The Racer

by David Millar

  Eventually we break free from the gruppetto and begin our pursuit. I do the first few kilometres knowing that’s all I have and that I only trust myself to pace it right – it’s too easy in that situation to let the adrenalin of panic put us all in the red. The other guys then take over. By the top of that climb there is only Ryder and Cardoso left with Dan. Cardoso then crashes on the descent. So it’s down to Ryder to take Dan back to the front of the race. Somehow he does it, Dan eventually finishing seventh on the stage atop Lagos de Covadonga, actually taking time out of some of his main general classification rivals.

  Definitely one of the more random days I’ve had on a bike.

  * * *

  This is what happened to my jersey. The old cycling High-Level Skin Protection System.

  View on Twitter

  * * *

  Day 16

  I decide not to go to the hospital for X-rays, as whatever they tell me won’t change the fact that I’m going to carry on, and, anyway, tomorrow is the rest day, so I can get myself properly checked out then. The day after a big crash is always bad: the body inflames and seizes up, and it’s usually hard to sleep because of all the wounds. Things are not made any easier today by knowing it’s the queen stage of the race: the biggest mountain day. Not ideal.

  My hand hurts more than anything else now; it has swollen up like a balloon during the night. My other injuries don’t bother me much in comparison. I wake up early as usual. For some reason I decide to shave – I suppose it makes me feel like I’m not giving up – but just holding the razor hurts so much. I watch myself ever so delicately put the razor against my cheek: it’s like I’m shaving for the first time, my hand doesn’t feel like mine, and it certainly doesn’t look like mine. Suddenly it crosses my mind: if I can barely shave, how can I race? I stand there in front of the mirror. I put the razor down, and look at myself. I’m not going to cry, don’t cry. I hold it back, my eyes just tearing up a little. This can’t be my last day racing.

  I go and sit on the end of my bed and regroup. It doesn’t take long. I stand back up. I can do this. I go and shave in an almost ritualistic manner.

  I go down to breakfast. Koldo is there, which is rare. Sean, our chef, has made us pancakes, among other things. We stand at the breakfast table, where everything is laid out. I have my plate in my left hand and try to use the tongs with my right. I can’t do it. Koldo gently takes them off me without saying anything, puts his plate down and takes mine, then asks what I’d like for breakfast. We sit down at the table. He can see I’m not good. He hasn’t asked me how I am, or commented on the hand. He just looks at me and says, ‘It’s difficult, isn’t it?’ I can’t speak for fear I’m going to lose it, so I just look down and nod. Koldo’s words feel like the most empathetic thing anybody has ever said to me.

  I make it through the day, painkiller-free, as per our new team policy. It’s difficult.

  Rest Day

  Go to the hospital. I have two broken fingers and a fractured rib. Now wearing splints for my fingers.

  Day 17

  Day 18

  Oddly my handwriting hasn’t been neater since I was a little boy. I am forced to hold my pen so lightly and move it so slowly, with such small movements, that it can’t help but be controlled. So that’s a good thing. I should probably learn something about life from that.

  Day 19

  I still do my job. But I’ve made it more difficult for myself by not having my head in the game. I’m stuck near the back, wallowing in self-pity. I can see Dan in front of me, and even there he is way too far back. I manage to get my head out of my arse at the last possible moment and go and get him, telling him not to lose my wheel. I end up drag-racing Sky on my own with Dan on my wheel. I drop him off with the very front guys into the switchback that takes us into the final climb. I peel off and very nearly unclip. I’m that fucked.

  Day 20

  I see Dave B at the start. I tell him the truth, that my hand is bad, but that everything else is healing and that I’ll update him a few days after the Vuelta finishes. He doesn’t seem overly worried; he expects me to be road captain, as much before the race as during it. His confidence makes a refreshing change to that of Charly, Jonathan and Doug. I know the British team are looking after me. There’s no real reason for them to take me in my current state, apart from out of respect and, possibly, affection. It makes me want to be better. It reminds me of where I come from.

  The stage is still a struggle, though. I’m OK at the beginning, keeping myself right at the front when everything is going crazy. Then, as the race progresses, the closer I get to the finish, the harder it becomes. I can feel myself letting go: the more certain I am of finishing, the easier it feels to give up. It’s as if I’m holding on to a rope, being pulled up a cliff face – the nearer I get to safety, the more my grip loosens. On the final mountain, up to the summit finish, I’m barely able to stay in the gruppetto. I’m so incredibly tired. I end up riding up on my own, not even sure if I’ll make it inside the time limit. I’m that beat down.

  Coming inside the last kilometre, realising I’m almost finished, I experience a sense of relief I’ve never felt before. As I come around the final corner, with only 300 metres to go, there’s Graham Watson (the cycling photographer, who has been taking pictures of me since my first-ever professional bike race in 1997) taking my photo, and shouting out, ‘Go on, David! It’s over.’

  This is it. I’ve done it. I’ve finished. I still have tomorrow’s time trial and the Worlds, but I’ll never have to go as deep again. Graham has seen me over the previous eighteen years turn myself inside out, race after race, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. He is right, it’s over. I don’t have to hurt myself any more.

  Day 21 – The End of the Road

  * * *

  I think today, for the first time in my life, I’m not going to make myself hurt in a TT.

  * * *

  My last race with the team, and the finish line is on El Final del Camino in Santiago de Compostela, the end of the pilgrims’ trail. I couldn’t have made that up.

  This is shaping up to be the worst time trial of my life. I’m in pain, everything hurts, I’m exhausted. I’m so beat down I don’t even warm up. I just sit on a cool box outside the bus in my speedsuit awaiting my start time. I don’t even recon it. I glance at the race book, that’s it. Bingen comes up to me as I sit behind the start ramp and gives me a hug. He has tears in his eyes. I’m totally fine. As far as I’m concerned I may as well be sitting in a café, about to set off and ride home. I think in a way this has made him more sad – he’s only ever known me as the most focused, edgy, occasionally crazy person. He’s only ever known me as David Millar, the racer. I’ve spent over twenty years doing time trials, the majority of them I’ve wanted to win. Everybody will be expecting me to try.

  For this, the final one, I don’t even try. I just do what I have to do to make sure I finish inside the time limit. Yet, weirdly, I don’t think I’ve ever suffered so much in a time trial. I can’t even hold the handlebars the final kilometre as it’s on cobblestones, the vibration through the bars making it too painful for me to grip with my mangled hand.

  I cross the line and find Luca, one of our soigneurs. I stop next to him and remove my helmet. He takes it and puts it on the floor and, ever so gently, gives me the biggest of hugs. He’s crying for me.

  It’s for this reason that, moments later, when I’m interviewed by Matt Rendall for ITV, I can’t help but be emotional. None of my team would have asked me the same questions Matt does. It’s his job to spell out to the viewer what’s going on, to ask me what’s going through my head. Koldo, Bingen, Luca, Ryder, all of them, they know what I’m going through, and none of us want to talk about it.

  Nathan finishes his time trial soon after me. I’ve agreed to wait for him. When he gets here we hug and then I suggest a drink. We find the nearest café and order a bottle of Cava and spend the next hour talking about the world an
d all its weirdness. We’re half cut when we leave to ride back to the start, to where the team bus is parked. It’s a fun ride back to the hotel. We’re happy. I’m not sad any more. I managed to puncture again about two kilometres from the bus. Which seemed perfect.

  This evening the team has organised a small farewell dinner for me. It’s strange facing the realisation that I’ll never again be one of them. It still feels like my team, the one I’d helped to build back in 2007. I’ve put my heart and being into it for years. That evening I received neither a message nor a call from Jonathan Vaughters. Nor have I since.

  Among the speeches at the meal Nathan chose to read a poem. It was a good choice: although not cold and dead, I was now gone. The team would carry on without me.

  ‘O Captain! My Captain!’

  Walt Whitman

  O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

  The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

  But O heart! heart! heart!

  O the bleeding drops of red,

  Where on the deck my Captain lies,

  Fallen cold and dead.

  O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

  Rise up – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills,

  For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths – for you the shores a-crowding,

  For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

  Here Captain! dear father!

  This arm beneath your head!

  It is some dream that on the deck,

  You’ve fallen cold and dead.

  My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

  My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

  The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

  From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

  Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

  But I with mournful tread,

  Walk the deck my Captain lies,

  Fallen cold and dead.

  Epilogue

  The Worlds

  As Team GB we’d been through a lot. I’d had the honour to captain the team in our two greatest-ever performances: the Copenhagen World Championships, where Mark Cavendish had won, and the London Olympics Road Race, where we didn’t win but rode with a commitment rarely seen by any team in any sport.

  It’s not easy coming out of a Grand Tour at the best of times – not only are we physically exhausted but also psychologically wasted. It almost feels like mild depression, which I think it probably is. Added to that, my hand and rib meant that I couldn’t even pick up the boys or play with them when I got home to Girona, which put me in an even deeper hole. But after discussions between my doctor in Girona and the GB team we decided I’d be good enough to race. That was the only thing that mattered now.

  The bottom line was that I was the most experienced bike racer that Great Britain had, and Dave and Rod wanted me in Ponferrada, more than anything to be the role model – to take the mantle of leader off the bike as much as on it, something I had assumed over the years. It was official: my last pro race would be in a Great Britain jersey at the World Championships.

  Asking me to captain the GB team in my final race was the ultimate gesture of reconciliation from Dave Brailsford. More than that, it felt like I was coming home, finishing where I’d begun with the people who cared the most about me. The greatest thing about it for me was the fact that Dave was doing something based more on emotion than rationality. Dave, Rod, Shane (Sutton) – even the riders who had backed the decision for me to race – were all taking a punt on me. I had a broken hand, after all. It was the opposite of how my professional team had acted when it came to the Tour de France. They had probably read The Chimp Paradox and believed they were doing what Dave Brailsford and Steve Peters would do – that is, make a decision based on facts and policies, purely rational in its construction. The irony was, the people who had created that way of thinking were showing that it didn’t always apply: sometimes a decision could be made using both emotion and logic.

  Any disdain I’d felt towards the professional cycling world was eradicated by Team GB’s gesture. They didn’t adhere to the age-old, cynical, ‘there are no gifts’ belief system. It was not as if they were treating me as a charity case: they knew I was an asset to the team, they’d seen how I was able to do my job as road captain in the final week of the Vuelta when properly buckled. I could only be better than that with time to recover before the Worlds.

  The Worlds is one of my favourite races. It has an energy about it like no other. Outside of the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games it’s the only time in the year we get to race for our country, which means different riders, different staff, different team kit. It all feels new, which is something of a tonic by September, after a season of racing, travelling through airports and constant hotel hopping. We’re exhausted; we just want it to be over – and so, for many of us, the Worlds will be our final race of the year, which gives it a last-day-of-school buzz. The fact we’re reunited with old friends and have been chosen to represent our home nation makes it all the more meaningful.

  The pro Worlds have held a special place in my heart since the very first time I raced them in Spain in 1997. The national team felt small and amateur back then – it had limited resources, most of the staff were part-timers, some were volunteers, and we barely had enough kit to go round. I’d spent all year in France with my French pro team, learning the hard, unforgiving ropes of professional cycling. It wasn’t a pleasant environment back then – looking back, I’d go as far as to say it was a criminal world: black money galore, drugs, illegal doctors, dealers, trafficking; cheating was part of the culture. Spending a few days with the British team was wonderful, by contrast. For starters, I could speak English instead of French (not that I didn’t like French, but at that time it remained a foreign language and culture to me). Being with the British felt homely and, more importantly, I felt safe. Pro cycling didn’t feel safe to me. I didn’t care that the GB team was a small, insignificant set-up back then; it was preferable to the big, harsh, professional teams, where everything and everybody seemed expendable.

  It only took a few years for me to feel more at home in the pro scene than the GB team, though. By 2001 I bore little resemblance to the innocent twenty-year-old pro who turned up to the 1997 Worlds. Then, in 2002, Dave Brailsford took over the national team and created a new version of cycling. The national team began to operate on a higher level than almost any professional team, and without any of the criminality the pro scene had embedded within it. He managed to keep all the ethics and team spirit associated with the older, smaller GB team, yet added a level of excellence it had never known.

  This new version of cycling gave me belief in the sport again, something I’d lost with my conversion to hardened, cynical pro. Dave Brailsford and the GB team began the process of fixing me long before anyone or anything else. Dave may have been ignorant of the doping problem, but that didn’t make him stupid. In less than a decade he proved himself to be not only one of the smartest people in cycling, but in any sport.

  Although held in a different country every year, the Worlds always follows the same format. The race is the same distance as a Monument, anywhere from 250 to 275 kilometres, and it’s always held on a circuit of approximately fifteen kilometres. That’s a lot of laps. Some years the circuit is on rolling roads, others hilly, and occasionally it’s flat. This way all types of rider will, at some point in their career, find a Worlds that suits them. It’s one of the few one-day races where specialisation is not of such importance; all types of racer battle it out for the win.

  The circuit in Ponferrada, north-west Spain, was, as usual, not particularly challenging. But this didn’t mean the race wasn’t. I knew some teams would want to make i
t difficult in order to thin the peloton down – and, sure enough, they did, which is when myself and Geraint Thomas were distanced (he, like me, had injured his hand a few weeks before, in a training crash). Like every Worlds, the speed increased with each and every lap in the second half of the race, whittling down the peloton in the process. As is usually the way, everybody awaited the final lap. This has become a monotonous annual display, and although the spectators may not particularly like this patience game it is, in fact, the surest way to stand any chance of success. Almost without exception those who move earlier than the last lap will fail. The whole race has become a competition in economy and efficiency, much like Milan–San Remo – he who does this best stands the most chance of being able to make the difference on the last lap, when it matters.

  I wasn’t able to offer much in the race – the only thing I brought to the team was the ability to predict other teams’ tactics and the general organisation and motivation of our team on the road. With absolute precision I called exactly which lap the Italians would launch an offensive, the guys paid heed to this and were at the front ready when it happened. I would have loved to have been able to race in the final and help Ben Swift, Pete Kennaugh and Luke Rowe, who all rode superbly, but I wasn’t able.