The Racer

by David Millar

  Rod Ellingworth, the Great Britain and Sky coach, began the tradition, a few years back, of using the Nationals as an opportunity to get the GB squad riders together. We’d join up once a year – twice if you were lucky enough to be selected to represent GB at the Worlds.

  This was the other reason I chose to go to the Nationals when I still wasn’t even sure if I’d race or not: I got to spend time with Team GB, where I knew I’d be looked after well, surrounded by people I trust. Above all, it’s invigorating being around Rod and his team. As much as I enjoy spending time with my American team there’s something easier and more natural about being back among Brits; there’s also the fact I’ve known some of the staff for close to twenty years.

  The day before the time trial, I’m feeling better. The initial classic symptoms of swollen glands and sore throat have disappeared, but riding round the course doing recon with Alex Dowsett I’m still coughing. I know what this means: my whole career I’ve had the same problem; my lungs have always been my weak point. Instead of joining Alex for a second lap of the course I decide to go back to the hotel where I immediately call Charly, or ‘Charles’ as I always call him (having done so since we were teenagers). After the coughing fit in the recon, I ask him if he thinks I should do the time trial. I’m veering towards resting a bit more.

  ‘It puts me in a very difficult position if you don’t race, David,’ he says, less than chirpily.

  I’m not expecting that response from him. I’ve taken it for granted that he’ll understand completely – after all, I am selected for the Tour, and that’s the most important thing now. I can feel my anger rising: ‘What do you mean? Are you being pressured regards my selection? Fuck, come on. I know I’ve been shit recently, but I know I’ll be good when I need to be good. My weight is bang on, I’ve done the workload, I just need to rest.’ My anger is not directed towards Charly, but at the powers above him that I suspect are forcing Charly to be a dick. I can imagine Jonathan using him like a puppet.

  ‘No, David, there is no pressure,’ he replies. ‘Jonathan has given me complete control over selection. It’s my decision. You have to race, David. It’s complicated otherwise.’

  Now I am totally confused. I tell him I don’t really understand, but will try to ride within myself, so as not to do too much damage. I’m trying to grasp why Charly is being like this. Then he signs off with a totally bamboozling remark: ‘My advice: if you’re going to race, then race.’

  ‘I always race, Charly. You, above all, should know that. OK, I’ll call you after.’ I’m both fuming and massively disappointed.

  I start the time trial then stop after one of the two laps. Trying to race it means I’m coughing even more; it’s making things worse rather than better. I phone Charly again. He isn’t impressed. In fact, he now says I have to show myself in the road race on Sunday. Things are getting weird. I’m getting properly worried. I now don’t trust Charly, just as he clearly doesn’t trust me.

  After the final race of the week, the road race, I’m heading up to Manchester to stay with my sister for a couple of days, before travelling to join my team in Leeds for the start of the Tour on Saturday. Rod lives near Manchester and has kindly offered to drop me off. So there I am, road-tripping with Rod in a Team Sky Jaguar up the M6 past Birmingham. Direction: Tour de France. We’re talking about the day’s bike racing, breaking down Pete Kennaugh’s victory for Team Sky, and analysing my own performance – I’d ridden a conservative race, trying to make sure I didn’t do more damage than I had to. But, being the Nationals, this was nigh-on impossible, as it’s at its hardest in the first half, after which it finds its rhythm and turns into a gradual wearing down, the last men standing eventually battling it out for the win. Once I realised the race was over for me, about the time Geraint Thomas decided to head off in pursuit of the breakaway, I retired along with Alex Dowsett. Pete Kennaugh, Ben Swift and Adam Yates had fought out the win, while Luke Rowe and ‘G’ had played dominant roles in different parts of the race. Rod’s boys had done him proud. I was pleased for Rod; Rod and I have always got on well – we both love a bike race, our enthusiasm rubs off on each other – with most people I’d rather not talk about the race, but with Rod it is always a delight.

  Just then my phone starts ringing. ‘Here we go, it’s Charly. “Charles, how’s it going?”’

  Immediately I can tell something isn’t right. He has on his super-serious voice: ‘David. Can you speak?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m calling to tell you I’ve pulled you from the Tour de France team.’

  Holy shit. I’m actually speechless. ‘What? I’m on my way there now.’

  ‘You’re sick, David. I can’t take an unhealthy rider to the Tour de France. You didn’t finish the time trial or the road race at the Nationals due to illness, and you’ve been underperforming in the races leading up to those.’

  ‘Charly, you were the one who made me race the Nationals when I told you I was sick. I didn’t finish because I want to be healthy for the Tour – you’ve already selected me. Fuck, are you serious?’ I could feel Rod’s silence next to me.

  ‘Yes, David. I’m very serious.’

  ‘And that’s it? There’s no discussion on this?’

  ‘No, David. I’ve made my decision.’

  ‘I can’t believe this is happening, Charly. I’ll speak to you later.’

  I hang up and sit there staring ahead in my own silence, suddenly becoming very aware I am sitting in a Team Sky car on the M6 near Birmingham, a long way from home and not going to the Tour de France. I try to comprehend what is happening. My hand is in my lap, gripping the phone tightly, in total contrast to the dead weight of my arm. Rod remains silent, clearly understanding exactly what is happening. I think it may have been minutes – I have no idea how long – before I eventually speak: ‘Charly has pulled me from the Tour, Rod. I don’t understand why he’d do that to me.’

  Rod knows how important this is to me: ‘I’m sorry, Dave. I don’t know what to say.’

  I call my sister, Frances, who not only works at Team Sky but was there with Sir Dave Brailsford from the very creation of the team, and who now has the legendary job title ‘Head of Winning Behaviours’. She answers with our classic, ‘Watcha, mate!’

  I try to reply with equal enthusiasm: ‘Watcha, mate!’

  ‘Where are you? Is Rod being all slow? Tell him he’s allowed to go faster.’

  ‘Somewhere past Birmingham. France, Charly has pulled me from the Tour.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not doing the Tour.’

  ‘But you’re selected?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Doug or JV?’

  ‘I’ll try calling them after this. You better get some wine in.’

  ‘Fuck. Why would Charly do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shit, France, this isn’t how I’d imagined it.’

  * * *

  For Sale. Been raced, not much. Battery fully charged (I think). Good condition. Reasonable offers please.

  * * *

  Charly

  I was devastated not to do the Tour. It was made worse by the fact that I was back to full health less than forty-eight hours after the Nationals, and at my ideal race weight of seventy-six kilogrammes, the lowest it had been since the previous year’s Tour de France. Obviously, over a decade of aiming for July has conditioned me to perfect timing.

  The worst thing about it all was how I now felt about Charly. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him from now on. We’d been friends since teenagers, racing together on the national team and sharing our first successes abroad together. I’d even been glassed in a pub in York defending Charly’s honour back when we were young professionals.

  Charly is from York, near where the Tour de France will start in Leeds. My stepmum, Colette, is York through and through, so when visiting her and my dad while they were over from Hong Kong I arranged
to see Charly at the same time. Three birds, one stone and all that (I didn’t know about the glass yet). On one occasion we somehow chose the roughest pub in York to meet up – being young pro cyclists at the time we didn’t really know how it all worked, especially in England. It was early evening and we were having a jovial time. In France it would have been l’heure de l’apéritif. I think that paints a picture of where we were in our lives at that point.

  At one point Charly got up to go and spend a penny, normally a reasonably mundane affair. A few minutes later he came back and sat down with one hand holding his face. It turned out he’d been punched by some random bloke when leaving the toilet. Apparently they didn’t like the fact he looked at them. I don’t know why, but I got up and asked Charly which group of guys it was. He told me to leave it. I couldn’t, it was bullshit. I wasn’t going to let some idiot hit my friend for no reason.

  I got up, and headed over, my sister and dad in close proximity, knowing that I was totally out of my depth. The bunch of guys were now sitting at a table. I asked which one of them had hit my friend. The twat got all cocky and said, ‘Me.’ So I asked him why and he responded with the genius, ‘’Cause I felt like it.’ I nodded and lunged across the table, grabbing him by the neck and pinning him against the wall. Before I could punch him I found myself being picked up by the four other guys, who lifted me and held me against another wall. What happened next I still can’t figure out totally. It wasn’t their first rodeo, let’s put it that way. Next thing I knew, broken glass was showering down from above. I don’t know whose they were or where they came from but glasses were thrown at the ceiling above my head. Being an old English pub with low ceilings this was highly effective: the shattered glass rained down on my face and head, gashing it up, one cut in particular being worthy of hospital. They all went and sat back down again like nothing had happened while I stood there bleeding, thinking, ‘Well, that went well.’ The police were present in about a minute. We learnt afterwards the pub had a big red button under the bar for such moments. It was all very dramatic.

  Mine and Charly’s careers had taken completely different directions from our initial first footings, his role becoming that of domestique while I became a leader. We’d both experienced tumultuous times during our professional careers, for different reasons and due to our different characters and positions within the sport.

  But it was a lovely twist of fate that we’d both made it through everything and were now on the same team – a team I’d helped create, build and shape. It seemed right that Charly could now be with us in an environment that offered every chance to young riders, something that Charly and I hadn’t had in our day. Charly and I could help fix what we had always felt was wrong. Well, that’s how I hoped it would be.

  Charly and I are very different: it was clear from when I first got to know him that this was the case. He had an enormous natural talent, he was born to race a bike – tall and skinny, with a crazy endurance ability due primarily to his naturally high red blood cell count. This was so high, in fact, that he was at times over the UCI 50 per cent haematocrit limit and had to get a special dispensation in order to prevent him being stopped from racing. In hindsight this was his disadvantage, because when Charly came into the professional sport his natural advantage was negated by the fact that drugs were being used to mimic it.

  Physically, he was amazing, yet he was always so insecure, constantly riddled with self-doubt. I could never fathom how somebody with such obvious natural ability could refuse to believe in it himself. It was like he was constantly self-sabotaging. I, on the other hand, had too much self-belief. I thought anything was possible; I tried to make Charly feel the same.

  My career ended up being centred around trying to win races; Charly’s became about helping others win races, and he was damned good at it. It’s often the way pro sports careers go: our personalities dictate the destiny of our talent.

  Garmin

  The three of us – Jonathan Vaughters, Doug Ellis and me – had built the team together. Jonathan created the team and its ethical values after retiring from racing, disillusioned by the corrupt professional scene. Doug wanted to create an American Tour de France team and realised that if he wanted to do it in a way that reflected his own values there was only one option: Jonathan Vaughters. I was the third and final element. I had come back into the sport from my ban a reformed man, respected by the people who Jonathan and Doug needed to win over if they wanted to turn their team from a small domestic US outfit into an international Tour de France team.

  The first people I had to win over were the riders we needed to recruit. I personally approached and convinced the majority of our initial signings. We were a small American outfit without a title sponsor – Doug guaranteed the initial finance out of his own pocket – so we didn’t appear to be the safest bet. We weren’t even in the top division, which meant we had no automatic invitations to the biggest bike races – neither the Classics nor the Grand Tours, never mind the others. Generally this would have prevented the majority of good professionals from even considering us, but we offered something no other team could: we wanted to change the sport for the better, we were 100 per cent against doping and had our own internal testing programme that went beyond the official anti-doping controls. We had, before it even existed in the sport, our own biological passport. It was an opportunity for the riders who believed in and loved their sport to do something to change it. I would explain to them how important this was.

  That alone couldn’t win them over, though; we had to convince them we’d provide the best support possible in order to allow them to perform at their very best. We would base our team in Girona and request that all riders lived there; we’d apply the latest in sports science and only choose suppliers who could guarantee us the best equipment; we had altitude training camps planned throughout the year. We were marginal gaining before anybody else. The final ingredient was the recruitment policy. We made sure we approached riders who had compatible personalities – we generally headed for the mavericks, riders with a higher than average professional cyclist’s intelligence. The racers had to understand what we were attempting to do and buy into the fact that we were going to be outspoken about, and proud of, our 100 per cent clean policy. At the time it was a ballsy position to take, and it required a certain type of rider to buy into it. We were going to be transparent – journalists were welcome, to the point I even shared my room with one at the Tour of California while racing for the general classification win.

  The last two things I brought were my story and my contacts with the Tour de France. My story helped, as I was the voice for the team. I did interview after interview explaining my belief in what we were doing. I must have done dozens and dozens of feature pieces about my past and our future as a team, and how we wanted to make a difference. Jonathan and Doug placed so much responsibility on me because, being a reformed doper, I was representative of the sport as a whole, not to mention many within our team, who at that time were unrevealed ex-dopers. I became a firewall for them and an honest voice for the team. And my close relationship with the organisers of the Tour de France (and my status in France as a whole) meant that I gave the team access to the race on a personal level, something necessary for a wild card invitation to the race. My involvement was so important that I was made a part-owner of the team. Jonathan, Doug and I were on a mission to do something good for the sport of cycling. Something, now all these years later, I can look back on proudly and say we did.

  Unfortunately, as is often the way in professional cycling, the past no longer mattered.

  Not the Tour de France

  The days following the announcement of my non-selection for the Tour were horrible. I was angry, very sad, and above all so confused. I couldn’t understand why the team would do it to me. I had never let the team down at a Tour de France; I had been the linchpin in the team, on and off the bike, since 2007. I had given so much of myself over the years. Yes, I had sucked a bit the pre
vious two months, but my data from training was on an upward curve, my weight was bang on … I had proved time and time again that if I announced I was up to the job, then I would be up to the job.

  Jonathan Vaughters and the team owner Doug Ellis hadn’t answered their phones in the aftermath of the Charly call. A conference call was arranged for the next day between the three of us. I still hoped beyond hope that they would fix it all, yet I knew if they weren’t answering their phones to me and wanted to organise a conference call they were treating this in a very clinical, businesslike manner. Something the three of us had never done in the past; we had always had a more personal than working relationship.

  As I feared, the call was a waste of time. They treated me like a journeyman professional with whom they had no history or personal relationship. Jonathan and Doug both reiterated the selection policy of the team: that if a rider was deemed unwell he couldn’t be selected for the Tour de France, and they couldn’t deviate from that. The same selection criteria also stated that no rider who didn’t have a contract with the team for the following year could start the Tour de France. Jonathan had even, in one of his rare appearances, gone as far as announcing this to the whole team at the beginning of the year. He felt very strongly about it. The reason being, he didn’t want to take a rider to the Tour de France who would use the race as a vehicle to secure a contract for the following year with another team. In other words, you signed on the dotted line of the contract JV was offering before the Tour or you didn’t get a start. For some reason that didn’t matter this year – the team took four riders to the Tour who were out of contract at the end of the year. So there was obviously some wiggle room – at their discretion, of course.