by David Millar
I was fascinated by their plan. In many ways, much of what we’d created with Slipstream had been based on what I’d learned from Dave. His methodology and management style, militaristic in its precision and planning, was like nothing else that existed in cycling.
Initially, it was out of the question that I might leave Slipstream, but the prospect of working with Dave and my sister captured my imagination. Before long, the subject had been broached and I met with Dave and France.
The thought of joining SKY was exciting, but neither Dave nor I could fully commit; I felt great loyalty and love for where I was and Dave had a more surprising reason – that I wasn’t to discover for a few more months.
JV, Christian and most of the Slipstream team seemed resigned to the prospect of me leaving for SKY. They knew how close I was to Dave and were aware of the admiration I had for him. The fact that my sister was the other key player made it seem all the more inevitable. Yet I didn’t want to leave; every time I went to a race I was reminded of what an amazing team Slipstream was. I was totally confused.
Then I broke my collarbone in Paris–Nice and found myself on the sidelines, with too much time to think. Eventually I decided I would definitely stay with Slipstream. Then I decided I’d absolutely definitely go to SKY.
In the end, the decision was made for me. Dave told me that SKY couldn’t take me because of my doping past and that he would be enforcing a zero tolerance policy towards any members of the SKY professional cycling team having any prior doping history.
I understood their position and didn’t hold any bad feelings, certainly not towards Dave. After all, he’d stood by me through the most horrible of times when everyone else had fled. Dave didn’t owe me anything. In fact, it was the reverse, because he’d contributed hugely to my renaissance.
But it brought home how little Dave and SKY knew or understood the world the team would soon be entering. In the current climate, it is nigh on impossible to construct a professional cycling team without people involved who have encountered doping in one form or another. Doping had been so prevalent on the European scene that the whole team would have to be under 25 to come close to guaranteeing no doping history. Even then, you couldn’t be sure.
This was where JV and Slipstream had been so smart. He had accepted the pragmatic truth that, in order to create a clean modern team, you had to acknowledge the past. He knew that the past couldn’t be swept under the carpet; it had to be understood and accepted, not ignored and forgotten.
Part of Slipstream’s bid to be as transparent as possible meant confronting our demons. One of mine came in the form of Irish sportswriter and former pro cyclist Paul Kimmage, a winner of sportswriter of the year and also author of the ground-breaking, Rough Ride.
Kimmage and I had history. When I’d been embroiled in the opening cross-fire of the Cofidis affair and mired in denial, Paul had wanted to interview me. Paranoid and scared, not to mention knowing that he was fervently anti-doping, and – so I thought at the time – anti-cycling, I declined.
That made him angry. Typically, he wrote about me anyway and published an article, in which it became clear that I had threatened to sue him and the Sunday Times. It became a bit of a mess, although not one that I was particularly concerned with as a far bigger judicial problem was heading my way.
The conflict left its mark on Paul though, and was probably one of the reasons why he held me in such incredibly low esteem. That said, I think there are many people on Paul’s radar that are held in low esteem, so it wasn’t as if I was getting his undivided attention.
His ‘tears for a cheat’ article on me after the Vinokourov doping scandal simply reinforced the sentiments we shared for each other. I saw him as bitter, small-minded and unforgiving. He didn’t believe I had reformed – he saw me as lying scum.
That was how things stood when JV called me to ask if I’d be open to being interviewed by him. He also asked if I’d mind if he followed the team through our first Tour de France. Initially, I wasn’t keen and expressed my doubts to JV, but then, after some thought, accepted that it would be the ultimate display of transparency. Showing a renowned and sceptical journalist who hated my guts and didn’t trust me or believe that we were sincere and trustworthy would surely silence the majority of doubters. There was no option really.
Paul came to our training camp in the Pyrenees about two weeks before the Tour started. This seemed like a good idea as we had a fair bit of ice to break through. I had already decided that I had no problem wiping the slate clean and in fact felt I had become quite accustomed to it.
But I was interested to see how Kimmage would be with me. Paul seems on edge the whole time and finds it very hard to make eye contact unless he’s The Interviewer. There is no spontaneity in his style; it is not a conversation. Instead, it is a formal interview that has been scrupulously researched and structured. He is a professional through and through. First though, we had to bury the hatchet.
I was very welcoming to Paul, which I don’t think he expected. We shook hands, went up to the apartment I was staying in and sat down at the dining table.
‘I want to show you something,’ he said.
This was classic Kimmage, no messing around, straight to the point. He handed me a pile of faxed pages, with key sections highlighted.
Jeremy Whittle’s book, Bad Blood, had come out that very day. In one chapter, Jeremy met with Paul to talk about doping. Kimmage had been unflinching in his criticism of me and of my comeback to the sport.
One strike and you’re out [he’d said]. I find it hard to accept that he is now being heralded as a whistle-blower. He didn’t blow any whistles, didn’t do any favours to cycling.
When I see Millar welcomed back like a hero ... I mean – I tried to do the sport a service. But he hasn’t shat on any of his pals, he’s still playing the game, still respecting the omerta.
Millar should not have been let back into the sport. He should have been banned for life. Until the sport does that, there’s no chance.
I read through the pages slowly, enjoying how uncomfortable Paul was. I knew what he thought of me and in some ways it was actually liberating to have him sit and watch me while I read it. I put my hand in the fire and held it there.
I didn’t think Paul was objective about cycling.
Confronting doping – confronting me – was so personal for Paul. Sometimes I couldn’t believe that he even covered cycling, given his bitterness and the emotionally charged hold that it had on him.
I’d been amazed to read an article he’d authored about the Etape du Tour, the mass-participation event, organised by ASO, that recreates a mountain stage of the Tour de France. In the piece, he had belittled all those who took part, making them sound like complete imbeciles for wanting to emulate professional cyclists.
I thought it was a very misjudged piece, but it allowed me to look at him differently. He had never forgiven cycling for what he perceived it had done to him. He was an embittered fanatic, but as my mum always told me: ‘There’s a very fine line between love and hate.’
And I think this was the problem. He still wanted to love cycling, but he couldn’t reconcile the grey world in which it existed with the black and white world he longed for.
I put the pages down.
‘Well, I think we’ve both said things about each other,’ I said. ‘If we’re going to do this then we need to start at zero.’
He nodded and we shook hands.
I genuinely meant what I said. After all, I was the ex-doper, the enemy. If he was willing to give me a second chance then I was sure I could win him over; I was just as sure that he wanted to be won over.
He wanted to believe in cycling again and I wanted to help him rediscover his faith.
25
KEEPING THE FAITH
Bradley Wiggins shone at the 2009 Tour de France. He reached a new level, performing as Christian Vande Velde had done the year before. But, unlike Christian, Brad was supported through the race
by a brilliant team.
Brad’s performance a few weeks earlier at the Giro d’Italia had hinted that he might perform well in the mountain stages of the Tour, but we didn’t expect him to be one of the best. He was definitely the star of the show, but he couldn’t have done it without Christian and the team.
As Brad blossomed and the Tour went on, Christian reverted back to his old role of the loyal lieutenant. Christian shared his years of experience with Brad, telling him everything he’d learned the previous year, when he’d found himself in exactly the same position.
In fact, it was amazing Christian was even riding in the Tour that year. He’d crashed badly in the Giro, breaking bones in his back and ribs and had only been on his bike for three weeks before the Tour started. Under those circumstances, Christian’s seventh place finish overall, with little training and despite being still injured, was even more impressive than Brad’s fourth place.
My job at the Tour was to work for Christian and Brad and to protect their place in the classification. I made sure that they were always in the best positions for the most critical moments in the race. As a team, our collective performance was phenomenal. We almost won the coveted team time trial, which, considering that the majority of the team had been struggling after only 8 of the 38 kilometres, was remarkable.
Brad, Christian, Dave Zabriskie and I rode the last 30 kilometres on our own with Ryder Hesjedal clinging on for dear life as our fifth man. That was all-important as the collective time is taken on the fifth member of the team to cross the finish line.
It was a close thing and we narrowly missed out. The Astana team of Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador only beat us by 18 seconds – and that was with their nine-man team intact for the whole stage.
On the stage to Verbier, we again demonstrated collective discipline and power, leading the peloton to the bottom of the climb and supporting Brad with a fantastic lead-out on the lower slopes, so that when the inevitable Contador acceleration came, he was in the best possible position.
But then I’d never been on a team that rode with the same discipline and motivation as we did in that Tour. Every day we rode our hearts out and we were finally rewarded with second place in the overall team classification. In only our second year in existence, we were one of the strongest and most organised teams in the world. It was incongruous, given our happy-go-lucky, relaxed, ‘whatever’ reputation.
On the Tour’s final stage, we had planned to set up our sprinter Tyler Farrar, by leading out the sprint on the Champs Elysées. To ensure that we were as quick as possible, Tyler, Brad, Zab – Dave Zabriskie – and I wore our time trial speedsuits and brought out our fastest, lightest wheels, even though we had ride the cobblestones of the Champs. Wearing speedsuits, designed to be skintight and aerodynamic, in a normal road stage wasn’t the done thing, but then we were so keen to support Tyler that we didn’t care if the other riders laughed at us.
We wore our normal race jerseys over the top, thinking that would hide our plan. Zab had even gone so far as to wear two sets of race numbers, one set on the faux jersey he was wearing over the top of the speedsuit, the other on the speedsuit itself. But, unwittingly, he blew our cover, pinning the race numbers so low on his speedsuit that, once he was on the bike, all four numbers were perfectly visible.
Then, rather than concealing our cunning plan, Zab only drew attention to himself. As the race rolled away from the start area, he announced that he needed to do a number two – while wearing a speedsuit in the peloton.
Zab takes a keen interest in bodily functions. He even owns his own colonic irrigation machine back in the States. When his house was broken into, perhaps unsurprisingly, it was one of the few items that the thieves left behind. He’s also got an eccentric sense of humour. Sometimes I think his deadpan, desert-dry wit would suit a Coen brothers film.
This, after all, is the man who has his own lubrication company, DZnuts, pronounced Deez Nuts. He even had ‘Official Applicator’ T-shirts made (‘For the ladies,’ he said). He’s also a little OCD when it comes to cleanliness, so there was little chance of him pooing ‘wild’. And, as he didn’t have his habitual baby wipes, I couldn’t foresee a happy ending.
Taking a dump is not the easiest thing to do while racing in the Tour de France, but it’s particularly inconvenient when wearing a race jersey over a full-body, super-tight, aerodynamic speedsuit. Thankfully, his need arose during the promenade section of the stage, as the peloton rolled gently through little villages in the countryside outside Paris.
As I watched his anxiety grow, I couldn’t contain myself.
‘Zab, you’re screwed,’ I guffawed. ‘You’ll lose minutes just undressing ...’
‘I know, Goddammit,’ he snapped. ‘I gotta make a plan.’ He was clearly using all his mental energy to restrain the turtle’s head.
I was in hysterics as I rejoined the bunch. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of him skidding to a halt outside an Indian restaurant and running through the door, shouting in alarm, much to the complete bafflement of those standing around on the pavement, who’d come to applaud the heroes of the Tour.
About 20 minutes later, he was back in the bunch, riding alongside me, filling me in on the grisly details. He’d run into the restaurant shouting, ‘TOILET?! EMERGENCY!’ while simultaneously struggling out of his speedsuit.
Moments later, he’d strolled back through the dining room to his bike, bidding onlookers a cheery goodbye, while thanking them – ‘Mercyyy, Mercyyyy’– in his deep, Utah drawl.
Our sprint lead-out for Tyler on the Champs Elysées went almost perfectly, as the whole team did their job – except Brad.
One by one, we took a huge turn at the front, keeping the pace as high as we could to prevent attacks, so preparing the way for Tyler’s sprint. Christian and I led the peloton into the final kilometre, and when I peeled off, expecting Brad to be in his designated position to set up Tyler’s finishing sprint, he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Ty’s final lead-out man, Julian Dean, had to make double the effort. But without Brad taking his turn, Julian was faced with too far to go, effectively ruining Tyler’s chances in the sprint.
I was furious. It was the one day that Brad was asked to give something back to the team, after we’d given him everything for three weeks. Yet I felt he hadn’t even tried and had remained about 80 places back in the middle of the bunch, without even telling us he wasn’t going to help.
We felt let down by him. We’d done so much to help him, yet he couldn’t even make this final gesture of camaraderie on the last day. He was the polar opposite to Christian, who was always part of the team, whether leading or helping. To me it was thoughtless of Brad that he did not see the symbolic nature of what he’d been asked to do. It was an omen of things to come over the next few months.
For the first time in my career, I had ridden all three Grand Tours – the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta. After I won the final time trial in the Vuelta – my fifty-sixth Grand Tour stage of that year – I headed back to Girona.
Brad had made Girona a second home, spending periods training and living there. In the two months since the Tour had ended, we’d had no contact, but as we’d roomed together for most of the Tour and I’d captained the team that had taken him to his Tour success, I’d been looking forward to meeting up, for lunch or dinner, and celebrating his success.
But I didn’t hear from him. It seemed he had already forgotten the team. All we heard were rumours of him leaving Slipstream and moving to SKY, who were desperate to sign him after his Tour performance. In fact, Brad had another year on his contract, but this didn’t seem to be an obstacle to Brad, Dave Brailsford or to the people at SKY.
I knew the rumours about Brad and SKY were well founded. During the first rest day of that summer’s Tour, we were sharing a room and Brad had disappeared for a few hours. When he got back, I asked him where he’d been. He told me the truth – that he’d been meeting with Dave Brailsford, who wanted to br
eak his contract and sign him to SKY for the following year.
What he told me didn’t affect our state of mind because we had a professional job to do and we did it. But I also expected that, whatever the final outcome of his negotiations, Brad would still respect us as teammates and friends.
During that year’s World Road Championships, the speculation continued. In an interview with the BBC, Brad fuelled the intrigue even further when he used a football analogy to explain his perception of the difference between Slipstream and SKY.
‘It’s a bit like trying to win the Champion’s League,’ he said. ‘You need to be at Manchester United and I’m playing for Wigan.’ Brad subsequently said it was a wrench for him to leave Garmin, and too good an opportunity to turn down to work with David Brailsford. It seemed to me, though, that he had no feeling for what we’d achieved as a team. It also ensured that Jonathan and I hardened our hearts towards him.
After he’d made that hurtful comment, we looked forward to watching him fail. We knew what he was capable of as a rider and we also knew that, in the 2009 Tour, the stars had aligned perfectly for him.
I actually found what he said quite funny. He was digging himself a hole. We were certain that he’d never be on the podium at the Tour, which made it a little easier to hear all his big talk. As we listened to him, Christian and I just shook our heads in amazement.
Nonetheless, I took the whole affair badly. JV and I had wanted to keep Brad – I had agreed to a large pay cut on my 2010 contract so that we could offer a new deal to Brad that came closer to matching what SKY had offered him – and this meant that I became more personally invested in the whole saga. Inevitably, Brad eventually left. He didn’t thank us, nor did we feel we were given the respect we were due. I have found it hard to forgive him.
I finished paying off my debts in 2009. Nicole and I had been living off my IVA allowance for long enough to have developed a sensible attitude towards money. I’d broken free from the status-based attitude within the professional sporting world – our lifestyle didn’t match what I earned or my position within cycling – and no longer suffering from ‘status anxiety’ was liberating.