by David Millar
Visibility was terrible and the roads were treacherous – I twice came past guys who were sprawled in the road after crashing. I crashed too, in the last 5 kilometres, yet this didn’t stop me winning by 15 seconds and posting one of the fastest ever time trials, with a 54 kilometres per hour average speed. I’m good when I’m relaxed, but I’m even better when it’s wet.
After the Tour ended, I signed with Cofidis for two more years. It was the big money contract I had wanted. I had been in protracted negotiations with Bjarne Riis and his team, but now that Bondue was out of the picture, I was sure I’d be able to steer things more myself. In truth, my loyalty towards the team was based more on the longevity of our relationship than anything else.
Brad McGee and I spent some time together in Biarritz after the Tour ended. Brad knew that I had been prepared and we both knew that what had happened in the Tour prologue was right – that it was karma – and that he was supposed to win. I had told him this the next day. Brad understood that I had made my decisions, and yet he did his best not to judge. He was one of the few, an untouchable, like Moncoutie.
There was talk of the Vuelta and more preparation with Jesús, but I couldn’t face it. Instead of heading to altitude and back to doping, I stayed in Biarritz. I had been in regular contact with Dave Brailsford through the year – although he knew nothing of my preparation programmes – and now my thoughts were all about racing with Team GB at the World Championships.
I knew I had to ride the Vuelta to find form but I turned up overweight and unfit. I was one of the first riders to be dropped in the first road stage – even I was a little shocked. I got a grip and decided that suffering through the Vuelta would be about getting ready for the Worlds, in just a few weeks time. In the first time trial, I set off expecting very little, yet I finished second. I was baffled; maybe it was just down to pure talent. However, any illusions I had of sporting genius were stamped out in the next day’s mountain stage.
I was on the ropes, last on the road, for most of that day. For a good 80 kilometres, I was with just one other rider, far behind the gruppetto. He ended up throwing in the towel, but I knew that I had to finish the Vuelta if I wanted to win the Worlds time trial. Eventually, I caught the gruppetto just 4 kilometres from the finish. The toughest day was behind me: from then on I got better and better.
More by luck than judgement – I had come perilously close to not making it through the first week – I finished the race in good shape. Now I had to hook up with Jesús.
On the last day of the Vuelta in Madrid, I picked up a batch of EPO and took the first dose. Jesús had advised me to take the next two doses of EPO directly into the vein. That way, he said, it would work faster and disappear out of my system well before race day. It was the first time I’d taken EPO intravenously.
From Madrid, I flew to Manchester, to spend time with Team GB, testing the new super-bike that had been built for me, before heading out to Canada for the World Championships.
It was a joy being with the British team. Dave was a great leader and an even better manager, and there was focus to everything that they did. Their organisation and expertise made Cofidis look like a small cycling club. Dave had followed through on his promises from the year before and had done everything possible at his end to enable me to win the Worlds. All I had to do was to be physically ready.
After I had finished the doses of EPO, I was left with two empty syringes. I didn’t want to put them in the hotel bin, so I slipped them into a side pocket in my suitcase, planning to dispose of them later. By this point, I was so blasé about doping that I didn’t really think it was such a big problem to carry around some empty syringes until I found a safe and secure place to deposit them.
By taking EPO I had guaranteed that I would be fulfilling my end of the bargain. Nobody in British cycling had any idea that I was doping, as they were absolutely ignorant of the world I lived in. They looked up to the European scene, even if, like everybody, they knew there was bad stuff going on. But it never crossed their minds that I was involved in any of it. Because of this it was possible for me to conceal my secret.
Although the bike that Team GB had built for me was a dream – like nothing I’d ever ridden before – I was plagued by doubts. The new bike gave me a clear performance advantage, but that only made me even more nervous as I knew how much time, money and effort had been put into building it for me. I also had EPO, testosterone and cortisone running through my veins – there was surely no way I could lose, yet I was terrified that I might.
But I didn’t lose – I achieved a crushing victory. I was so much quicker that I realised that I would win at the halfway point. In fact I spent the last 10 kilometres trying to save energy, so that I’d be good for the road race three days later. After I’d won I stood on the podium, listening to ‘God Save the Queen’. I was World Time Trial champion, yet I felt almost nothing. I should have been choked, moved, just as other athletes were at such a moment. I wanted to experience that feeling. Instead, I just thought: ‘Job done.’
More than ever, I was fully aware that I needed to rethink what I was doing and where I was going. The time in Canada had allowed me to talk to Dave Brailsford at length. He picked up on my unhappiness and we discussed my future.
The Athens Olympics were less than a year away. There was talk of me becoming part of the ever-improving track team and maybe even riding the individual pursuit. I knew what this would mean and I made the decision that if I was going to work with Dave and the national team then I would do it clean.
I’d become so drained by the professional world. I’d become world champion, but it was a hollow victory. The possibility of working with Dave and Team GB opened up options. He reinforced my self-belief, his was the voice I needed to hear.
I was sick of doping. Team GB offered escape from that world. As we flew out of Canada, I knew it was over, that I’d never dope again. From now on, I told myself, things would be different.
17
GAME OVER
I had thought that I could just stop doping and put it behind me, that ending the cheating would end the lies. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Within a few months my life would spiral further out of control than ever before.
Yet I was now a clean athlete, taking that philosophy to an extreme that I hadn’t done since my first few months as a pro. Team GB’s thinking and professionalism was having a profound impact on me. After long discussions with GB’s sports scientists, I decided I would put a stop to all needles, which meant no more ‘recovery’ injections.
They had convinced me that there was no scientific proof of injectable ‘récup’ speeding up an athlete’s recovery. I simply had to be diligent with the food and drinks I used and my body would recover just as well, if not better.
I was now in a position where I could stand by this and stick to it. I wasn’t a wide-eyed, gauche neo-pro who knew no better and was easily manipulated. I was reigning World Champion – and an ex-doper. I didn’t care what my fellow pros, team doctors, soigneurs or team management at Cofidis thought: if I wanted to do it my way then that was how it would be.
I had realised that the more I doped, the more I hated cycling – and the more it became a job, not my passion. I may have been able to win bigger races but I’d never felt less joy in doing so. That feeling stayed with me, an emptiness, a pointlessness that wouldn’t go away.
Dave Brailsford and Team GB gave me another option. They had an anti-doping stance that they truly believed in and they operated in a manner that made you want to be clean. I had in many ways given up on Cofidis and the European pro scene, but the prospect of being part of Team GB for the Athens Olympics inspired me.
I holed up in Manchester and spent increasing amounts of time training on the track. Rod Ellingworth and Simon Jones were coaching me and I spent every afternoon in one-to-one sessions on the boards. Before long, I was in training sessions with the track squad. The level of skill and experience was terrifying, but I loved it.
I hadn’t had so much fun on a bike in years and we discussed the realistic possibility that I’d race in the Athens Olympic track team. Soon afterwards, Nicole Cooke and I were announced as the first official members of the Team GB Athens Olympic Squad. The future was looking bright.
My lifestyle in Biarritz was very different from the disciplined environment of Team GB. Work on my house was progressing as it was transformed into the ultimate bachelor pad. From the outside, it looked to be a classic Parisian-style villa, but once inside it was anything but traditional. There was a fingerprint-access front door, 400 square metres of loft space fitted with the most cutting-edge technology available, furniture shipped from Italy, a wine cellar and a cinema in the basement. There were glass panels through each of the four floors, and standing in the basement you were able to look up and out through the atrium, far above.
Tellingly, it had not even crossed my mind to have an area for my bikes. I hadn’t wanted the house to have anything to do with cycling. I persuaded myself that it was my ticket to happiness, thinking that when it was finished everything would finally make sense. But the closer the work came to completion, the more I recognised how incredibly wrong I was to have thought that, as I realised that the house was the manifestation of my cheating. I began to dread the day it would be finished and I’d close the door behind me.
I was enjoying a world champion’s lifestyle. I had a deal with Jaguar that meant I had a car waiting for me wherever I went, and an XKR on order. I was an Olympian with medal success almost guaranteed and I was one of the highest-paid cyclists in the world. Yet I was lonelier than ever. I was now seeing a French girl called Katherine de Freycinet but I still struggled to sustain a relationship.
Katherine, a bohemian aristocrat and very French, fitted my new image perfectly. For a few months things between us were good. She would sit in the centre of the velodrome, sketching and writing songs while I was whizzing around the track, learning how to become an Olympian. From the outside it probably looked like a wonderful life.
I began to think that maybe having the fabulous life was what it was all about. Then I’d beat myself up about it, and then tell myself off for that. What right did I have to feel sorry for myself? I had a life people only dreamed of.
But it didn’t make me happy. I found it almost impossible to spend time on my own. I had to be with people as much as possible. Before long I couldn’t even handle being on my own with Katherine and decided that I wasn’t cut out for relationships. I had my house – that was a big enough relationship.
And through it all, my doping past shadowed me. It was always there, hovering. I’d done my best to bury it but it wasn’t long before I realised how wrong I’d been to think I could just put it all behind me and move on.
At the first Cofidis get-together for the 2004 season, in Amiens, I found out that Philippe Gaumont had spent a week at l’Équipier’s house in Tuscany. I was completely stunned. I’d been able to influence the team to re-sign l’Équipier for one more year. To hear that he was now taking care of Gaumont’s needs blew me away.
I stormed through the hotel corridors until I found his room. ‘Tell me it isn’t true that Gaumont came down to stay with you,’ I snapped at him.
He was shocked by my anger. He looked down, eyes averted.
‘David, he came down with his family for a week.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘He understands though – don’t worry.’
I was incensed. I couldn’t believe how stupid he had been to trust Gaumont.
‘You fucking idiot!’ I shouted. ‘What does he know? Does he know about me staying with you?’
‘No, no! Of course not,’ he said. There was a pause. ‘I don’t think so anyway.’
I was panicking, terrified of what could happen. Gaumont knew all about the omertà, but he had trouble keeping his mouth shut. There was no doubt in my mind that everybody would soon know that l’Équipier was the team’s fixer. If Gaumont got caught, then l’Équipier would be implicated and then, eventually, so would I.
There was a high risk of me being linked to him. The Tuscan trip had been over two years earlier, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be traced. I had been so calculating when I’d worked with Jesús. I had reduced the human factor to a bare minimum. Two people were in on the deal – Jesús and me.
My mind was racing: Gaumont, always Gaumont. How was he still on the team? Nobody really knew. There were rumours of him having a series of clauses in his contract that allowed the team to fire him if he went off the rails, while some claimed he blackmailed the team into keeping him on. I think the truth was simpler. Philippe could be a charming man when he chose to be, and no doubt it was this charm that had convinced Migraine to stick with him.
I was in shock, gripped by the awful realisation that word might spread that I was a doper. Finding out about Gaumont spending time with l’Équipier awoke me to the bitter truth: it was never going to go away. I would always have to live with my doping past, no matter how much I cleaned up my act.
Two months later, my worst fears were realised.
An ex-Cofidis rider – Marek Rutkiewicz, a young Polish guy who was mentored by one of Cofidis’s soigneurs – was arrested at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, carrying doping products. The soigneur, ‘Bob’ Boguslaw Madejak, had brought several young Poles across from Poland and secured them contracts, acting as agent, doctor and father figure. Bob was a great soigneur and part of the old guard, but from what we could tell, he didn’t seem to do anything that was too risky.
As soon as we heard about Marek being arrested we knew Bob would be next. He was in Spain with us at our pre-season training camp, but it was like watching a dead man walking. He was naturalised French and his family lived in France, so he had no choice but to return.
Marek was released after cooperating with the police and telling them what they wanted to know, while Bob, arrested on arrival when he flew home, simply refused to speak. He was of the Eastern bloc old school. In the 1980s, as part of the Polish national cycling team, he had escaped the country and been forced to leave his family behind in Poland for two years until he could get them out. A few months in jail weren’t a big deal to Bob.
It seemed obvious to most of us that Gaumont would be the next to be arrested. He had previously been detained by the police and was the obvious target. After the camp ended, when the team returned to France, Philippe and Cedric Vasseur were arrested and held for the maximum 48-hour period.
During their detention, l’Équipier and I were implicated, just as I had feared. People knew I worked with Jesús, but Gaumont wrapped us up in other accusations as well. He claimed that we’d been taking cocaine at the training camp in Calpe. Whatever Gaumont’s recollection, I knew this was not true, but he had no choice but to drag others into it all, as he was drug-tested while in custody and knew that he would test positive for cocaine and whatever else he’d been taking.
I knew what I’d done – and I also knew what I hadn’t done. I was the golden boy of the team but Philippe made me sound like a monster. I could only surmise that, even in the death throes of his cycling career, he tried to protect himself by implicating me and as many others as he could in order to reduce the impact of his own corruption.
The police were convinced they’d unearthed a massive drugs ring and that Cofidis operated a complex internal doping programme. All of us knew that this was about as far from the truth as was possible, but we also knew they would do everything within their power to prove their theory. Gaumont certainly made it sound as if there was systematic doping, but then he was genuinely convinced that it was impossible to be a successful professional cyclist without doping.
The L’Equipe had received leaks of the statements that Gaumont had given to the investigating judge. They had two journalists working on the story and when I saw either of their numbers appear on my phone, my palms would sweat and my heart would race.
I never knew what their latest bit of information would be, so
I always assumed the worst. Had l’Équipier talked? Had they found something out that nobody knew?
I was not very good at weathering this storm. For the first time I was being asked, point blank, whether I’d ever doped. Up to that point, I’d never had to lie, simply because I had always been thought of as an innocent. Now I was having to lie, but I didn’t live with it well.
The day before I was supposed to compete in Manchester at the Track World Cup, for Team GB, Cofidis withdrew the whole team from racing in order to try to bring an end to the ongoing saga that was the Cofidis affair. We were grounded for a month. During that time, Cofidis planned to put new internal controls and rules in place so that the team could move forward.
The team ran the first of what were planned to be regular hair tests, able to detect drug use over the previous months (depending on the length of the hair and the drugs they were looking for).
We also signed the latest ethical charter, but God knows how many of these we’d signed in the previous years. It was all more of a publicity stunt than anything else, because Cofidis had fundamentally failed when it came to preventing doping. But the last thing they wanted to do was admit it.
The Cofidis affair had also attracted the interest of the French tax authorities. Gaumont had told the police about certain riders in the team receiving income from image contracts paid through a Luxembourg holding company. He had been the recipient of this type of contract when he had first come to the team and was generously paid.
As a result, the police raided the Cofidis headquarters and took all our contracts. It was only a matter of time before I would receive demands from the dreaded ‘fiscal Française’. I got in touch with a UK firm to try and piece together the previous four years of accounts, but it was a gargantuan task and one that had no prospect of a happy outcome. Now I faced the very real threat of losing my house.