outside of training. "You train and you train and you hope you'll be selected," is all he'll say. "I need to care for my body better next year to make sure it has the best chance to recover from the training. But the standard is incredibly high and it's always a fight. The rules have changed for London – countries can now only enter one rider for each event, so there's a chance I won't be there at all."

Coogan, on the other hand, almost certainly will be. I make the mistake of offering to help him out of his chair – he bats my hand away with an arm still steely from a lifetime of running. "God willing I'll still be here next year," he says. "And it will be an honour to carry the torch."

As the national presenting partner for Scotland for the London 2012 Olympic torch relay, Bank of Scotland is bringing the torch to Scotland, starting at Castle Gate/King Street, Aberdeen, Saturday, ending at the Great Scottish Run, Glasgow Green, 4 September. For details and to nominate, visit www.bankofscotland.co.uk