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

by David Millar

  I waited until a group had escaped from the front of the peloton and the bunch was giving chase. When we were completely strung out, and one rider had decided to try and bridge across, I jumped onto his wheel and sat there waiting for him to tire. I knew that he’d expect us to work together – we were brothers in arms until we reached the safety of the break ahead. I didn’t want any brothers though. I waited patiently for him to swing over, expecting me to set the pace, and then launched one huge effort that left him far behind and took me up to the group ahead.

  But the peloton wasn’t giving up. I looked over my shoulder and saw an approaching mass of riders, spread menacingly across the width of the road. At the bottom of a steep hill, I decided to make my move, leaving behind the group I was with, and distancing the peloton in the process, I felt so strong, completely within myself, adrenalin flowing, as the emotion took over.

  Now I was where I wanted to be. I was leading the Tour de France, on my own, through England.

  I didn’t care that it was a futile move. I felt like I owed it to the crowds who had come out to cheer the Brits on. I’d never seen so many people at the roadside. They were perched on lamp-posts, standing on walls, leaning out of windows – and endless kids hauled up on their dads’ shoulders. The crowds parted ahead of me as I climbed up the hills and the villages and towns welcomed me with a deafening roar. Goose bumps rippled over me.

  Four riders were chasing me, but I ignored the time checks. I was only interested in the gap I had to the peloton and once that reached 5 minutes, I regretfully eased off the pedals and slowed to await my four pursuers.

  During that lull, I was able to pay more attention to what was going on around me. There were banners and Union flags bearing my name and in places ALLEZ MILLAR! was painted on the road. I was popular, people were cheering for me. I’d hoped Brits still supported me, but I hadn’t expected it, and I was so thankful and so proud. But that happiness was tinged with sadness. I wanted to stop, shake hands, and say sorry to everybody for my past mistakes.

  By the time the group of four caught me, I had already claimed one sprint bonus. I took the next one too. I’d also taken the first King of the Mountains points, but had opted out of the next one. As we closed on Canterbury, I was leading the Mountains classification with only one more climb to tackle.

  Now I had real hopes of taking the King of the Mountains jersey at the end of the day, but I was tiring. Inevitably the breakaway would be caught, so I radioed behind and got my team to start chasing. Meanwhile, I dropped out of the breakaway group and awaited the peloton’s arrival. The tactic was simple: my team would shut down the break while I rested in the peloton. When we hit the last climb I would be replenished enough to score the King of the Mountains points I needed. It was a calculated gamble.

  The peloton reeled in every rider from the break apart from Stephen Augé of Cofidis. He’d stayed away and was going to score maximum points on the last climb, which meant I had to secure second place to have any hope of taking the Mountains jersey. Fortunately, I still had the legs and took second with a teammate sneaking into third behind me.

  During the final 20 kilometres, I was filled with cramp. I couldn’t get out of the saddle, but the finale was fast and mainly downhill – if it hadn’t been, I don’t know what I’d have done. I finished the day third overall in the race classification with the polka-dot King of the Mountains jersey on my back. It had been an amazing day.

  But I still want to say thank you - thank you to everybody who shouted for me, made banners and painted my name on the road. You carried me along and gave me a polka-dot jersey that I had never imagined wearing. And maybe there was a teenager out there who will be racing in the Tour one day, who’ll remember seeing me pass by and who will do the same thing if he ever gets the chance.

  I’ll do my best to make sure he never has to experience what I went through to get there.

  24

  THE PERSUADER

  Whenever I gave interviews and spoke about how long it would take for cycling to heal itself, I would usually say ten years. Sometimes, people would be shocked or depressed by this answer, but then another scandal would come along to prove my point – just as it did in July 2007.

  For the Festina affair read Operación Puerto, for David Millar read Alexandre Vinokourov.

  Once the race had left England, things got worse at the 2007 Tour. The British tabloid press – not for the first time – called it the Tour de Farce. After tying himself in knots over whether he had lied to the UCI, his team and the media over missed doping controls, the race leader, Michael Rasmussen, quit the race in shame under cover of darkness. Hot on his heels, Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov, lauded for his coverage and gutsy riding, tested positive.

  Vinokourov – ‘Vino’ – and his Astana team had arrived at the Tour with the intention of total domination, but a crash in the first week had effectively killed off his overall chances. But in a startling return to form, he recovered to win a time trial in dominant fashion and then one of that year’s hardest mountain stages in the Pyrenees. L’Equipe hailed it as Le Courage de Vino – within 48 hours, courage had turned to dopage.

  On the Tour’s second rest day in Pau, Saunier Duval had organised a press conference, publicising the sponsor’s involvement in conservation. Knowing that not many from the media would come to us, we took it to them, holding court in the press centre at the Palais des Congrès.

  There were three Saunier Duval riders: Spanish climber Iban Mayo – the day after the 2007 Tour finished it was announced that he had been random controlled that very day and had tested positive for EPO – Christophe Rinero, my old Cofidis teammate, and myself.

  It was a lacklustre affair. Almost all the questions were directed towards me and there was little interest in Saunier Duval’s good deeds. The few journalists there were trying their best just to find things to ask, hoping perhaps to give the whole affair some heart. It was a little desperate really and in truth a bit embarrassing.

  So we were all easily distracted by a buzz that suddenly started to wash over the press room. Watching from the platform, as people started running, phones rang off the hook and shouts erupted across the desks, it felt like a tsunami. I could feel something malevolent in the distance heading my way. Then it hit us, full force – a tidal wave of shit.

  British journalist, Daniel Friebe told me what had happened. Vinokourov had tested positive after his two stage wins. I was in total shock.

  I collapsed inside. Vino had been one of my heroes. I loved his attacking style and truly believed if anybody could do it clean, then he could. Admittedly, I’d been a little disturbed when it had been disclosed pre-Tour that he was trained by Michele Ferrari, and his total avoidance of tackling the subject of doping disappointed me too, but, at the same time, if I was clean and never doped, I’d be pissed off about being asked about it over and over again. And, after all, I’d worked with Luigi Cecchini and been clean – I wasn’t exactly in a position to jump to conclusions about Vino working with Ferrari.

  Daniel asked me for my reaction. My response was simple, off the cuff. ‘We may as well pack our bags and go home,’ I said. Mayo and Rinero, sitting alongside, sensing my mood, shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

  As soon as I said it, I knew I couldn’t throw in the towel like that. I wasn’t allowed to believe that. I’d promised myself that when coming back to the sport I would take responsibility. So I tried to gather myself, to defend the progress being made in anti-doping, saying that the very fact that Vino had been caught was a massive step forward. I remember giving my heartfelt opinion on it all and there being a ripple of applause when I’d finished. But the shock was deep, and it was all such a blur.

  We stood up to leave. A huddle of journalists quickly surrounded me and Paul Kimmage began to berate me. I can’t even remember what Kimmage was saying, but I felt woozy with it all, desperate for some fresh air. Eventually the huddle broke up. Jeremy Whittle from The Times, who’d seen me go throu
gh a lot, always there as a witness and often as a friend, sensed my unease.

  ‘David,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

  I began to well up.

  ‘I just feel like crying,’ I said and then sat down on the nearest chair.

  He put his arm around my shoulder and allowed the mask to fall. I just sat there, head in my hands, in tears. Meanwhile, Kimmage watched from across the room.

  In the Sunday Times that weekend, Kimmage skewered me, accusing me of crying for Vinokourov, talking of my ‘tears for a cheat’.

  He was wrong. They were not tears for a cheat, nor were they tears of self-pity, desperation or fatigue.

  I wept because suddenly, definitively, I fully understood the gravity of what I’d done to my sport and to everybody who had believed in me, cheered for me, defended me and trusted in me. I’d broken their hearts the way that Vino had broken mine.

  The Tour de France always ends with a party and 2007 was no different. I didn’t linger at the Saunier Duval function as I wasn’t really hanging out with the riders by this point. We weren’t enemies – we just didn’t really have much reason to spend time together away from racing.

  Afterwards, Nicole and our photographer friend, Camille McMillan, popped into the CSC team’s bash, hooked up with Christian Vande Velde and then headed off to the private party that the Discovery Channel team – who’d just won the Tour with Alberto Contador – was hosting in the Hotel Crillon.

  We wandered into the penthouse of the Crillon and, to our surprise, stumbled on one of the cooler post-Tour parties that I’ve been to. Given how corporate Discovery could be, this was a surprise.

  Discovery had the best after party?

  Although Contador had won the Tour, the team’s management figureheads – recently retired Lance Armstrong and his longstanding colleagues Johan Bruyneel and Bill Stapleton – couldn’t find a new sponsor. Yet – after winning eight Tours and also earning significant wealth – instead of thanking the sport and bowing out graciously, they were critical.

  ‘It’s not an environment right now that’s conducive to a lot of investment,’ Stapleton said, as a way of explaining their inability to find a sponsor.

  ‘Clearly things need to improve on many levels, with a more unified front, before you would see us venture back into cycling,’ Lance stated.

  Bruyneel, Stapleton and Armstrong, in particular, owed everything to cycling, and yet now they treated it with what I felt was disdain.

  I’d written to Lance criticising his disregard for the state of cycling, and attacking the way that the Discovery team had signed Ivan Basso, despite the allegations of doping against him. Basso was still at the centre of the Operación Puerto storm and, due to the tacit agreement between most teams not to sign or race those under investigation, their pursuit of Basso had seemed deliberately provocative. I believed that to be particularly irresponsible and of no help to the state of cycling at that time.

  The thought of them walking away from cycling like that was on my mind when I saw Lance at the Crillon and wandered over to say hello.

  Earlier that day, I’d been among the only guys in the peloton not wearing Livestrong-branded sunglasses on the final stage, something I was sure he knew. Oakley – a company that sponsored dozens of cyclists and that I’d had a long relationship with – had sent people round the team buses the day before the Paris stage, handing out black-and-yellow Livestrong sunglasses for the riders to wear on the Champs Elysées.

  I’d always liked Lance, but I didn’t feel like representing him or his brand. I could have justified wearing the glasses and supporting the cancer charity, but at the same time Livestrong, especially at the Tour de France, was much more representative of Lance Armstrong, the brand, than it was of a cancer charity. So I took the decision not to wear the sunglasses. I didn’t think it had been fair of Oakley. It seemed to me that the company was almost forcing them on us, and I really didn’t like that.

  Lance is a charismatic but controversial man. All the good he’s done has been tarnished by the never-ending accusations. His wins in the Tour de France came during what was one of the most doped periods of professional cycling. Almost every single one of his ex-teammates who attempted to come out of his shadow was caught for doping and some have also made allegations against him. Tyler Hamilton, Roberto Heras, Floyd Landis – they were all Lance’s lieutenants who changed teams and tried to beat him. Yet, once on other teams, all of them ended up failing doping controls.

  I can’t say definitively if Lance doped or not. Yes, there are all the stories and rumours, but I never saw him dope with my own eyes. If he did dope, then, after all that he has said and done, it would be unforgivable. Certainly, his performances in the Tour were extraordinary, unprecedented, but then he’s unlike anybody I have ever met, a force of nature. But I felt he could have done more and he should have done more against doping; he was in a position to make a difference and to help his sport, but I never saw any evidence of that.

  He is a phenomenal human being – I would never argue against that. He lives life on a different level, controlling his world in a omnipotent manner, leading by example but also by fear. His ability to motivate, based on his absolute self-belief and complete fearlessness of failure, is legendary. His own lack of fear brainwashes those around him to believe in everything he does.

  But you don’t fuck with Lance because he will not forgive you – in his mind, in cycling at least, forgiveness equates to weakness. What also sets him apart is his ability always to be switched on, to not make mistakes. Every detail is thought of and taken care of. Yet there’s no doubt he’s an odd fish, and sometimes unpredictable. After we started chatting at the Crillon, I quickly got on to the subject of the Livestrong sunglasses.

  ‘Of course I noticed you didn’t wear them, Dave,’ he said, calmly, ‘but it’s your choice.’

  I explained that I didn’t agree with Oakley forcing them on us, that they didn’t have the right. So what did Lance say in response?

  ‘You want me to speak to Oakley and get them to sort you out a new contract?’

  That threw me, although not for long. So then I asked him if he’d received the emails I’d sent him the year before, taking him and Discovery to task for signing Basso, emails that he’d not responded to.

  ‘Yeah, I saw them,’ he said.

  By now, drink in hand, I was warming to my theme.

  ‘Look, Lance – I know how much you love the Tour,’ I said, ‘but you’re alienating yourself from it more and more. What are you going to do twenty years from now if you’re not welcome back? How can they invite you back as a past champion if you treat the sport like shit and are clouded in controversy . . .?’

  Lance stared at me. So did a wide-eyed Christian and an increasingly unnerved Nicole, standing alongside me. I continued, undeterred.

  ‘You didn’t win seven Tours without loving the sport – I know that. Give something back, help us clean up the sport, it doesn’t matter what happened when you raced, it’s what happens now and in the future . . .’

  I awaited his response.

  ‘Dave,’ he said, ‘of course I love the sport, but I can’t help it if it won’t help itself. I’ve got bigger things to do now, Dave, and shit – life is amazing away from cycling. I could tell you stories you wouldn’t believe. I’m moving on.’

  I shook my head. ‘Lance, that’s bullshit. You will always come back to cycling . . .’

  We talked a little more and I told him about what Jonathan and I were doing. I knew Jonathan and Lance had history and I didn’t want that affecting Slipstream’s future, so I suggested that we should be allies, not enemies. We parted on good terms, I think – but I’d perhaps lectured him for a little too long – 10 minutes too long . . .

  Camille took a photo of our encounter. Lance is staring at me, stony-faced, as I lecture him. Alongside me is an edgy Christian, who had been on one of Lance’s Tour-winning teams and knew better than to say what I was saying.

&nb
sp; Sadly, I think it was the beginning of the end of my friendship with Lance. He’d always stood by me and supported me, but I was now a different person from the person I had been when we’d first met. And I could no longer pretend otherwise – even with Lance.

  Saunier Duval dropped me from their team for that autumn’s Vuelta. I was pissed off but I knew that I was paying the price for my conflicts with the team earlier that year. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was the end of the Worlds, because, without racing in the Vuelta before the World Championships, I stood little chance of competing against those who had.

  So I focused on other things and was very proud to win both the British road and time trial titles. As I had won the individual pursuit title earlier in the year, this meant that I held three of the most prestigious national championships.

  It was very important to me, and it meant that I’d race all road events in the following year in the white jersey of British national champion. It felt fitting that I’d be launching my dream team wearing my country’s colours.

  My standing as a reformed athlete was growing and UK Sport had put me forward as the British nomination for the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Athlete Committee. This was a complete surprise and a great honour. It gave my anti-doping role within sport an official title.

  Each stakeholder country in WADA can put forward a recommended nominee for the committee. It’s then up to the WADA executive committee to select who it believes is an appropriate addition and matches the cross-section they are looking for.

  The majority of the committee is made up of former athletes, but there are a few who are still active. But there wasn’t – nor had there ever been – an ex-doper or a professional cyclist.

  Suggesting my name was a forward-thinking move by UK Sport, but one that we thought might not be supported by WADA, which had long been critical of cycling’s record on doping. But my nomination was approved and I was elected to a three-year term on the Athlete Committee. I was now officially part of WADA, the global agency promoting anti-doping – something that would have seemed preposterous a few years earlier.