LONDON, Dec 1, 2008 (AFP) – Four-times Olympic champion cyclist Chris Hoy was among thousands of people stranded at Bangkok airport because of protests, it emerged Sunday.

Hoy and his girlfriend were on holiday in the country and were due to fly out of Bangkok, but the airport was shut down by anti-government protests, his agent Ricky Cowan told the Scotsman newspaper.

Drawing on contacts of Hoy’s sponsor DHL Logistics, they were able to get a flight out of Phuket instead, heading to Singapore.

In a blog on Hoy’s official website, his father David Hoy said that after it was clear no flights would be leaving Bangkok, “we started to look for options which included two-day train journeys or a 1,200-mile drive, neither of which filled Chris with joy. All local flights are fully booked for over a week”.

“Step up our good friend Guy Elliot, CEO for DHL Logistics,” he wrote, adding that Elliot put Hoy in touch with local contacts who found him a flight to Singapore within hours.

They had then found flights to Frankfurt and to Majorca, where Hoy was due to meet another sponsor on Monday.

Hoy won a gold medal at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, and left this year’s competition in Beijing with three more.

File Photo by: CorVos Pro