One of the hallmarks of Sir Chris Hoy's glittering career has been his ability to find the right words and the appropriate tone for every occasion, whether it be explaining away a rare defeat in front of a half-empty velodrome, fending off the notion that he may be Britain's greatest Olympian, or accepting a prestigious award at one glittering ceremony or another.

His departure from cycling was entirely as might have been expected: businesslike, relatively low-key, eloquent enough with a hint of emotion but without the faintest soupçon of grandstanding. Hoy was not looking for a platform of any kind; as so often on major occasions, he seemed almost disconcerted that so many had come to hear what he had to say. He remained a stranger to hubris, as he always had been.

The paradigm of a Hoy media moment came after the Beijing Olympic Games, when he was invited by the Scottish press to tell them what "Chris Hoy thinks of Chris Hoy now he has won three gold medals". He was dismissive then of the notion of bigging himself up, and he dealt adeptly here with the notion that his brace of gold medals in London last August might have taken him past Sir Steve Redgrave in the pantheon of British Olympians.

"It's great fun, the pub chat and the debate about who's the best pound-for -pound fighter, it's interesting, but the greatest is subjective. To me, in my subjective opinion, Sir Steve is and will be the greatest, perhaps for ever. To keep going for five consecutive Games and be at the top of your game, to me that is a far greater achievement than winning multiple golds at one Games."

"The longer your career goes on, the more you understand how much that must have taken out of him in a physically demanding sport as well. It's amazing to sit back and look at your career; when I started I never dreamt that I would have one gold medal. I remember in Sydney, getting the silver medal, being on the podium thinking I have to soak in as much as I can of this now, this could be the peak of my career. To win a medal of any colour was almost unthinkable."

The Hoy journey, and the voyage on which the sport in these shores has accompanied him and Sir Bradley Wiggins, is encapsulated there. At the start of his career in the mid-1990s, an Olympic medal for any Briton in cycling seemed exceptional; now, the standard for any cyclist at the Games is gold, in every event they contest. Hoy, more even than his fellow Sydney "veteran" Wiggins, is the man who has set that standard.

It is hard for outsiders to understand how hard Hoy has pushed his body and mind over the years but that is the background to his decision to go now, rather than clinging on in the knowledge that an adoring crowd will await him in the velodrome that bears his name in Glasgow in next year's Commonwealth Games. "I got everything out in London, every last drop," he said.

Some of his thinking about the decision to go sooner rather than later could be read between the lines. "I won't miss the way you feel in the morning, particularly after certain gym sessions that leave you with an incredible soreness for the next 48 hours when you can barely move; the physical tiredness at the end of training, the feeling the next morning when you have to get out of bed aching from the day before and the day before that, and you have to go and do it again."

The suffering is, however, a small price to pay, he says, for what he will miss: "The team, the banter, the routine, the sense of being part of a journey. When I think about where the team was to where it is now, it's been a hell of a ride. The reason you put up with [the pain] is because you know it's not just about that day in the stadium in front of thousands of people, you do it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

"It's not one moment of brilliance but the thousands of hours that no one sees apart from your coach and your team-mates. I never enjoyed the suffering, but I loved the moment you finished the session and realised you had taken a step towards that weekly goal and that was going to take you towards your monthly goal and your year's goal. I loved that feeling of progression, the little box ticked, the step taken towards where you wanted to go."

Hoy does not do media give-and-take with the bantering style – or the profanities – that is the hallmark of Wiggins, the man who has eclipsed him in the public eye as our most high-profile cyclist. But he can raise a laugh. He was, he said, "looking forward to continuing his career in Premiership refereeing" – a reference to the episode where he was confused with the referee Chris Foy, leading to a major Twitter episode.

He will continue to ride, hinting that he will be mountain biking in the Pentland Hills where he rode as a youth, while sportives such as the Etape du Tour and charity rides such as Lands End to John O'Groats may catch his fancy. He has a bike company to take up his time as well.

There will be charity work, a mentor role for the Scotland team at the Commonwealth Games, an ambassador's job in the bid for the 2018 Youth Olympics, and a few days a year acting as a mentor for Scottish Rugby Union – making him just the latest of a series of figures within cycling to develop links with the oval-ball game.

His coach, Shane Sutton, has said that he would dearly love Hoy to continue working with the Great Britain squad in some capacity, but Hoy is clearly not keen to move into coaching – partly because he does not wish to coach riders who are former team-mates, but also because he knows that the coaches, in British Cycling at least, work as hard as the athletes. But again, a mentor's role may beckon there as well.

Hoy would never have the temerity to talk of a "Hoy way", so typically he described his philosophy by citing another role model, the 2000 Sydney Olympic gold medallist Jason Queally. "The way he behaved behind the scenes was an example of what I would hope to achieve. He was a real team player, he was an individual athlete and he was successful but he sacrificed a guaranteed medal in Bordeaux in 2006 [for the team]; he mentored me in 2002 and I ended up beating him in the Commonwealth Games.

"All he was focused on in his career was being the best he could be. If someone else beat them he would shake their hand. If he was the best and he won, brilliant. If he wasn't, he could live with that as long as he did his best. That's the philosophy I've tried to have: no matter what happens as long as I've done the best I can, prepared the best I can given the circumstances. If you win, you win. If you don't win, you're disappointed but you accept it."