... was born in Nairobi in 1985, the youngest of three brothers. His parents had emigrated to Kenya from Tetbury, Gloucestershire, to run a crop farm. Chris moved to South Africa at the age of 14 to attend school there, and he took up road cycling while studying at the University of Johannesburg. He competed for Kenya at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, where he caught the eye of Team Sky coach Dave Brailsford. He turned professional in 2007, and in 2008 he joined Barloworld, a team that was based in Britain but financed from South Africa and competed in the UCI Continental Circuits (the second tier to the UCI World Tour). Two years later he joined Team Sky, and ... the rest is history. He competed for Great Britain in the 2012 Olympics, taking the bronze medal in the time trial behind Bradley Wiggins and Germany's Tony Martin. (In the road race he sank without trace, being the last but one of the 110 finishers.)
After switching his allegiance from Kenya to Great Britain, he said, "Although [in 2008] I was riding under the Kenyan flag I made it clear that I had always carried a British passport and felt British."
© Haydn Thompson 2017