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

by David Millar

  Nicole and I got married that autumn. It was a magical day that exceeded our hopes and expectations. The service was in the church in the village where Nicole had grown up, and friends and family came from all over the world. Stuey, Whitey, Ruggero and Nicole’s brother Dom were my ushers and Harry was my best man.

  Nicole looked stunning and was so wonderfully happy. I would live that day over and over again simply to see everybody I love so happy. In my speech, I thanked everybody for coming and then talked of ‘a life less ordinary’.

  Then I spoke about my parents. ‘I’ve not been the easiest son. I know I’ve brought you as much heartache as I have joy, but you’ve been wonderful and I thank you, Mum, Pater-san, for making me who I am.’

  I thanked Nicole’s mum and dad, Nigel and Desirée – Desirée who had met me in Mallorca when I had been there with the Major and who, with premonitory powers, promptly telephoned Nicole to tell her she’d found the right man for her – and then spoke about Frances.

  ‘I hope that if Nicole and I are lucky enough to have children that they will have the good fortune to love each other as much as we do, because a life without my sister would have been so bloody dull,’ I said.

  Nicole had abstained from having bridesmaids, so I had been unable to resist the opportunity to dress some of cycling’s best known names in skirts, with the ushers all sporting kilts.

  ‘It has been an ongoing debate between Stuey and Whitey whether they would be going full Scottish today,’ I said, while crediting Nicole for allowing such a lethal combination of gentlemen to have such important roles. ‘No doubt we will find out before the night is over.’

  Now that my debts were paid off, Nicole and I could finally start thinking of getting a mortgage and moving forward. We’d done our research over the previous two years; we knew the market and what we wanted, and we had found a house near Girona, close to where we were already living, that fitted the bill. We had a concrete future plan and life was sweet.

  One lunchtime, after I’d got back from training, I was making something for us both to eat when the doorbell rang. There were a couple of letters for me to sign for, one of which was from the Spanish tax office. I presumed it was the receipt for my second payment of 2008 tax, but it was a bill, which puzzled me. I opened it, glanced down and saw an unfathomable, terrifying number. It didn’t make sense.

  I felt physically sick. I’d paid everything back. I looked again. I had a week to pay it all or everything would be seized. In an instant, everything had changed and I was back in my nightmare of paranoia and hopelessness.

  ‘Calm down,’ I told myself. ‘This is a mistake.’

  Then I looked closer. The French tax office had taken advantage of a very new EU law that allowed them to make fresh demands through the Spanish tax authorities.

  I was catapulted back in time, reminded of something long forgotten, of very dark places and even darker feelings. The amount they were demanding was within €500 of the asking price for the house we’d found.

  The next week was horrible. It was both heartbreaking and terrifying telling Nicole. There were sleepless nights and tearful days. Only three months after concluding five years of paying for my earlier mistakes, our future had been torn from us. We deserved far more. I felt sad for Nicole and fearful that, after living in blissful ignorance, dreaming of a house, kids and a secure future, I had let her down.

  I had to deal with the problems quickly though and so went to work with seven different accountants in three different countries. I had already spent £200,000 on accountancy fees.

  I transferred our money out of Spain and came to terms with the fact that buying a house and building a life there was no longer an option, as long as the French were still after me. I knew that the tax authorities in France would happily battle for years and that the only place I was protected legally was the UK, due to the IVA that had been agreed in 2005. My Spanish accountant managed to stop the seizure, at the death, but the French clerk in charge of my dossier was on holiday during the whole manic week.

  I needed perspective though and it came from Fran. She sent me a text message, a week after the arrival of the letter, that reminded me of where I’d come from. I’d been in a much worse place – being reminded of how sad I’d been in Biarritz allowed me to put things in perspective.

  We sat on those steps, on that beach, and we promised we’d never be there again.

  We spoke about a fast-forward button, and how, in that horrible time, being able to press it and see what the future held would be both scary and comforting.

  Well, imagine if we’d had one and pressed it.

  You’d have seen that in five years you’d have met and married a beautiful woman, had your bike racing back, and would be held in higher esteem by your peers and the wider world than you ever were.

  You wouldn’t have believed it.

  Breathe deep. Hang on. And rage, rage, rage, against those who try to break you.

  You beat them once. YOU WILL BEAT THEM AGAIN.

  I’d felt like giving up when I’d received that letter from the tax authorities. France’s message reminded me who I was, what I’d been through, and it helped me to stop feeling sorry for myself.

  I had lived a short time without a future, completely lost – never alone, but very lost. We say in bad times that it’s happening for a reason, perhaps – because it makes us feel better – to give times of strife a higher purpose, even if we find it hard to believe.

  Nicole and I were awoken to what we had and where we’d come from. We stopped living in the future. We already lived a wonderful life – we didn’t need anything else. It was time to slow everything down and live in the moment. France was right, I thought – ‘fuck ’em ...’

  I knew I had paid my debts, that it was unjustified to demand more of me. I could beat them, and I didn’t care how long it took. I wasn’t going to give up or run away. The past is as important as the future, but we only live in the here and now. I hadn’t appreciated that until I’d had my dreams almost wrenched away from me once again.

  Eventually, we did win. The claim for further tax payments was dropped.

  During the off-season, all that remains of Girona’s multinational pro-cycling fraternity are Canadian rider Michael Barry, and I. We’re the seasoned campaigners, the veterans.

  In the past, this period, leading up to Christmas, had always been the most trying part of the year for me. Unfit, battling bad weather and loneliness, the major races seeming a world away, I never enjoyed riding in winter, putting up with it only because I had to. But Michael and I had spent the previous two winters training together, ‘getting the miles in’, as they say.

  As we rode, we got to know each other even better. I’d never considered myself anything other than a racing cyclist; I was a thoroughbred, baffled by how or why people rode for fun, for relaxation or simply to escape. Riding with Michael was different. He introduced me to an ideal that I’d never previously grasped: cycling for the sake of cycling – which, in fact, I’d experienced briefly when I’d first got back on the bike after being banned.

  We spent hundreds of hours riding around Catalunya, Michael regaling me with anecdote after anecdote. After thousands of kilometres together, he’d got in the habit of starting each story with: ‘If I’ve told you this before, stop me.’ But the stories are just as entertaining the third, fourth or fifth time, and he spends 90 per cent of the time talking, so it seems fair to allow for some repetition.

  The Catalunyan landscape is sublime at times and, on our long winter rides, Michael and I experienced this more than most. Now I’m older, there’s no longer a direct correlation between my fitness and enjoyment on the bike. I didn’t really care any more if we had to go slow because we couldn’t go fast. We’d stop at times and take photos, we had tried and tested enough cafés to whittle them down to particularly trusted regulars, we had mountains we’d climb simply to get to the top, and routes to complement the accompanying weather. Out on the road,
we’d talk and talk. It was fun.

  Michael comes from a cycling background. His father, Mike, is originally from London, where he was immersed in the postwar cycling club scene – a scene that was social, not competitive, with tea and toast stops de rigueur. Mike Barry migrated to Toronto in the 1960s and eventually became a frame builder, developing his own Mariposa-branded bikes. A traditionalist through and through, Mike’s bikes are from another time and place.

  This was the cycling world that Michael knew and loved. He’d grown up around bikes and most of his friends and his father’s friends were cyclists. It was a world about as far away from my independent pure racing stock as could be imagined. I became fascinated with the idea of a cycling club run along those lines.

  That growing fascination led me to ask why we couldn’t recreate that club ethos ourselves – I now wanted to be part of it, and if it didn’t exist then why not create it? That was how Velo Club Roca-corba, our own social cycling club, was born. Rocacorba is the nearest mountain to Girona and is a climb often used by pros for training and testing, so it seemed appropriate we should call our club after it.

  Michael and I became passionate about the idea. We would meet in a Girona café to brainstorm with a sketchpad and notebook. Over time, we created the look and a basic manifesto for the club. I was to be president of Velo Club Rocacorba, Michael vice-president, and we invited carefully selected like-minded individuals to join us. Cycling was no longer just my job – it was my passion again. I was in a place in my life that I had never envisaged.

  We held our inaugural Velo Club Rocacorba dinner a few nights after I had received the traumatic letter from the tax office. It made me appreciate even more how lucky I was to be able to do such frivolous nonsensical things. Our first meeting, celebrated with a brilliant dinner at the renowned Can Roca restaurant, was a great success. The next day everybody from the club climbed Rocacorba.

  I started my 2010 racing season with the fearless attitude of a neo-pro. I wanted to enjoy being a professional cyclist while my body could still carry me through the biggest, toughest races – I didn’t care about goals or expectations any more, I was just determined to race my heart out.

  In fact, I’d started every race since my comeback with that mindset, but without really understanding why. Now I knew. Now I lived in the moment when I raced, not caring or worrying about anything beyond, or before, the start and finish lines. It was the final lesson for me to take from all of my trials and tribulations.

  After racing in Paris–Nice and a brief trip back to Malta for the first time since my birth, I went to the Classics, winning the Three Days of De Panne, considered to be one of the hardest and most dangerous races on the calendar. De Panne has special resonance for me: it was the scene of one of my very first professional wins, thirteen years earlier, and it was at De Panne that I’d asked Matt White to join Slipstream as a directeur. Appropriately, Whitey was directing as I clinched overall victory.

  Then, fuelled by my new attitude, I raced in the Tour of Flanders, deemed one of the most brutal one-day races and the domain of specialists and Classics veterans. When Stuey saw me on the start line in Bruges he was genuinely shocked.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here, Dave?’ he said in amazement.

  ‘Fancied a change.’ I shrugged. ‘Something new, you know – thought I’d come and have a play with you boys.’

  I was a naïf in these cobbled Classics so there was no way I could be taken seriously. I decided just to have a laugh about it. Although I’d just won De Panne, I decided the best way to play it was that I wasn’t serious, more inquisitive.

  ‘After fourteen years ...?!’ Stuey exclaimed. ‘Fuckm’ ’ell, Dave! I worry about you ... !’

  Starting Flanders turned out to be a good idea, because 250 kilometres later, I was off the front with Belgian champion Philippe Gilbert chasing Fabian Cancellera and Tom Boonen, all three Classics specialists. I don’t think Stuey had expected that, but then neither had I.

  Flanders is a wild event, deeply embedded in the Belgian sporting psyche and generating crowds similar to a Tour de France mountain stage. The main difference is that everybody is there to watch the race and to cheer their favourites on, unlike the Tour when people often wander out from a nearby campsite, simply to have a picnic and to catch random crap tossed from the publicity caravan.

  I was a little out of my depth and my inexperience cost me dearly, because Flanders is like no other race we tackle. Not only do you have to be the strongest rider, but you also have to be the best bike handler, to know the roads like the back of your hand, and to be fearless when it comes to positioning yourself in the frenzied peloton.

  I was in my element, but I had been too far back in the peloton when the attacks came, at one point finding myself walking up one of the many cobbled climbs. By the time I’d got back to the front, Cancellara and Boonen were long gone. Yet I was so euphoric just to have fought my way back up there that I attacked. Gilbert bridged up to me and then we were off, flogging ourselves in pursuit of the two leaders.

  I wasn’t in the habit of racing close to 270 kilometres, especially in one of the most difficult races that exists, so when we reached the bottom of the penultimate and legendary cobbled climb, the Muur de Grammont, my lights dimmed, flickered and then finally, as they say, went out.

  I crawled up the Grammont ‘wall’. But I was still one of the first on the road and on my own, an experience very few pros ever have on that hill. I can’t really remember it, as I was having an out-of-body experience at the time, but I know it happened because I’ve seen a photo.

  I was caught with 2 kilometres remaining, but recovered enough to lead out Tyler Farrar for the group sprint. I was empty when I crossed the line, rolling to a stop and sitting down against the barriers, just beyond the finish, trying to figure out what had just happened. Euphoric at winning the bunch sprint, Ty came and found me.

  ‘Holy shit, Dave, WE ROCK! The Dave and Ty Show save the day!’ he said exuberantly. ‘That lead-out was perfect, man. Thank God you were there.’

  Finally, taking in the state I was in, he paused. ‘Er, you okay . . .?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m so fucked, Ty,’ I said. ‘Really, I don’t think I’ve ever been this fucked. I was off the front with Gilbert, then, like a junior, I blew. They only caught me with 2 kilometres to go.’ I put my head back in my hands.

  Tyler stared at me. ‘NO WAY!’

  Now I knew he was impressed.

  13 JULY 2010, STAGE NINE OF THE TOUR DE FRANCE

  Injured in a series of crashes on the opening days of the 2010 Tour, David Millar is fighting for survival as the race enters the Alps ...

  Despite the damage to my ribs – and the pain everywhere else – I decided not to take painkillers before the stage from Morzine-Avoriaz to St-Jean-de-Maurienne, confident that I was feeling better after spending the previous day, a rest day, in bed. This turned out to be a mistake.

  From the moment the flag dropped, I felt weak. I knew straight away that I was in big trouble. After only 10 kilometres, the pace was frenzied and, as we descended a hill, the peloton was stretched taut, lined out, with me dangling precariously at the back of the train.

  I was pedalling at my maximum, but couldn’t hold the wheel and was losing ground on the guy in front of me. The rider behind came around me to fill the gap I’d allowed to open, a very bad sign so early in the day.

  I crawled over the first small obstacle, the Chatillon, a short 2-kilometre climb that normally I’d barely notice. Only 100 metres further on that hill and I would have been left behind, sliding backwards through the peloton, beyond the riders and through the team cars. As we came over the top, I was suddenly horrifically aware that I had made a major error in thinking that I was better.

  Next came the first major mountain pass, the Col de la Colombière. I prayed that the racing would settle down, that the bastards at the front would ease up and let me find a tempo, that we’d climb it at a controlled, steady,
slower speed. This did not happen. Instead, things got worse.

  From the lowest slopes of the Colombière, I was adrift, unable to stop my rapid slide out of the back of the bunch and into the convoy of following cars. Worse, every time I lifted myself out of the saddle to try to pedal a bit harder, my back began to spasm and there were stabbing pains from my ribs.

  I had even less power standing on the pedals than I did planted in the saddle. I was dropped on my own – the first rider to go. There were just under 180 kilometres remaining in the stage and four mountains to climb. was unequivocally, irredeemably, fucked.

  Experience of racing has taught me not to panic. I did my best to remain calm, thinking that if I kept a steady pace I would be able to catch up with the gruppetto. But even if this panned out, I knew I’d be alone for a long time. Moments later, I passed my teammate Ryder Hesjedal, stopping for a piss at the side of the road. A few hundred metres later, he caught up, looked across and in his Canadian West Coast drawl, said: ‘All right! Let’s go Millar Time!’

  I stared back, open-mouthed.

  ‘Ryder,’ I spat, ‘I’m fucked. I’m not going anywhere.’

  With a stunned look on his face, Ryder rode on.

  Soon he was out of sight, making his way back up through the cars in the convoy. I kept pedalling, and caught snatches of information from the race radios on the motorbikes overtaking me. The attacks were coming in waves at the front, leaving me even further behind.

  For the last few kilometres of the Colombière, I was 90 seconds behind the other dropped riders, now forming little groups of chasers behind the ever-smaller front peloton. The descent, too fast and not technical enough to allow a lone rider to close a gap, didn’t help me. By the time I got to the foot of the 2nd category Col des Aravis, I was minutes behind the group ahead of me.