29 SEPTEMBER 2001
Imran Khan
‘Cricket seems so small and far away’
The US war on terrorism has put a strain on the natural confidence of the Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician
By Edward Luce
It is not often one gets to meet a childhood hero. But Imran Khan, Pakistan’s finest-ever cricketer, and still the heart-throb of a million adolescent girls, is not in the mood for nostalgia. There is a strong atmosphere of foreboding in Islamabad, Pakistan’s gleaming modern capital, following the country’s decision to back the US in its war on terrorism.
‘For the first time in my life, I’m starting to feel rather old,’ said Imran. ‘I’ve always been a natural optimist. But the terrorist attacks and America’s declaration of war on terrorism both trouble me deeply.’
Dressed elegantly in a white shalwar kameez, the UK-educated leader and founder of the small Justice Movement party looks much younger than his 49 years. But there was also an air of wistfulness about the former Pakistan captain. And it took some effort to coax him off the subject of the US and what everyone in Pakistan assumes to be the impending war in Afghanistan.
We met, appropriately enough, at the Kabul Restaurant, a thread-bare Afghan outlet in the centre of Islamabad. Imran’s presence did not raise an eyebrow. ‘I love Afghani food – the mutton you get here is the most tender in the world,’ he said.
Imran ordered for us both: a simple meal of kebabs, stewed spinach, and unleavened Afghan bread. Although he was born in Punjab, Imran’s family originally came from the Pathan tribal areas that border and spill over into neighbouring Afghanistan. The hardline Taliban regime of Afghanistan is dominated by Pathans.
Romanticized by Kipling and others as the least repressible people in the British Raj, the ‘martial’ Pathans of the north-west frontier province have also supplied many of the fast bowlers that have brought Pakistan such success on the cricket field. Imran, of course, is the most celebrated of them all.
Our conversation inevitably turns to General Pervez Musharraf’s recent decision to back possible US-led action against Afghanistan. ‘Afghanis are our cousins, we share the same blood,’ said Imran. ‘Any attack that results in the death of innocent Afghani civilians will provoke an enormous backlash in Pakistan. It would be deeply immoral.’
As a graduate of Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Keble College, Oxford, Imran is well placed to observe the miscommunication that often curdles relations between Islamic countries and the west and expresses anxiety that the terrorist attacks on the US could provoke broader conflict between Islam and the west.
At the same time, he is dismissive of the religious hardliners in Pakistan who have come out on the streets to chant ‘Death to America’ and ‘Long live Osama’ – in support of Osama bin Laden, prime suspect for the outrages.
‘These people are not representative of most Pakistanis,’ said Imran. ‘But the western media, especially the TV outlets, have been focusing almost exclusively on the Islamic hardliners.
‘All it does is reinforce the stereotype of the Muslim as a mad fanatic.’
Although broadly secular in his philosophy, Imran says he has also been the target of western media stereotyping, especially when, in 1995, he announced his engagement to Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of James Goldsmith, the late Anglo-French industrialist and Eurosceptic.
Imran flinches at the memory. ‘I could not believe the British press coverage of my engagement to Jemima. They said I was going to lock her up in a room somewhere in Pakistan and never let her out.’
Imran was also vilified by most of Pakistan’s Urdu-language newspapers over his bride’s Jewish background. ‘The coverage over here was equally upsetting. I was accused of being a Zionist and working for the Israelis. The whole episode was very disillusioning.’
Imran eats deftly with his fingers, an elegant contrast to my clumsy efforts with the knife and fork. He sips from a bottle of cola. I ask whether his experiences with the media have made him pessimistic about the possibility of Islam and the west ever peaceably co-existing.
Imran seems troubled. ‘What the terrorists did in New York and Washington has nothing to do with Islam,’ he said. ‘The west doesn’t blame Hinduism when the Tamil Tigers launch suicide bombers in Sri Lanka so why are they so quick to blame Islam when there are actions such as this?’
But Imran is also keen to emphasize that the west, especially the US, has done much to create the breeding grounds for people such as bin Laden. ‘America’s support of what Israel is doing in the occupied territories, and the sanctions on Iraq that are killing thousands of innocent children, give Muslims the impression that America has serious double standards.
‘Of course it is vital that the guilty are punished for the terrorist attacks on America but it is also important that America removes some of the deep causes of resentment that many Muslims feel.’
So, tough on terrorism and tough on the causes of terrorism?
Imran agrees emphatically.
We polish off what remains of the mutton and he orders some green Afghan tea with sugar.
What, I asked, had persuaded him to turn to Pakistani politics? It seemed so far removed from the world of cricket and the glamorous life that Imran was reputed to have enjoyed whenever he was outside Pakistan.
Imran says he became interested in politics when the ‘deep corruption’ of Pakistan’s ‘ruling mafia families’ began to dawn on him in the mid-1980s. At the same time, in 1985, his mother died of cancer. Her death – ‘the most life-changing thing that has ever happened to me’ – prompted him to re-evaluate his philosophy.
Imran spent much of the next decade raising money for the construction of a specialist cancer hospital in Lahore that is named after his mother. ‘When you go out on the streets asking people for money it has a profound effect on your character. It brings you out of yourself,’ he said. ‘That experience also opened my eyes to the role money plays in Pakistan politics.’
With Imran having been falsely accused of siphoning off donations from the cancer hospital – in spite of the fact that he was the largest donor to the charity – his young party ran on an anti-corruption ticket in the 1997 election. A lack of money meant it failed to get anywhere, he says. Even today, it merits barely any press coverage in Pakistan. ‘To get media coverage in Pakistan you need to have a lot of money.’
But Imran’s natural optimism – some would say innocence – is irepressible. Against all the evidence, Imran predicts his party will come to power at the next general election in Pakistan.
‘Optimism works,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘In my first Test match I thought I was going to get 100 runs and 10 wickets. If I thought I would get nowhere in politics I wouldn’t bother.’
It was time for a parting of the ways. At just $5, the bill for lunch seemed unjustly small.
‘Leave them a big tip,’ Imran advised. As we were getting up, I asked him if he missed the world of cricket and international stardom.
He thought for a moment. ‘The world of cricket seems so small and far away,’ he said. ‘What I am doing now with the cancer hospital and through politics gives me a much, much greater sense of fulfilment.’
1 JULY 2011
David Millar
Back in the saddle
Doping brought the cycling champion to the brink of losing it all. Now he is a ‘clean’ crusader – but will two bottles of wine over lunch scupper his chances in the Tour de France?
By Tom Robbins
It is 1.30pm and Scott’s of Mayfair, a renowned fish restaurant on one of London’s smartest streets, is buzzing. White-aproned French waiters dance between tables at which expensively dressed men and women are toasting their latest successes. At one end of the small room former snooker world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan is entertaining a group of friends; at the next table society designer Nicky Haslam makes a glamorous journalist laugh, and to my right some executives from Louis Vuitton are engaged in deep
conversation with a prominent magazine editor. My table, however, is silent.
David Millar is late and, as I sit re-reading the menu and examining the cutlery, I start to worry whether he’s coming at all. After all, professional cyclists are not known for their hearty appetites, especially in the run-up to the Tour de France, the biggest race of the year, which starts this weekend. Fans are familiar with whippet-thin figures hunched over their bikes and articles in cycling magazines describe obsessive regimes to reduce body fat, and thus avoid carrying unnecessary weight up the Tour’s vicious mountain climbs. But Scott’s menu features oysters with wild boar sausages, fresh Devon crabs and lobster thermidor: if Millar does turn up, will he insist on a protein shake and stick of celery?
My fears are unnecessary. When Millar rushes in, 30 minutes late, he apologizes, blames the traffic, orders a beer and starts discussing the menu. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this all day,’ he says, eyes gleaming. ‘I love restaurants like this, that classic French service, all so business-like.’ I gingerly push the wine list across the table. We are meeting three weeks ahead of the Tour and I can’t help feeling that I might be leading him astray. But Millar doesn’t demur, and orders a bottle of Viognier Sainte-Fleur 2008.
In fact, being led astray is a large part of what people know about Millar. In 2004, he was reigning world time-trial champion, leader of French team Cofidis, with a string of race wins to his name, a million-euro annual contract and a playboy lifestyle. And then, on a summer’s evening in one of Biarritz’s best restaurants, a team of policemen burst in, grabbed Millar and bundled him into a police van. After two days in a cell, he confessed: he had repeatedly used performance-enhancing drugs. ‘I knew I was going to lose everything – the house, the car, the lifestyle, the job, the respect …’
I suggest we leave the drugs until we have ordered – seared scallops with garlic butter for him, smoked salmon for me, followed by cod with Padrón peppers and chorizo for both of us – and ask him what it was that first attracted him to cycling. He says he took up mountain biking in his teens, having gone to live with his airline-pilot father in Hong Kong, but then, aged 15, road cycling began to fire his imagination.
‘I started learning about the sport, reading about it, and I was just enchanted,’ he says. ‘It seemed romantic but also tragic – people would be winning but then lose it all, or crash but fight on, break bones but get back on their bikes and try to finish. Just getting to the end was seen as an achievement in itself. It’s somehow old-fashioned, gladiatorial …’
Masochistic? ‘Absolutely – it’s all about suffering. Often the best guys are just those that can suffer longer, who don’t give up. And it’s so easy to give up, when you’re on a mountain and it’s really hurting. We go through a lot physically.’
And, so … the attraction? ‘Well, they say it’s like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer – when you stop it feels great.’
He describes a race in Switzerland in which 200 riders started but only 15 finished: ‘The course went up a mountain, then down the other side to the finish, and it started raining, then snowing. On the descent it was so cold my fingers couldn’t work the brakes and guys were crashing off at all the corners. When I crossed the line, I was hypothermic and started having full body convulsions.’ I nod sympathetically, my mouth full of rich smoked salmon.
Millar, 34, is wearing a charcoal-grey Paul Smith jacket, funky thick- rimmed glasses, slicked back hair and a deep tan. When he began to become known in cycling, French newspapers nicknamed him ‘le Dandy’ – ‘I hated that!’ he protests – but he still looks more like someone who works in graphic design, fashion or film. The tan comes from living and training in Girona, Spain, but he is in London for the launch of his autobiography, Racing Through the Dark, the pages of which drip with visceral descriptions of the agonies of cycling.
In it Millar describes how, having decided to give himself two years to see if he could make it as cyclist, he moved to France – alone, aged 19 and unable to speak French – to join an amateur team. If unsuccessful, he would return to the UK to go to art college, but it soon became apparent that suffering was something for which Millar had a prodigious talent. His amateur performances were so strong that five professional teams tried to sign him, he went on to win a string of races, then in 2000, on the first day of his first Tour de France, he won the stage and ended up in the leader’s yellow jersey. But behind the scenes, the dream was turning nasty: on the eve of his first pro race, a rider he was sharing a room with started discussing how the team was asking him to dope for the race. Shocked, and with no one to turn to for advice, Millar called his mum back in England.
‘It was heartbreaking. This was what I’d always dreamed about and suddenly my eyes were opened. I made the decision quickly that I wouldn’t dope, that I would stand by my own value system, but you’re in this weird situation because you can’t really tell anyone. Who would I tell – my team boss? They don’t care; they know what’s going on. The sport’s governing body? They know what’s going on. I didn’t have any friends, so I called my mum.’
The fact that cyclists have taken drugs is hardly news – but Millar’s book reveals the jaw-dropping scale of the abuse. On his second race he noticed that other riders had their own little medical bags with ampoules and syringes and would keep disappearing off to the bathroom. Deliveries of ice would turn up at odd hours to protect supplies of erythropoietin, or EPO, which boosts red blood cells. One rider fell from his bike, fracturing his wrists, but was using so many drugs that he was able to carry on for another 200km, and finish in the top 10. So was anyone not on drugs? ‘There were clean riders but the real question is, “How many clean guys were winning?” And the answer to that is very, very few.’
Amazingly, Millar did manage to win some races and was promoted to team leader, but more often he was congratulated at the finish line for being ‘the first clean one back’. ‘At first I’d be pleased, take it as a compliment, but then it kept happening. It chips away at you, there’s this gradual degradation of your ethical standards. I felt like it was me against everyone else, and eventually I started to question why I was fighting so hard. I thought, “All I am is a professional cyclist – why am I being so stubborn when nobody cares?” ’
His fall from grace came, he says, during the 2001 Tour. Injured and exhausted, he had abandoned the race on the mountainous stage to Alpe d’Huez, wracked with guilt about letting down his team. That night an older rider and a manager came to his room and suggested that he might like to ‘prepare’ properly for the next big event, the codeword for doping. Had they been waiting for his weakest hour?
‘Well, I think they had been waiting for the right time but here’s the thing: I think they thought they were helping me. In some weird way I think they thought, “Let’s start making David’s life easier, let’s stop him traumatizing himself all the time by trying so hard.” I think they wanted to put me out of my misery.’
Our cod arrives – plus Millar’s side order of chips and a second bottle of wine – as he tells me about the effects of EPO, taken for a few weeks before competitions, far enough in advance that it isn’t detectable during races. In short, the drugs do work – they can ‘turn a donkey into a racehorse’, as one of his teammates put it – but they also killed any sense of satisfaction. ‘My epiphany came in that police cell: I realized I was about to lose everything and it didn’t bother me, not in the slightest. I’d come to hate cycling because I blamed it for the lie I was living.’
Banned from professional cycling for two years (criminal charges were eventually dropped) Millar severed ties with the European racing scene, and moved back to England, to a cottage in Derbyshire. On long solo rides through the Peak District, he started to enjoy riding again and, within a year, was plotting his comeback.
Aware that he would always be associated with drug-taking, he realized that he would have to become an anti-doping crusader as well as a rider, proving with his results that it wa
s possible to win clean. Some critics found this conversion rather too convenient, his new-found zeal hypocritical and his excuses self-pitying. After all, he hadn’t voluntarily owned up to his misdemeanours but been caught.
To the casual observer, fighting drug abuse in cycling might seem a lost cause. This year’s Tour starts amid yet more scandals. Lance Armstrong, a seven-time Tour winner and still the world’s most famous cyclist, is facing a doping investigation by the US Food and Drug Administration, and has been denounced by several former teammates. Meanwhile Alberto Contador, winner of last year’s Tour and favourite for this year’s, is the subject of a legal battle over a positive drug test.
Perhaps it’s inevitable in a sport that demands such super-human efforts that there will always be temptation. Speaking of which, would he like a pudding? Some dessert wine? Yes and yes – gooseberry crème brûlée and a glass of Sauternes for him, Eton Mess and Muscat for me. The car arrives to pick him up – it is 3.30pm – but he shoos it away, saying we need more time.
So is there any hope? What Millar says next is perhaps the most shocking thing about the entire story: ‘Today ours is the cleanest of all the endurance sports.’ I almost choke on my meringue. Really? ‘You can go into the sport now as a young rider and never encounter doping, never see a syringe … Of course we still have the anomalous cheaters you get in any walk of life but they are a minority – for a long time they were the majority.’
How has this come about? Is it the result of technological advances in testing or various campaigns by the World Anti-Doping Agency, on whose committee Millar sits? ‘To be brutally honest, it’s simple economics. If they want to come into cycling, sponsors need to know the team they are funding is clean, otherwise the risk is just too great.’ For years, sponsors would come in for a few years, get burnt by a scandal and pull out. Today, at least three teams – Garmin-Slipstream (which Millar played a key role in setting up), Sky and HTC-Highroad – make being clean a key part of their image. They ensure their riders deliver on that promise by constant blood-profiling and by providing support for young riders.
Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews Page 26