Racing Through the Dark: The Fall and Rise of David Millar Read online

  RACING

  THROUGH

  THE DARK

  THE FALL AND RISE OF

  DAVID MILLAR

  DAVID MILLAR

  IN COLLABORATION WITH

  JEREMY WHITTLE

  To the love of three women, my mother Avril, my sister Frances, and my wife Nicole. Thank you for being so kind.

  And the peloton, I treasure the small amount of time I have left with you, even though you can be so cruel.

  ‘It is very difficult to know people . . . For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can’t come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them.’

  W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge, 1943

  ‘The man is greater than his victories and defeats. The man is worth more than the cyclist. In the champion, beats the heart of a boy, a heart that needs normality and that cannot be sacrificed at the altar of exploitation.’

  Bishop Antonio Lanfranchi’s eulogy at the funeral of

  Marco Pantani

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword by David Brailsford, CBE

  Biarritz, 2004

  Barcelona, 2009

  1. My Early Years

  2. The Mess

  3. Flying Ball Bicycles

  4. Chasing a Dream

  5. ‘Quoi?’

  6. The Professionals

  7. Childhood’s End

  8. Tour de Dopage

  9. The VDB Show

  10. 19:03 Millar Time

  11. La Vie en Jaune

  12. The Fall of Dunkirk

  13. 2001: An Odyssey Begins

  14. La Vida Dopado

  15. My Personal Jesus

  16. Chains and Rainbows

  17. Game Over

  18. Côte des Basques

  19. Judge Dread

  20. Shaken, Not Stirred

  Terry Across the Mersey

  21. Life in the High Peak

  22. La Roue Tourne

  23. Time Trials and Tribulations

  July 2007

  24. The Persuader

  25. Keeping the Faith

  July 2010

  26. Dave the Brave

  List of Illustrations

  Index

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  JEREMY ‘JUDGE’ WHITTLE and DAVID ‘KAISER’ LUXTON, without whom there would be no book, you always believed in it; thank you for teaching me how to do it and doing it when I didn’t learn. IAN ‘PRIEST’ PREECE who has been a wonderfully patient and skillful editor, thanks for putting up with my ‘naivety’ and allowing me to create the book I wanted.

  The photographers: GRAHAM WATSON, to whom I will always be ‘The Junior’; you’ve seen more of me race than anyone else, and have seen my ups and downs far closer than anybody else, thanks for giving me the memories. TIM DE WAELE, for his generosity and gift of being in the right place at the right time, which has created some of my favourite photographs. BRUNO BADE, from the 1997 Tour de L’Avenir prologue to the 2010 Chrono des Nations, thank you for scouring your archives. TIMM KÖLLN, the Catalan German, kudos for creating the peloton book and thank you for the photographic epilogue to this book. CHRIS MACPHERSON, our man in LA, thanks for capturing that Californian moment and for that drink in that random bar. CAMILLE ‘THE CHRONICLER’ MCMILLAN, legend.

  Cycling allows me to meet some interesting people. KADIR GUIREY is one of them, and through him I met NADAV KANDER. Nadav, thank you for creating the cover portrait. I thought I had it in my head. Evidently I didn’t, you did. Look forward to cycling together in the future, with the occasional stop for chicken soup and heartfelt chat.

  To the esteemed members of Velo Club Rocacorba, thank you for putting up with your president’s folly, and offering your help and advice when it came to the book. There is no opinion I value higher than your 51.

  My cycling team, SLIPSTREAM, more commonly now known as TEAM GARMIN. In particular DOUG ELLIS, who believed in us and made it possible for us to achieve what nobody else thought possible.

  My wife, NICOLE MILLAR, who watched me turn into a Howard Hughes-like figure while writing this book. I may have spent the off-season at home, but I wasn’t really there; thank you for taking me out and ‘airing’ me on occasions. And for not getting annoyed when I couldn’t remove my head from my hands at the end of the kitchen table, oblivious to anything beyond the screen in front of me. You are an angel.

  FOREWORD

  Life is about making decisions and my relationship with David Millar has informed some of the toughest and most critical decisions in my career. Looking back, his experience has also been pivotal in fuelling my passionate belief in clean sport.

  I first crossed paths with David in 2002 at the World Road Championships in Belgium. I was working as Performance Director to Team GB and he was riding for the British team. It was clear from the outset that he was different to any other bike rider I’d met before. Hugely talented, ambitious and extrovert, Dave was a thoroughbred.

  He was intelligent and strong-willed, yet also very vulnerable. It is rare for me to mix personal with professional, but we got on immediately and he is one of the few riders that I have also become close friends with.

  Dave was already clearly frustrated with the ‘old school’ thinking of the European scene. We talked about working together, developing new ways of thinking about racing and equipment, and about taking those ideas into Europe. I knew that with the right environment he could go on to great things.

  Yet in hindsight, I can look back and see that there were nagging worries. Dave was something of a wild child, living life to the full, lacking the kind of mentoring that he needed at the time. I knew he had doubts about the team that he was in, that he was under a lot of pressure, that some aspects of his lifestyle were extreme, but I didn’t know how far that extreme lifestyle had gone, or that there was another side to his life that he couldn’t share.

  I had just come back to Biarritz with him, after watching him race in the build-up to the Athens Olympics, when it all came tumbling down. I looked on in horror and disbelief as the French police arrested him, just as we settled down to dinner in one of his favourite restaurants in Biarritz. It was a shocking moment, something I never want to experience again. Only then, did I begin to understand his secret life and how deeply ashamed he was of betraying his ideals and his family and friends.

  Dave’s arrest put me in a difficult situation. I was advised, in no uncertain terms, to leave as quickly as possible, to ensure that British Cycling was not tarnished by scandal. Ultimately though, I had nothing to hide and had done nothing wrong. I was warned that it could be damaging to my reputation but I felt that I had a duty of care to Dave. I decided that the right thing to do was to stay.

  He was in custody for seventy-two hours. The French police were brutal and very aggressive. I was interrogated for almost five hours, but they finally completely acknowledged that I had no involvement at all. I waited until Dave was released, exiting through the back door of the police station to avoid the media. Then I told him to tell me everything.

  Over the next few days, as we talked openly about what he had done and what he had been through, the murky world of doping – something I had never encountered – became real. It opened my eye
s as I learned how the culture of doping had poisoned his life. It was a steep learning curve for me, but his experience has given me valuable insight and helped me to further develop the strong ethical values that are now the foundation for Team GB and Team SKY. I have seen first hand how doping can almost wreck an athlete’s life – I am determined it will not happen to any athlete in my charge.

  Dave and I came close to working together a couple of years ago, when Team SKY was being developed. The team would have benefited from his racing knowledge, from his performances and from his experience as a captain on the road. In the end, however, the premise of Team SKY, emphatically founded on creating a team that exemplifies clean sport and that has a zero tolerance on employing anybody with any doping history, made it impossible for him to come to the team.

  I am convinced Dave has learned his lesson. Since his comeback, he’s become a reformed character, a voluble contributor to the anti-doping debate through his work with Garmin-Slipstream, UK Sport and WADA. More remarkably, his passion for cycling is undimmed, despite everything he went through. It’s very clear to anybody who knows him that he will always love riding his bike. That alone probably tells you more about who he really is, than any number of speeches.

  Most importantly, Dave’s story reveals what I have long believed – that, in the wrong environment, under the wrong influences, even people with the greatest integrity can make the wrong decisions. Although the culture of doping in sport is often depicted as black and white, it can be insidious and subtle; on the one hand, it exploits the vulnerable and pressurised athlete, on the other, it enables the cynical to clinically cheat. That’s why the David Millar story is so valuable and so instructive to all those who care about ethics in sport.

  David Brailsford, CBE

  Performance Director, British Cycling and Principal, Team SKY

  Manchester, May 2011

  22 JUNE 2004, BIARRITZ

  It is early morning.

  I have been dozing. I open my eyes.

  For a moment, I don’t know where I am.

  Then I remember the night before, the hands on my shoulders, pushing me, shoving me, the rage and the abuse, my heart racing, my palms sweating.

  And then, my guts in sudden freefall, I recognise where I am, the bare walls, the rough blanket, the hanging light bulb.

  I am in a French police cell, below Biarritz town hall, in an empty basement. A smell of piss and disinfectant hangs in the air. A drunken man shouts relentlessly in a cell somewhere down the corridor.

  It is six in the morning. The morning of a new life. Only I don’t know what kind of life it will be. What do I feel? Relief, shame, terror, emptiness, loneliness.

  And tired, I am so tired.

  Outside, the sun is already up, warming the rooftops. The dawn surfers will be heading down to the beach, the patisserie near my flat opening for business, the nightclubs emptying. This place has been my home. They liked me here. Not any more. Now they will look the other way. Now I don’t belong.

  I don’t belong here, in France, where they have arrested me and where they will shame me and break me, nor in Britain where they will disown me for who I have become. Now I don’t belong anywhere. Now I float, cast adrift, out to sea, a speck in the distance.

  Now I know it is finished.

  There are no good reasons, no easy excuses. There is no redemption. Instead I am blinded now, dirty, unshaven, red-eyed – they took my phone, my belt, my shoelaces – just in case, they said.

  Just in case.

  I bury my head in the hood of my sweatshirt, understanding that I’ve lost everything I had once dreamed of, but feeling nothing but acceptance. There is no sadness – simply the recognition that I have been unhappy for a long time.

  I close my eyes, pull the hood over my head and turn towards the wall. I want darkness, but here the lights never go out. The opposite wall, the one with the locked door, is made of perspex. Privacy is a thing of the past.

  I can’t sleep.

  I can’t sleep because I am guilty and I am all the more awake because of it. All I can do is think of ways to explain myself, to justify myself, but I know I can’t. It doesn’t stop me trying for hours and hours on end.

  I lie there on the wooden bench, motionless, wondering when it’s all going to start again, when will they come for me with more questions. Fourteen hours in this cell, no food, no company.

  There is a bang on the door. Finally. A bolt turns and the one with the gun, the one who laughed at me, comes in.

  ‘Bon. On y va.’

  The walk upstairs to the interview room is humiliating. I know some of the policemen who work here. They treated me as somebody special, asked for my autograph. I’m being looked at differently now. They are embarrassed for me. I can sense pity.

  For 24 hours the questions continue, in and out of the interview room. The good cop, the man in charge, seems reasonable. He plays his role.

  ‘David, I understand the stresses you’re under,’ he says. ‘This is all the fault of Cofidis and François Migraine. Not you. You know that? They’re the ones responsible for us being here – you must remember that.’

  After a while he leaves. I am on my own with the one with the sneer and the gun. And, in turn, he plays his role. He knows how to hurt me.

  ‘I know the type of person you are, David. It’s disgusting that you trick people who admire and respect you.’ He moves across the room, leans in closer. ‘All you are is a cheat and liar.’

  By the end of the second day, I’ve barely slept for 48 hours.

  I know I’m going to lose everything, my career and my sport, the house, the car, the prestige, the money, the lifestyle.

  I do not care if I lose everything, even though I thought that it was all that mattered. It is a relief. I am going to be free. It is an epiphany.

  They take me back to the interview room. I ask if I can talk to the other policeman, the third guy, the one who has never spoken to me.

  He has remained in the background, seemingly the lowest ranked of this elite drugs squad. He enters the room.

  ‘You must be tired,’ he says, pouring me a glass of water.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I am.’

  I look down for a moment, studying my hands, tanned and wiry from the hours spent gripping the handlebars, training and racing with my Cofidis teammates, for thousands upon thousands of kilometres.

  I lift my head and look at him. He is watching me.

  ‘You know, David, this is not going to go away,’ he tells me. ‘We’re not going to stop.’

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  Now, at last, I am ready.

  ‘I want to tell you first. I don’t want to give them – the others – the satisfaction.’

  And so I begin.

  Let me tell you who I am.

  My name is David Millar.

  I am a professional cyclist, an Olympic athlete, a Tour de France star, a world champion – and a drugs cheat.

  And I want to start again.

  9 JULY 2009, BARCELONA

  You might think, after everything that happened, after the bitterest humiliation, that I would have wanted to quit professional cycling. In fact, the opposite was true. I grew to love it more than ever. I realised how lucky I was that I had a second chance. I wanted to make up for wasted time. I owed it to myself and to the idealistic, romantic kid I’d once been.

  That was why, racing alone through the pouring rain, 30 kilometres from a Tour de France stage finish line in Montjuic, I still believed.

  The Tour peloton was chasing me, but I was still riding faster, clinging on to my lead. Time checks, encouragement and expletives came through my radio earpiece from Matt White, my Australian directeur sportif, at the wheel of the team car following in my wake.

  Television helicopters hovered above, flying low enough to send litter scurrying across the road, the rotors deafening me as they swept overhead. Screaming Catalan cycling fans were crammed onto the hillside. Press cars, race commissair
es and media motorbikes weaved around and about me. The pain in my legs and my lungs gripped me, my face tightening with the strain, as I neared the top of the final climb.

  It was intense, it was excruciating.

  It was wonderful.

  I have lived in Girona in Catalunya for a few years now. In the past, many other professionals – Lance Armstrong, Bradley Wiggins, Floyd Landis – have also based themselves there. Even so, I never expected a Tour de France stage to start there. Stage five of the 2009 Tour, however, did, tracing a 182-kilometre route south to Montjuic in Barcelona, using roads that I trained on day after day. The Tour was in my backyard.

  During the winter, prior to off-season training rides, the handful of us living in Girona often met in a café on the peaceful Placa de Independencia. This was only a couple of hundred metres from where the Tour’s team buses were now lined up and where, overnight, the Tour’s sprawling start village had sprung up, taking over the city centre. Those grey, cold winter days seemed a lifetime ago.

  It was a hot morning and there were thousands of people milling around. I couldn’t distinguish between the pavements, roads or car parks. The juggernaut of the Tour owned them all now. The biggest circus in cycling had come to town, and I was one of the performers.

  Nicole and I sat in the start village with Brad and his wife Cath, their kids running circles around us. The energy levels of Brad and Cath’s son Ben, a Garmin racing cap perched on his little head, reminded us of our one-year-old terrier Zorro.

  At the same time, the ‘performer’ bit, fuelled by Nicole’s prompting, was playing on my mind. The following day we would ride to Andorra and climb to the ski station at Arcalis, the first of three Pyrenean mountain stages. The previous week of racing had been very demanding; in the team time trial we had ridden out of our skin to finish second. I’d gone particularly deep that day, making myself physically sick and being unable to eat for almost 7 hours after we crossed the finish line. It had already been torrid, and horrifically hard – and there were still eighteen days of the Tour remaining.