My Gadget Life – Chris Hoy

I have a bad gadget-buying habit
But I’m terrible for not wanting to read the instructions. I think I waste a lot of money buying gadgets that I never use

I’d be lost without my BlackBerry for checking my emails on the move.
It’s great being able to stay constantly in touch with people. I’m not really tempted by the iPhone – I think it’s because everyone has one. I like having a keyboard

I love my pair of Bose noise-reduction headphones.
Sometime I pop them on when they’re not even plugged into a player – I just like the peace and quiet. I also take a BT mobile broadband dongle with me so I can stay online wherever I am and, of course, an iPod for music.

Tech is a huge part of cycling.
From kit, bikes and especially to monitor performance. I have an entire team that monitors my performance – everything is recorded, stored and analysed, from my speed, power, cadence, torque heart rate etc. It’s scarily efficient technology and really helps me to perform at my very best.

I don’t use Twitter or Facebook
I don’t want to sign up and get hassled by people that I don’t want to be in touch with. I reckon I am in contact with everyone that I want to be in contact with, and I don’t feel the need to share with the world when I change my underpants.

That might change. If I do feel the urge to share every single thought with the world then maybe I’ll join Twitter.

I really like driving games
I like ones that take months to complete, like GTA and Gran Turismo. Or maybe that’s just because I’m a bit rubbish at them! They’re a really good way to occupy my time when I’m resting from training. You have to completely rest your body, and I can spend hours playing them which helps the recovery process – that’s a good excuse for playing computer games, isn’t it?

If I could invent any gadget, I’d like some sort of hard drive on which you could store your thoughts.
That way you could press pause and rewind if you had missed something. That might be a bit scary if it got into the wrong hands. You’d have to make sure that you had a PIN number for that!


Chris Hoy is supporting the launch of up to 20Mb BT Total Broadband. BT is now offering up to 20Mb broadband to give you consistently faster broadband even at peak times. For more information visit www.bt.com/broadband