by David Millar
I watch the race ride away from me, helpless to do anything about it. I hang my head and prepare myself for the long and lonely ride in the rain to the finish. It’s heart-wrenching. I’ve dreamt of being up there racing for the win, giving the Scottish fans a Scot to cheer for at the front of the race. I’ve been given the perfect opportunity to say thank you and goodbye: it had seemed a dream come true when I’d realised the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow would be one of my last-ever races, and knowing how well the course suited me I had dared to believe it could be a fairytale ending. I should have known better.
On the final lap I pull over and stop where my family have been standing, watching the day’s racing, leaving the two riders I am with to continue on to the finish. I am still in the top ten at this point. I give my wife a hug and say hello to the boys. It isn’t quite how I’d imagined the last lap to be, but in a way it is the perfect ending.
I’ve done everything I can. I’m not strong enough, is all. I kiss them goodbye and clip back into my pedals then continue to the finish. The rain finally abates and the sun shows itself for the first time all day. I then puncture. Only twelve riders finish. I’m eleventh.
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Thank you Scotland. That was an amazing day, wish I’d been strong enough to race for the win. Happy G won, he’s nice.
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Washed up
My relationship with the team had changed drastically since my Tour de France non-selection and my subsequent public flip-out. I no longer had any input in my race programme. The privileged status I’d previously taken for granted was now gone with the wind. I received a generic email towards the end of July with a revised schedule. There was nothing explaining the thought process or objectives. It was simply a calendar with the races I’d be doing. And there weren’t many – two, in fact: Eneco Tour followed by the Vuelta a España.
As far as I was concerned the World Championships were no longer a possibility. I knew the British team would be making its selection mid-August, and I’d been counting on showing myself at the Tour de France and being one of the strongest at the Commonwealth Games off the back of it. In reality, I’d shown nothing to dissuade the selectors from thinking I was a washed-up pro counting down his days to retirement. The Worlds was one more fairy tale I could put to bed.
I’m not a big fan of the Eneco Tour. In fact, I’d be amazed if there are any professional cyclists who are. It’s like the Flanders Classics without any of the history or romance, and instead of one day it lasts seven. The fact I’ve never liked it hasn’t stopped me doing well there – I almost won the general classification of two editions and, in truth, it’s a good race for the type of rider I am. And, coming two weeks after the Tour de France, I always had a residual super-strength that made it a bit of a no-brainer.
This year I can’t see any point in me going there – it will more than likely compromise any preparation for my new principal end-of-season goal, the Vuelta. The team don’t care, though. They don’t even respond to my very polite (and difficult to write) emails requesting reconsideration. Oh well, the dream is clearly over. I’ve managed to put myself back to neo-pro status in my final season; I no longer have any influence whatsoever on my race programme. There’s nothing for it but to do what I’m told. Charly and Jonathan are getting their revenge for my anger at not being selected for the Tour. I haven’t spoken to either of them since before the Tour de France. I sent them a congratulatory message when Ramūnas Navardauskas (my replacement) won a stage. They didn’t respond. Ramūnas, on the other hand, thanked me publicly for having spoken to him and wishing him good luck before the Tour (once I found out he was my replacement). I seriously couldn’t think of another rider I’d rather have take my place. I asked him to win a stage for me; being Ramūnas he did.
The Honey Badger
Ramūnas and I are rooming together at Eneco. He’s the perfect roomie: quiet and respectful, most of the time he resembles a sleeping bear, which couldn’t be in greater contrast to his on-the-bike persona. He hadn’t been on the team very long before we nicknamed him the Honey Badger.
Ramūnas is Lithuanian. He turned pro with us in 2011, the year of his twenty-third birthday. He’d been so good as an amateur that people thought he was on drugs. If he’d been Australian, American, British or French there wouldn’t have been any doubting his pedigree. Unfortunately the Eastern Bloc countries are still tarnished by decades of prejudice and, sadly, some history in this regard. Jonathan Vaughters did his due diligence and checked Ramūnas’s blood profile while also putting him through extensive physiological testing. The majority of teams didn’t even bother with that, instead basing their decision not to engage him on the vicious rumours they’d heard, or their presumptuous preconceptions of young, fast, Eastern Bloc bike racers.
When he first came to our team his English wasn’t so good. His French, Russian, Lithuanian and Spanish were OK, though. Now his English is perfect. Rather than turn on the TV in the room he will read a book. He is generous in his consideration of others to the point of altruism. He sleeps deeply, and wakes up as late as the daily schedule will allow him to. He laughs at every joke, will listen to every story and will always try to stay at the evening dinner table until it is clear that the last there are finished. He much prefers listening to talking. For me, he’s more of a gentleman than any Australian, American, British or French rider I know. He is loved by everyone in our team.
Then there’s the alter ego, the Honey Badger, so-called because of a YouTube video Dave Zabriskie introduced us to in 2011. Until that moment I’d never heard of the honey badger – a real-life, living creature which, despite its name, bears more of a resemblance to a weasel than a badger. It is ferocious, virtually tireless in battle, and damn near impossible to kill. Fuck knows why it’s called the honey badger – there’s nothing sweet about it.
But that’s Ramūnas in a bike race. We’ve used him in lead outs in the past, and more often than not I’ll be on his wheel as he positions me, Kiwi Guy and Ty. It’s in the final ten kilometres of the race – when most people are starting to lose their cool, get aggressive and sometimes push, lean or even head-butt – that I’ve watched Ramūnas simply weather the storm from all angles, and never once decelerate or change position. While teams all around him are expending three riders to match him, he remains as solid as a rock. Occasionally, I’ve seen him have no choice but to retaliate to invasions of his personal space, and when he does he always, always, wins. It’s a beautiful thing to behold, and he never loses his cool. After the race he won’t even mention it. Most of us will be in the team bus already, regaling everyone with our own stories of the day’s events. Ramūnas will come in and quietly sit down in his seat and let out a big sigh and say, ‘I’m so tired. You guys were so strong.’ We all just stop and look at him, as if to say, ‘You have no idea, do you?’ Then shake our heads and carry on again. His exploits are legendary. He does things that are simply incomprehensible, not only to us, but to him, too. He just cruises along killing people and races at will.
Nathan
Eneco is going by OK – in the sense that I haven’t crashed, which, much as in the Classics, is a win in itself. I’ve had to shift my attitude from resentment at being here to a positive mental attitude: I’m using it as training for the Vuelta, with the recognition that it’s the last time I’ll race these roads that I’ve known for so long.
It’s made easier by the team here: my good friend and Weissbier-drinking partner, Andreas Klier, is our directeur sportif. He knows exactly the mixed emotions I’m experiencing. Then there’s Nathan.
Oddly, the member of the team at Eneco who is having the most positive influence on me is Nathan Haas. Odd, because he’s only been racing road bikes for four years. Normally it’s the old guard I rely on to inspire me – Andreas, Stuey, VdV, Ryder, etc. Nathan doesn’t know my sport, we haven’t grown up together, we’re not the same. Well, that’s what I was thinking heading into this race ar
ound the backwaters of Holland and Belgium, mainly due to the fact that I’d become too old to remember what waking up in the morning ready to conquer the world felt like. I used to feel like that, but spending time with Nathan has opened my eyes to how incredibly annoying the younger me must have been to the older pros in my team.
I turned up to Eneco pissed off and resentful, still angry with the team for denying me my final Tour, fucking my Commonwealth Games in the process, and then, insult to injury, making me do Eneco. When I got there it was raining, and that didn’t make me any happier. In a nutshell, I was unpleasant to be around.
Nathan and I travelled together from Girona. He spent hours with me before we even got to the race listening to my anger at the team. I needed to vent: I’d been keeping it all locked up the previous weeks. I used Nathan the way I would have one of my old pro friends. I forgot Nathan looked up to me, though. He relied upon my leadership; I was his captain.
I didn’t realise this until Nathan broke it to me in the hotel that first evening. We were on our way to join our teammates in the restaurant when he took me aside and said, ‘David, you have to stop being so negative, you’re going to bring everybody down. We rely on you. I’m just saying, I understand, but you have to remember the influence you have over all of us.’
‘Fuck me. He’s right,’ I thought. I didn’t know what to say to him. I don’t think I said anything, I was so surprised at how wrong he made me feel. Not many people in my life have done that to me, which is unfortunate, because I’ve been wrong more often than I’ve been right.
After that wake-up call I got to know Nathan a lot more. I was curious. Up to that point I’d always treated him as a bright-eyed, eager-to-please, intelligent yet naïve Aussie neo-pro. The things I’d noticed before and let wash over me now became interesting quirks that I wanted to know more about.
I’ve learnt a lot about him. He took up mountain biking at university in Sydney, where he read philosophy and political studies. He only got into road racing because people told him he should (which was much as it was for me – not the philosophy, the mountain biking). Nathan’s grandfather was a Polish emigrant to Australia. He arrived with nothing except injuries from the Second World War. He worked three jobs, had four kids, and passed on a work ethic and joy for life that Nathan displays today; in fact, Nathan credits his blind enthusiasm and his family’s eternal optimism to his grandfather.
Nathan’s dad was a military officer, and an exceptional athlete in swimming and football. He was Nathan’s hero. But, as with me, his parents divorced when he was ten (I was eleven). His father continued to live abroad while he stayed with his mother in Australia. His mother comes from a wealthy Australian farming family, and her passion is ballet: she was good enough to dance with the Australian Ballet for many years. Nathan believes his strength and compassion come from her, qualities he credits to her upbringing on the farm. His ability to endure pain also comes from her – ballet taught her that.
I’ve learnt all this at Eneco. Nathan fascinates me; the more I get to know him the more I admire him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him feel sorry for himself, and, unlike most of us, if he sees somebody in a bad way he won’t be scared to go and speak to them. He’s not the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed naïf I thought he was. Far from it: he’s motivated and he’s kind – simple as that.
Eneco
All the years I’ve relied on older pros to guide me – now it’s the younger guys who are saving me. Aside from Nathan there’s Ramūnas. He also reminds me that, even outside the race, I’m important to them. He’s lost his way since the 2014 Tour, only riding his bike once in the two-week interim. He’s become more talkative than he’s ever been, though; probably aware that this is the last time he’ll be able to speak to me in that sacred roomie way.
He’s at his wits’ end with the state of the Lithuanian cycling federation and their ability to put the dis into organisation. Every night he asks me more questions about what he can do to help change it, that he’s worried about young riders coming up and them not being protected, that the women’s cycling scene is run by coaches who he fears may be more aligned with the East Germany of the 1970s than the world of 2014. I help him draft a letter. (I don’t know if he ever sent it.)
Nathan and I are the only two of the team who are heading to the Vuelta straight after Eneco. This weighs heavily on our minds: we race hard but always with the knowledge that we have only five days between the two races. The demands of Eneco are completely different from those we can expect in Spain. Everything here is explosive, and the peloton is constantly nervous. By the end of each day we are frazzled, more mentally than physically. There are constant battles for position and the narrow roads and wild array of road furniture makes for stop-start racing. We do more braking and accelerating in one day at Eneco than a whole week at the Vuelta. Then there’s the fact that it’s relatively cool compared to Spain, where we’ll be starting in the very south at the height of summer. Seventeen degrees and 50km/h winds off the North Sea isn’t exactly the ideal acclimatisation for what will effectively be northern Africa.
Surviving the week without a crash or being too tired is the number one objective. The bottom line is it’ll make us better – racing generally does that, whatever and wherever it is. We convince ourselves of this fact, relying on each other for morale, but knowing, deep down, we just need to recover.
The final day is a brutal stage around the Ardennes, finishing on La Redoute, the legendary climb of Liège–Bastogne– Liège. Nathan and I are beat down and now really pissed off that we have to travel to the Vuelta in two days’ time to do team time-trial training when what we really need is rest. It makes no sense, and seems more like panic training than anything else. In my opinion the Vuelta team should have been in Girona training for the team time trial instead of doing Eneco. Unfortunately, my opinion no longer matters, so here we are, head-banging around Belgium and the Netherlands instead. Travelling to the airport after the race I realise that I will never have to race my bike up here again. I become suddenly nostalgic, but more than that I am relieved. Farewell, Flanders, it’s been emotional.
Spain, and the National Characteristics of Racing
I’ve loved the Vuelta a España since the first time I did it, back in 2001. Spain as a whole has always been a favourite destination of mine to race; the laid-back culture is absorbed by osmosis into the cycling. The pressure to win is the same as in any other big race, yet everybody seems to manage it with a tranquillity they didn’t even know they possessed. Unlike other races riders will try harder to keep their cool. I feel more at home in Spain in that regard. Maybe it’s the better weather and bigger, faster roads; probably it’s the slow mornings and later starts. All of those are factors, for sure, but I think the biggest contributor is the simple fact that it’s Spanish.
In Belgium and the Netherlands the racing is nervous and aggressive, the riders from those countries have grown up with that style of racing and so it becomes their default setting – they’re hardcore, one-day racers. Stage racers are a minority among them.
In Italy there is a culture of both one-day and stage racing. The races are generally designed with a physically demanding finale where there will be a series of hills or mountains that will break the race up into pieces. This means that Italian teams and riders have developed into that style of racing. Great Italian bike racers are often tactically savvy climbers who can also sprint. There is very little time trialling, and I don’t remember ever having experienced an echelon caused by crosswinds in Italy.
France is fairly chaotic – a state of confusion having probably sprung from hosting all types of racing: from cobbles to Alpine mountains; from the most famous one-day race in Paris–Roubaix to the world’s most famous stage race in the Tour de France. Having had a history of excelling in all disciplines the French have, of late, born more resemblance to jacks of all trades … and masters of none. Recently, and to their benefit, they’ve adopted a scientific Anglo-Saxon
attitude and are rediscovering success, in stage races at least, although their one-day racing results are still nondescript.
The British, Americans, Australians and Germans have brought a new science to the sport, number-crunching their way to success. The British and Americans have prospered in stage races, where variables are more easily controlled, while the Australians and Germans have found their prowess in the one-day racing world. Each of these countries’ triumphs in their preferred area has led to a self-perpetuating cycle of success that is difficult to break free from. Ironically, the Anglo-Saxon countries have proved that even relative newcomers to the sport find themselves sucked into the old world of specialisation.
In every country it’s the native riders, in all their forms, who shape the culture. Ex-riders organise, commentate, write, even judge – the current riders just race. Between them they dictate the general characteristics of their races without even knowing it. In Spain it’s their friendly, patient, occasionally autocratic attitude that rubs off on everybody.
Spain has never really budged from its specialities: climbing and stage racing. Spanish teams are some of the best in the world when it comes to controlling a race. When I turned professional in 1997 it was the year following Miguel Indurain’s retirement. His team, Banesto, had spent the previous ten years controlling Grand Tours: they were the masters of it. I can remember we would all breathe a sigh of relief when Banesto had the leader’s jersey in any race because we knew they’d control it with clinical precision. They were the experts of economising their effort, and by looking after themselves they looked after the peloton. That, in a nutshell, sums up the Spanish racing style – they are organised and respectful. For a country renowned for having a laidback ‘hasta mañana’ attitude they are a paragon of highly disciplined and very effective teamwork. For years at the World Championships the Spanish team were considered to be the best outfit. Where the Italians, the Belgians or the French would always have some sort of polemic going on, you could rely on the Spanish to do what they had to do, and do it damned well, and, most importantly, without drama.