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

by David Millar

  I reminded him of that particular nugget of wisdom a few years later while eking out a lonely existence as a wannabe pro cyclist in a quiet French village, cut off from local society, barely capable of ordering a café au lait or buying a baguette.

  As having fun increasingly took precedence over learning useful things, Dad did a good job of kicking my arse into gear. After a while though, even he was having too much fun to be bothered by such trivial things as his son’s performance at school.

  Brit expat culture was a remnant of a colonial history in which good manners, smart uniforms and hard drinking were the only way to survive a Far East posting. It didn’t take either of us long to get used to the privileges offered to us on a daily basis, and in fact we slipped into that lifestyle with ease.

  The British community was small, but the majority of the locals regarded us as a ruling minority. Even the kids were treated deferentially, strolling around Kowloon in our colonial school uniforms. Perhaps it empowered us a little too much, but it also gave me confidence and any shyness I may have had dissipated rapidly.

  We used this social situation to our advantage and would act as if we could do what we wanted. Our parents’ underlying guilt for making us live in such a faraway place meant that, most of the time, we got off lightly. So we would push a bit further each time, seeing what we could get away with. In fact, we were all spoilt and indulged, adults and children alike, some more so than others.

  There were positives to growing up there. We became multinational and multicultural, so it was a very healthy environment in that sense. Yet the ‘special’ status we enjoyed in HK meant that many of my friends would never quite fit in anywhere else.

  But that was Hong Kong before the handover, a land of self-indulgence. We did what we wanted, when we wanted, without any thought of the future or past. It was the expat lifestyle at its purest.

  I had other interests though, beyond the expat circuit. I’d taken my new passion for mountain biking with me to HK, and surprisingly it turned out to be a great place for riding. Hong Kong and the New Territories are very hilly, almost mountainous, and beyond Sai Kung and Sha Tin were the country parks, where we were given free rein.

  Every Sunday in HK was like a scene from End of Days, as all the Chinese would board buses and leave the city to spend a day in the country. The KMB super big double-decker buses, always a hazard, were particularly likely to knock you off your bike on those days. They were equipped with a big red emergency ‘Engine Stop’ button on the back.

  Sometimes, adrenalin pumping after being brushed by one of them as it overtook me, I’d give chase, catch up, lean across and push the button. I’d ride on, looking back as the bus ground to a halt, the perplexed driver standing alongside his stalled juggernaut, trying to figure out what had happened. These were my first sessions of interval training.

  As I got more into riding, I was becoming a geek, a bike perv. I would hang out on a regular basis at the Flying Ball Bicycle Shop. It was a crazy shop, deep in the heart of Mongkok and the very definition of organised chaos. Tiny and with perhaps one of the most valuable equipment stocks in the world, the shop had bikes that I’d only read about or seen in magazines, kit that a bike shop in England would never dream of stocking.

  Mr Lee, the owner, kept long hours. He was there seven days a week, from nine in the morning, sometimes until ten at night. He lived in a flat above the shop with his family and must have had the patience of a saint, because I surely annoyed the hell out of him, hanging around the shop, getting in the way and not buying anything. It was here that I saw a notice for some races in one of the country parks. I told the boys about them and we all set about training for them.

  Back then, my idea of quality training was to come home from school, eat a bowl of cereal and then set out on my mountain bike up Hiram’s Highway, a 4- or 5-kilometre climb, starting not far from the main entrance of Marina Cove. I would shoot out of the blocks as fast as I could and be tasting blood by about halfway up the climb. This was a sure sign I was ‘in the zone’.

  At the top of the hill, I’d turn around and head back down, taking as many risks as possible to get back home as fast as I could. There was one corner where I considered myself a chicken if I couldn’t get around it at 30 mph. It served me well though, because in the races, I was usually able to finish in the top five. I was a very skinny, motivated 14-year-old, but I must have had something, because two of the guys there, Simon Roberts and Ted Remedios, decided to take me under their wing and convert me to road racing.

  We would all go mountain biking together, but they would use the time to educate me about road cycling. At first, like so many others before they are seduced by road riding, I was totally against it. I thought the road was a bit effete, old school – the Lycra, shaven legs and boring conservative mentality – but as time went on I began to pay more attention, mainly due to their persistence. I’m grateful to them for that.

  Ted was the main protagonist in this brainwashing. He told me stories and loaned me magazines, books and videos. Little by little, I became fascinated by it all. Road racing seemed purer than mountain biking, more mythical, and it made mountain biking seem childish and transient. There were few moments of technical genius, unlike football or basketball or cricket, but what it did have was epic human accomplishment on a grand scale, performances as seemingly close to super-human as I’d seen in sport.

  One story particularly touched me.

  In the 1990 Tour de France, Miguel Indurain was riding as domestique to Pedro Delgado, then still the great Spanish champion. Delgado was not at his best, yet Indurain supported him unquestioningly. Indurain lost any personal chances he had during one mountain stage by staying with Delgado and pacing him through the valley to the foot of the last climb. Indurain never claimed that he could have won the 1990 Tour, yet many since have said that he was fully capable of it.

  This was new to me, this culture of sacrifice and obligation. In other sports, champions were just champions – they hadn’t served an apprenticeship as a professional helper to other champions, before finally getting their own chance. I found this ideal, of working up through the ranks to earn your right to lead and to win, dignified, old-fashioned and romantic.

  I read two books that really seduced me, Kings of the Road and Bernard Hinault’s biography, Memories of the Peloton. Both seemed epic, honourable and sometimes tragic. The more I learned about it, the more it seemed that in professional cycling – unlike other sports – winning really wasn’t everything. It appeared to be as much about respect and panache as about winning. I really liked that.

  I’d never come across a sport like it, and my growing fascination with it – and the secret dream of one day riding in the Tour – was the final nail in the coffin of my mountain biking days.

  Yes – I know how this reads now: I was very naive and romantic, but my youth gave me that right. Idealism is a good thing and, at its purest and most passionate, it can take you a long way. The downside is that it can leave you incredibly unprepared for the harsh realities of that world when you get there.

  Before leaving off-road behind, I did manage to break my collarbone again. Out on one of the trails after school one afternoon, I catapulted over the bars, landing badly. I had a long walk back to the road and then a wince-inducing one-armed ride back to the house. That sealed the deal; within a few months I’d sold my mountain bike and, with the help of my dad, bought a road bike. It was a ‘no name’ frame in green and white, with a Shimano RX100 groupset – the perfect beginner’s bike.

  Things were changing back in England. Mum and Fran had moved to Maidenhead, in Berkshire. I flew back from Hong Kong, my new road bike with me, for my first school holidays. Mum knew that road cycling was my new thing and had done some research on local clubs, with High Wycombe CC the closest of any standing. Once again, High Wycombe was the centre of my cycling universe: from BMX racing as a small boy, to mountain biking before leaving for HK – now it would be where I first com
peted in road racing.

  Back then, road cycling in the UK was, at best, a third-rate sport. Funding was minimal, and the sport was amateur and old-fashioned in its attitude. After having my imagination fired by the romance and grandeur of Hinault, Indurain and the Tour, it wasn’t what I expected, but it did make it quite easy to jump in as a clueless enthusiast. Local time trials were the lifeblood of the scene and each local road club would have its mid-week evening ‘10’ – a 10-mile time trial – throughout the summer.

  Anybody could turn up, pay 50p for a number and a start time, and join the race against the clock. The courses, all with coded names, were on open roads and almost always ‘out-and-back’ as this reduced the number of volunteer marshals needed and made the whole event logistically simpler.

  In mid-summer, within a 25-mile radius of most towns, you could find three different mid-week club ‘10’s. It was strange to find out there were so many when you’d never actually seen or heard of them. But road racing had been forced into near secrecy for many years, after time trialling had become the only way to race bicycles in England following the ban on bunch road racing at the turn of the last century. Its cultural roots were those of a rebel splinter group, and close to a century of practice had turned it into the most staid of disciplines.

  My first-ever time trial was the Longwick ‘10,’ or HCC202 to use its codename, another lingering remnant of past secrecy. I rode the course in a time of 23:58 and lost by 2 seconds to Bob Addy, a Tour de France rider from the late 1960s, and a local legend for having even started the French race.

  After that debut, the club ‘10’ became a regular Tuesday night feature of my spells in Maidenhead. Mum and High Wycombe’s very welcoming club members took it upon themselves to support me as much as possible. I loved the time trials, but above all I wanted to road race, as this seemed like much more fun. The club didn’t have any road racers at the time and Mum and I were left to figure out my next move.

  After the Easter holidays, I flew back to Hong Kong determined to come back and road race during the summer. And so my double life began. I became an expat fun-loving teenager in HK and a dedicated serious cyclist in the UK.

  Life in the Far East continued in the same vein.

  Dad acquired a speedboat and many mornings at dawn we would scale the fence into the closed Hebe Haven Yacht Club, launch the boat and head out across the millpond that was the early morning South China Sea.

  I’d also got back into skating, only now on in-line skates. There was a small sponsored team that I belonged to (although why it existed I don’t know, as we never really did anything). The best fun to be had on the skates was by thrashing around the massive shopping malls late at night being chased by security guards, or by having a good old-fashioned sliding competition on the polished floors.

  I wasn’t into drinking or smoking. I’d go to the occasional house party and have a couple of drinks but I was having more fun riding my bike and skating. On top of that, drinking wasn’t exactly a rebellious act in our household, or in expat circles in general.

  Any self-aware drinker will tell you that booze is an easy way to remedy loneliness, alleviate boredom and make friends easily – all syndromes that can burden many people when it comes to living far from home. Dad and Ally were fond of a drink, and they had many British and Antipodean friends who shared their interest.

  Sometimes a night out would end with a drunken argument that climaxed with all their wedding photos being taken down off the wall. It became routine for me to put these back up in the morning while they slept it off. I hated them arguing and would just leave the house and then on my return pretend it had never happened. That was how I learned head-in-the-sand problem-solving.

  I went back to England in the summer and, at long last, was introduced to road racing. Mum had tracked down the British Cycling Federation calendar and had planned where the nearest road races would be. My new club, High Wycombe CC, even had their own race a few weeks after my arrival to look forward to. So off we went, blissfully ignorant, our only previous experience being the club ‘10’. We took it for granted that the road races would be much the same.

  We tracked down the village hall housing the race HQ and Mum left me to sign on while she went off to get the Sunday papers. As I looked around, two things struck me; first that everybody had better bikes, and second that they all looked really serious. I joined the long queue to get to the makeshift table with the sign-on sheet and the little boxes holding the numbers. When I finally got there, they just looked at me patiently while I stood, fiver in my hand, and told them I’d like to compete in their race.

  That was when they asked me for my licence. A licence? I had no idea you needed a licence to race, and went running off looking for my mum in a panic. Tantrum over, we found out we could buy a ‘Day Licence’ and so, finally, I started my first road race.

  I didn’t win it.

  Over the next two races, it became apparent that, although tactically clueless, I was definitely one of the strongest in the field. The week before the Wycombe CC annual road race, Mum gave me a book by a guy called Eddie Borysewicz – or Eddie B, a near-legendary Stateside coach. It was called Bicycle Road Racing: Complete Program for Training and Competition and it became my bible.

  I read it from cover to cover and the world of road racing opened up to me. When I turned up next time, at the inevitable village hall and makeshift table, in Stokenchurch, for the Wycombe race I was an Eddie B disciple, fired up and ready to test my newly acquired savoir faire on my peers. The race was one of the bigger ones in the British calendar due mainly to the higher than average prize money.

  The circuit was about 20 miles long, a hilly, demanding course with the finish on the top of Aston Hill, one of the longer climbs in the Chilterns, with a snaking European feel to it. This made the race a little bit more exotic and, along with the larger purse on offer, meant that the peloton was of a high standard.

  There was another start-line drama, when I was told I wasn’t allowed to wear my favourite red and blue full-zip jersey, so instead I pulled on a High Wycombe club jersey. It was the first race I had entered with any thought of tactics. Up to that point, I had raced every time with the same goal; go as hard as I could for as long as I could. Now I had a plan.

  This time, I’d done some research. I knew who the good riders were and what teams they were on, I’d memorised where the climbs were and pondered whether it was worth going for the climber’s prize. I decided it was. I then committed myself to working off the other strong riders and their teams. For the first time since I’d started racing, lucidity and knowledge outweighed my passion and exuberance.

  There were three laps of the circuit and I won almost all the climber’s points, so by the time we came to the final climb leading up to the finish I was a marked man. VC Venta, the best junior team in the country, were there, and they boxed me in coming up to the sprint, leaving me in the left-hand gutter, with one of them in front of me and another of their riders next to me.

  Meanwhile, their teammate Danny Axford, who had won the junior national series that year, attacked from the front of the group. As I watched it all happen, I could remember Eddie B’s words coming back to me. ‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘I’ve read about this. They’re trying to box me in – better get out of here.’

  I touched my brakes, dropped back a little, pushed the guys behind and beside me out of the way, and launched after Danny. I caught him and won by a large margin. It was a turning point for me not only because it was my first win, but also because I realised how important using my head was if I wanted to be a good bike rider.

  As I slowed to a halt, the legendary June Smith – aka ‘Auntie June’ – made a beeline for me. ‘Bloody hell,’ she exclaimed, ‘you can race a bike, can’t you?’

  ‘They tried to block me at the finish!’ I protested, adrenalin still pumping.

  ‘Well, you showed them didn’t you!’ laughed June.

  After I’d caught my breath we
chatted some more about the race and about my plans. June’s enthusiasm for cycling was infectious.

  ‘Now look,’ she said, ‘I’ve been speaking to your mum. She tells me that you’re very new to all this, and I think I can help. I’m with the Southern Centre of Excellence – we’d love to have you with us.’

  I had no idea what the Southern Centre of Excellence was, but it sounded, well, excellent. June explained that each area in England had its own centre that would nurture young talent. I fell under the Southern Centre of Excellence umbrella.

  In my mind’s eye, I imagined a smart building with a lab and a gym, white-coated technicians, a bank of cutting-edge technology and pages of data and test results. It was actually Ian Goodhew’s living room.

  The centres had minimal funding and relied hugely on the generosity of individuals who loved the sport and wanted to help. June and Ian were two of these people and they put a lot of time and effort into helping me develop even faster. After less than two months of racing in England, I returned to Hong Kong, a fully fledged road racer. I would have to wait for the following April, in 1994, before I’d be back again to continue racing.

  Over the next year, I crossed a Rubicon in my development as a cyclist.

  I raced a bit in HK, which involved dawn starts and bus rides out to the country parks for chaotic and very hilly racing. I would destroy myself in these, relishing the challenge to see how much I could hurt myself, and more often than not I would finish cross-eyed and semi-delirious. I was very serious about cycling and it began to be known at school that it was my thing. I couldn’t wait to get back to racing in England.

  Meanwhile, that intensity earned me a place on the Hong Kong team. I found myself in Macao one weekend in a group of Chinese athletes, eating dim sum the night before the race. We were sponsored by Chinese triads, who – apparently – loved cycling. Our jerseys were purple with big white Chinese calligraphy embroidered on the front and back.