by David Millar
I rode the last kilometre very fast, at over 60 kilometres an hour, thankful for the fitted skinsuit, modified bars and my ability to pedal faster than most. I knew I was going to get the best time and when I crossed the line I was 11 seconds faster than Laurent Jalabert. It took me a few minutes to recover and return to the team bus where we all watched the last riders come over the line. They were all slower than me and it became clear that the only person who could better my time was Lance Armstrong.
I couldn’t watch as Lance came around the last corner and flew into the final kilometre, our times neck and neck. I had convinced myself that I wasn’t going to win in an attempt to avoid disappointment, and when the massive cheer rose up around me I couldn’t really grasp what was happening.
Everybody started hugging me and before I knew it, I was crying. Bondue was hugging me too, tears in his eyes, telling me how he’d always known I’d do it. Then I was pushed out of the bus into the throng of fans, photographers, TV cameras, and race officials, who acted as bodyguards as I was shepherded through the crowds. As I walked to the podium, trying to pull myself together, I realised that the Tour was now revolving around me, the new maillot jaune.
I wasn’t prepared for winning. I hadn’t visualised beyond the finish line, so stepping up onto the podium and putting on the yellow jersey was an overpowering experience. I was a blubbering mess. But it was good fun being the main man at the Tour and I quickly grew to like it. I felt special, and the nice thing was that everybody seemed genuinely pleased for me. I was floating on a cloud, I was so happy.
Three hours after the race ended, after the presentation protocols, doping controls, press conference and TV interviews were all over, I arrived back at the hotel. The mechanics were all still on a high and I went around the team and saw as many of the riders and staff as I could. Even though it was late, I was still wearing the yellow jersey. I kept it on for the rest of that night.
11
LA VIE EN JAUNE
When I woke up the next day, the first thing I saw was the yellow jersey hanging over a chair in my hotel room. I couldn’t wait to start racing in it, to be the maillot jaune at the Tour de France.
I was told to wait in the bus until as late as possible before signing on at the start village, but of course I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t really prepared for the chaos that surrounded me when I finally did emerge.
I was mobbed. Everybody was calling out, ‘DAVEED! DAVEED!’ shaking my hand, taking a picture or stopping me for a chat and an autograph. I tried to satisfy as many demands as I could, although I realised that just wasn’t possible or I’d never make it to the start line. In the space of 24 hours everything had changed; I was no longer a young espoir, I was now le maillot jaune.
Out on the road, racing with my peers, I was able to appreciate the value of the yellow jersey. Almost all the big hitters came and congratulated me. Their words were heartfelt and they seemed genuinely pleased for me. Lance spent a little time joshing with me but was genuinely happy that I’d won, which made me proud.
The notable exception was Marco Pantani, winner of the Tour in 1998. Not once did he congratulate me, which I found a bit strange. It was almost obligatory for a past Tour champion to congratulate the young pretender. It didn’t change my view of him as a rider, but his cold attitude did separate him from the others.
Riding in yellow totally changed my experience of moving through the peloton – a living organism, in constant flux – a breathing, kinetic, noisy, colourful being. In order to hold your position, particularly in the front half, you must be constantly moving up. The moment you relax you’ll find yourself losing position, simply because when there are two hundred elite cyclists racing along a road the majority want to be at the front. If you’re not at the front, you’re not in the race.
The more important the race is, the more nervous the riders are, and the more time they want to spend at the front. This puts the peloton in an aggressive mood which means mistakes are made and crashes caused. If you’re at the back of the Tour peloton, there are two hundred chances of crashes in front of you; the closer you are to the front, with an empty road ahead of you, the less chance there is of crashing because there are fewer riders in front of you and so less chance of being brought down.
I had been told that the Tour peloton was one of the most stressful in cycling, a bastard to hold position in, very fast and dangerous. So I was prepared for the worst. But I hadn’t realised how different it would be when I was wearing the leader’s jersey. Normally there is no chance of somebody letting you into a gap in order to move up the peloton, but in the maillot jaune this is not the case. I found myself being let into every single gap and riders happily moved out of the way for me. Wearing the yellow jersey gave me an ‘access all areas’ VIP pass, a laissez-passer through the peloton. And this wasn’t about me being respected – it was the maillot jaune that was respected. I wasn’t wearing the yellow jersey; the yellow jersey was gracing me.
I was in yellow for three days. There was one near miss when I crashed in the final couple of kilometres of the stage coming into Nantes, but I was up so fast that I was back in the safety of the peloton in no time. I finally lost the lead in the 70-kilometre team time trial on the third day. We were never renowned as a team time trial squad, but our performance was better than normal and we defended the jersey with pride.
Those three days had made me the darling boy of France – one local paper christening me ‘Le Dandy’ – and the public had warmed to the young Scot leading the big French team and wearing the yellow jersey. It helped that by this time I spoke French and also lived in France. The French like nothing more than a foreigner who has chosen their great république as their home, and being Scottish helped as well, as the auld alliance lived strong in French memories. I learned that much during the Tour.
‘Vous êtes Ecosse?! Ah oui! Ça, c’est complétement different! Bof on aime pas trop les Anglais non plus!’
‘You’re Scottish?! Ah, yes. That’s completely different. [The French] We’re not too keen on the English either!’
The race continued, moving inexorably towards an Armstrong victory. One day, a while after the yellow jersey had moved on to another rider, I was sitting at the back chatting to Stuart O’Grady and a couple of the other boys. The US Postal team was coming up the right side of the peloton, bringing Lance back up through the riders. As Lance came by he looked at me and called to his team to wait.
I turned to Stuey: ‘Here we go,’ I said.
‘Dave! Come here!’ Lance gestured for me to move across to him so he could speak to me.
I pedalled over to his side. ‘What’s going on, Lance?’ I said innocently.
‘Dave, what are you doing back here?’ he asked. I may not have been on the same team as Lance, but I think he still considered me to be his little protégé in some ways.
‘Chatting to the boys, just a bit of a calm moment,’ I said.
‘Dave, this is the Tour de France,’ he said sternly.
‘I know, Lance, I know.’
‘Well, Dave, at the Tour de France you have no friends. Ride at the front.’ It wasn’t a suggestion. It was an instruction.
‘Yeah – er, okay, Lance.’ I looked back at Stuey and shrugged. ‘See you later.’
It was a classic Armstrong moment, capturing both how expert he had become at always being at the front and exactly how he saw the Tour de France. It was war for him.
I wanted to finish my debut Tour but I had no intentions of just taking it easy in order to get to Paris. I wanted to go as hard as I could, for as long as I could. In the first mountain stages, in the Pyrenees, I buried myself and realised just how much better I needed to be if I wanted to stand any chance of racing for the overall standings at the Tour. It was a rude awakening, although a couple of days later I was fourth on a stage finishing near Toulouse, which lifted my morale again.
By the time we got to Mont Ventoux I knew a lot more about Tommy Simpson and had a feel
ing there would be a lot of British fans on the mountain. I wanted to do my best, but I crashed early in the stage, coming down on a spinning back wheel, with my neck taking the full impact. It hurt like hell, left a big gash on my neck and popped my collarbone. I grovelled up the Ventoux and was embarrassed to be right at the back of the race. So many people knew my name now and were cheering for me, something I’d never experienced before. I wanted to tell every fan that I’d crashed and was in pain and that’s why I wasn’t nearer the front.
The final week included three stages of around 250 kilometres and the first of these was a mountain stage to Briancon. It was a mammoth day and we ended up racing for over 8 hours. The route was nonsensical and went against all the talk of changing cycling and of eradicating doping. I was fuming with the race organisers and didn’t hide my feelings, especially when we got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the hotel.
‘It was bullshit,’ I told journalists. ‘They want to clean up cycling and then after two weeks of racing they put on a stage like that. They must think we’re robots. Jean-Marie Leblanc needs a slap.’
Most riders – let alone Tour rookies – might have thought twice before suggesting that the Tour director ‘needed a slap’ … not me.
But Jean-Marie and I made up the next day; I regretted my outspokenness while he was very honourable and apologised for the length of the stage. I was beginning to realise that people – or at least the media – listened when I talked. Unfortunately I hadn’t yet realised that this meant I had to think before I spoke.
My sister France had been amazingly supportive prior to the Tour, and she became even more so after I won on the first day. She had become the go-to person when it came to ‘David Millar’, taking care of everything, but then she’d always looked after her older brother. She had become much more professional about her role now that I was in demand. We were also having fun though, and we wanted to finish the Tour with a bang, so we – well, she – set about organising a party for the final night in Paris.
Fran managed to get one of the most famous nightclubs in Paris, Les Bains Douches, to open especially for us on the Sunday evening after the finish on the Champs Elysées. She had invitations printed up with ‘It’s Millar Time – Stage 22’ emblazoned on them. I intended to hand them out to everybody on the Champs Elysées stage. I even got Jean-Marie Leblanc to take a handful so that he could give them to the podium girls; there was one in particular that I had a crush on, although unfortunately it was unrequited. Fran was only 21 and I was 23 – yet we were planning on ruling Paris for a night. Rather than being daunted by the Tour we already felt it was part of our lives.
I was tired during the last week, but such was the excitement about making it to Paris that I couldn’t sleep. I was like a 6-year-old kid, waiting for Christmas. All my family and friends were coming to the finish, my best friends from Hong Kong had come over, my mum and dad were both going to be there, albeit on opposite sides of the road, and lots of others had also made the trip. It was brilliant having my family and friends there to share it.
Yet I wasn’t prepared for my feelings when I arrived on the Champs Elysées. Being part of the Tour peloton and racing up towards the Arc de Triomphe was an overwhelming moment. Every rider who makes it to the Champs Elysées has had a different experience getting there, but I think we all feel the same when we hit those cobblestones and take in the magnificence of that setting.
I knew where my family and friends would be standing on the Champs Elysées and I told them I would get into the standard breakaway so they could see me. Somehow, I did manage to get into the obligatory kamikaze attack and every time I passed the ‘It’s Millar Time’ group I clenched a fist to my heart and saluted them. It was a bit cocky, I suppose, but I didn’t know any better, and it was all done in celebration.
I really didn’t want it to finish. The team organised cocktails in the penthouse bar of the Concorde Lafayette, and by the time I got there I was already a bit drunk. Harry gave me a beautiful yellow-faced watch and a bottle of whisky that, a decade later, I still have.
We had dinner in the restaurant of Les Bains Douches. Harry and I were last out of the club, immersed in deep, drunken thoughts while the cleaners brushed up around us. We stumbled out into the dawn light of a beautiful Parisian morning. I think I slept for about 3 hours before heading to a lunch rendezvous at the Trocadéro.
Lunch was even better than the night before, but it had to end some time and, sadly, Monday drew to a close and everybody returned to their lives and jobs. I wasn’t looking forward to the journey back to my flat in Biarritz. The bubble that I’d been living in for a month had burst and I was on my own again.
Arriving back at the apartment was a big comedown. I dragged in my bike bag and suitcase and dumped them in the small entrance hall. In the kitchen an empty bowl, with the remnants of the cereal I’d wolfed down in my last-minute rush out of the door, a month earlier, lay in the sink.
I went through to the living room, turned on the TV and collapsed on the sofa. I sat there blankly, watching French television. Everything had changed, yet nothing had changed. It was a rude awakening. I’d just made my boyhood dream a reality, yet I felt lonelier than ever.
12
THE FALL OF DUNKIRK
There was a cure to my loneliness, which was to leave the apartment. As soon as I went out and about in Biarritz, I discovered I had a lot more friends than I’d had a month earlier. People came up and congratulated me.
I was no longer simply, ‘Daveed, le coureur? I was now ‘Daveed, maillot jaune du Tour de France.’
Biarritz felt like home. I was getting to know so many people that I’d have never met before. If I was out at night, I no longer had to queue to get into restaurants, clubs or bars. I was being called to the front and given VIP treatment. I loved it. I didn’t really see any problem – I could see what was going on and knew that it was predominantly bullshit, but I still enjoyed it.
I had many nocturnal friends – the owners and staff of cafés, restaurants, bars and nightclubs – people with whom I was great pals after nine at night, but never saw during the day. Some of them became best friends. I even gave Jean-Claude, the owner of Biarritz institution Le Caveau (a gay club that in winter had the most amazing Sunday night cabaret shows), a yellow jersey on his 50th birthday. This was the same nightclub that, only a few weeks earlier, had refused me entry.
Even so, I was still uneasy in my own company and spent as little time as possible in my apartment. I was beginning to think that maybe this was just the way of life for a pro cyclist, or at least for me. I couldn’t balance my life – it was split, separated. I was either the obsessive professional cyclist or a Biarritz social butterfly. When I was the social butterfly, I’d have no contact with anybody in the cycling world. I would disappear and be impossible to get hold of. The reverse would be true when I went back to obsessive pro cyclist mode; there was no crossover. The only person who could get hold of me in both worlds was my sister.
In the aftermath of the Tour, thinking that I should rest so I’d be good for the Sydney Olympics that September, I had turned down several criteriums – lucrative exhibition races in Holland, Belgium and France – in August. Despite that, I didn’t see myself as an Olympian. This, remember, was long before British cyclists dominated at the Olympic Games. To me, the only thing that really mattered was the Tour – the Olympics were simply a footnote.
Nonetheless, I knuckled down and started to ready myself for Sydney, even though it held no real goal for me. I knew deep down that the course didn’t suit me, as I’d stand little chance against the favourites in time trials over 30 kilometres. I didn’t possess the power needed to compete against the older guys in those longer time trials. I was more excited about the prospect of going to Sydney, meeting other athletes and hanging out with the British team.
I trained hard, despite my pessimism about my chances of winning a medal, but I lacked focus and this became apparent once I’d arrived in A
ustralia. I was sent to the holding camp on the Gold Coast, 1000 kilometres north of Sydney, but was devastated to find that there was only a skeleton team of athletes and staff there. Everybody else had already left for Sydney. The time trial was scheduled for the penultimate day of the Games and I was to be held for as long as possible in the holding camp so I could train on quieter roads, far from the chaos of Sydney. I was crestfallen.
There were other truths to face up to. I’d become a regular user of sleeping pills, something that had begun in the last week of the Tour when I was in a similarly excited state of mind and couldn’t sleep. I was forced to go to the British team doctor for more pills, and it was only then that I realised how removed my world was from that of other athletes.
At Cofidis, I was seen as a ‘good’ boy, somebody the team doctors trusted implicitly, but now, talking to the Team GB doctor, I felt that he didn’t trust me, or my habits. In a way he was right not to – I was a Tour de France rider, and we were all tarnished by our sport’s reputation. Even though I was clean, I was a walking example of how troubled and confused my sport had become.
I took it for granted that I could just ask for sleeping pills and that I could be trusted to use them correctly. I’d learned my lesson the year before with my roof-jumping incident and now used them only to help me sleep. But it wasn’t easy to get what I wanted from this doctor and it annoyed me. Because I didn’t dope, I believed I had the right to do anything that wasn’t doping – that was how the Cofidis team doctors treated me, and also how I’d learned to survive in recent years. In the build-up to the Tour I had even learned to inject myself so that I could carry on with récupération at home, in order to recover properly and train harder. I was not a doper, I told myself – I just injected myself to recover and needed pills to sleep.