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

by David Millar

  If anything, what I have now is an expat Brit accent that morphs itself spontaneously to mimic those around me. It’s not something I’m proud of; I would much prefer to have held on to the Scottish accent that I had as a child, because I remain very proud of being a Scot.

  At times, I have to admit that, listening to my English accent while calling myself Scottish, I’ve felt like a fraud. But then I suppose our nomadic lifestyle made it important that we were good at ‘fitting in’.

  When I started school in Buckinghamshire, I would always play lunchtime football in Scottish national team kit. Looking back, I think losing my accent was a pivotal moment. Even so, I feel most at home when surrounded by Scots, and it was among Scots that I spent most of my time during my doping ban.

  I didn’t enjoy school that much, but out of the classroom, I had a blast, particularly after I discovered BMX and became the proud owner of a Raleigh Super Tuff Burner. Dad would take me along to the BMX race leagues in High Wycombe every other weekend. I was 8 years old and it was the perfect introduction to racing.

  The BMX boom was at its height and movies such as ET and BMX Bandits were big box office. I still haven’t seen ET, even though, a few years later while on a family holiday in California, I was chosen out of a throng of children to ride the ET BMX against a blue screen at Universal Studios. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them I hadn’t actually seen the film.

  I loved the rush of BMX racing. The start gate would come crashing down and the ten riders in the field would hurtle with childish abandon towards the first ramps and left-hand banked turn, or ‘burn’. There was very little skill involved. It was more dependent on a lot of youthful courage and blind luck.

  I was still on my trusty Raleigh, competing against kids on special racing BMXs. This had never bothered me, until one day, when, after finishing in the top three and while pushing my Raleigh back up the hill for the next race, I heard the commentator remark on my less than special bike. I was upset to say the least.

  Despite that, in my first season I finished fourth in the county for my age group. This entitled me to a number 4 handlebar plate for the next season, but I clearly remember thinking that fourth in the county wasn’t really that good.

  I don’t know why I would have such high expectations or put such pressure on myself at such a young age. I was competing against boys who were clearly taking it much more seriously than I was. For my dad and I, it was simply a Sunday out together. He didn’t allow himself to get mixed up in ‘over-competitive dad’ syndrome. Any pressure or desire I had to perform came from me and me alone.

  But that number 4 plate was never used because my beloved Super Tuff Burner was stolen that winter, effectively ending my BMX career. I spent years looking in ditches and scouring bike racks searching for that bike, and it took me a very long time to accept that it was never coming back.

  As well as BMX, I’d taken to roller-skating much of the time, usually at roller discos. I can’t remember how often the roller discos were, but they were never regular enough for me. I was a roller disco king – Thame Leisure Centre was my kingdom.

  France, in true younger sibling fashion, had taken to copying everything I did, be it BMX or roller-skating. It was never long before France was, like me, fully equipped, tagging along. Most irritatingly, everybody still thought she was my older sister, which was not cool for an already quiet, shy, introspective boy. I’m ashamed to say that I did my best to make sure that skating was the last hobby of mine that Frances copied. At the time, I didn’t see the love, only the burden of a little sister.

  France was so confident, so able to talk to people. She would talk to anybody at any time on any subject. We – my parents and I – would hang back and send her forward to ask all sorts of things of all sorts of people. We didn’t need local knowledge or a tour guide when we were on holiday, because we had our own little search engine on legs. Frances was our Google.

  My mum and dad made a significant effort to improve us both. We were both given extra tuition outside of school and I was learning to play the trombone and the piano. I was trombonist in the school jazz band and now it amazes me that I pretended to enjoy it and persevered for so long.

  But there were problems at home. It became impossible to ignore the troubles between my parents. At first, it had been subtle, but now there were things that I couldn’t ignore. It became harder to pretend that the fights weren’t happening. I suppose it had been going on for a long while, but children choose not to see such things.

  Eventually, things reached crisis point. I was woken up in the middle of the night, my tearful mum and dad sitting on my bed, telling me that they were splitting up, that it wasn’t my fault and that I should look after my sister.

  I don’t think I cried. I certainly don’t remember being tearful, but I remember being incredibly fucking angry. My childhood had come to an abrupt end. I was 11.

  The next morning, I walked to school as usual, through grass covered in morning dew, my feet leaving a trail behind me.

  2

  THE MESS

  Things changed fundamentally over the next couple of years.

  Not long after Dad moved out, Terry, my mum’s new partner, moved in. With Terry came his children, Simon and Sarah. Simon was a bit older than me and Sarah was the same age. It was weird at first. At that time my dad didn’t have a home and was living in the officers’ mess at Northwood, while we were all under one roof in a little village 15 miles from Stone.

  Terry was nice enough though, and he soon won us over. He had met Mum through work, so we’d already met him before everything – my parents’ relationship – had fallen apart, but it was still a new family to me.

  Now, I can see that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like our new home, school made me miserable and, to make matters worse, we had no money. Dad wasn’t around much, although he and I would get together on Thursdays, as he lived in Aylesbury and I’d stop by his house on the journey to and from school.

  Fran and I spent a few weekends at the mess in Northwood. This was not just any officers’ mess, but home of the combined commander and chief officer’s ward room, where we would be dining on special dispensation of the president of the mess committee.

  It was more like a gentleman’s smoking room, full of high-ranking older officers who’d be sitting, quietly dining with full silver service, while reading or simply enjoying the rarefied peace and quiet. France and I would be on our very best behaviour, knowing that we had no margin of error in such an environment. It was the last time such behaviour would be required of us.

  But France and I had started to argue more than laugh, perhaps as much due to our adolescence as to the tumultuous times that we were living through. And I was changing, rebelling.

  The upheaval caused profound changes in me over a very brief period of time. I began to doubt the wisdom of adults, and began to understand that my life was mine to control. But I was still a kid – I wasn’t ready for such big changes.

  School held little escape. Aylesbury Grammar’s intake was largely smart state-school boys being groomed towards public-school values. Football – which most of us loved and cherished – was not on the school games list, and rugby took its place. This did not go down well. To rub salt into the wound, the one subject I liked most, art, was held in little or no esteem.

  Mixing such a diverse bunch of boys together did not make for the most harmonious of classrooms. We made our French teacher cry more than once and our second-year tutor had a nervous breakdown. We were smart and rebellious, a terrible combination for a teacher.

  I was still keen on cycling – I just didn’t have a bike. My short-lived BMX career was already over, but I started to take an interest in mountain biking. I took on some odd jobs and dad said he would match whatever I earned so that I could buy a new bike. So on top of a paper round was added car-cleaning and lawn-mowing. My financial planning, targeting a new mountain bike, was ridiculously organised.

  I had a big wall cha
rt taped to the ceiling where I would monitor progress, relative to weekly and monthly targets, while lying in bed. I would empty my moneybox and count it all out, like a wee Ebenezer Scrooge. (This was about the most sophisticated I would ever become in planning my finances, although in fairness, I should point out that things have got better recently.) At the end of the rainbow was a Marin Bear Valley ’89, black and gold and very handsome. I bought it in a shop in High Wycombe and my life in cycling began.

  Soon after that, Dad told us that he was leaving for Hong Kong. I knew he was leaving the RAF and training to be a commercial pilot but Hong Kong hadn’t been mentioned. We presumed he would be near us whatever happened. He immediately said that we could move out there with him, but we didn’t even know where Hong Kong was, let alone what it was like. It didn’t seem real, and although it wasn’t to have an effect on us for a while, affect us it did.

  Before he left, Dad and I went to Scotland together to look at boarding schools. I hadn’t been happy at Aylesbury since the beginning. The whole experience felt so miserable, from the cold, dark, silent wait at the bus stop, through the long journey on a double-decker bus, to the death march from the bus station to the school. And then there was the school itself.

  It was almost five hundred years old and had the foundations of a great institution, but it was dilapidated and frayed at the edges. Some of the teachers were wonderful, but there were also terrible teachers, young, inexperienced and badly trained.

  At the beginning of my second year at the Grammar our form groups were changed around. To my horror I found myself in a class of boys I neither knew or liked, and I wrote a letter to the headmaster expressing my unhappiness at being separated from my friends. A couple of days later, the deputy head asked to see me.

  He explained that the headmaster had read my letter and asked him to speak to me.

  ‘So, David,’ he began, ‘I understand you are not happy with your new form group?’

  I stood by my letter. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, you understand that these form groups were created to help you? We are not in the habit of allowing boys to simply pick their form group. Why should we treat you differently?’

  I explained that I understood the reasoning behind the form groups, and agreed it was the best way to educate us. Then I said: ‘I think my situation is a little different from the other students.

  ‘My parents recently divorced and we have moved away from all my old friends. This has all happened in the last two years and I seem to be living in constant change. I don’t feel like more change, sir.’

  I hadn’t intended to mention my parents divorce, but as I spoke, I realised that it was a key element in my motives for sticking with my friends and being moved to a less academic class. He got up from his chair and moved back behind his desk.

  ‘Well, I will speak to the headmaster and give him my opinion. If we choose to make an exception and allow you to go to the form you want, you can be sure we’ll be keeping an eye on you, so make sure you don’t let us down.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  There was a pause. ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘I asked around about you before this meeting. Did you know you are thought of as, er, a bit of a “wide boy”?’

  I had no idea what a wide boy was, but I liked the sound of it. Hesitantly I replied. ‘No, sir, I didn’t. Should I say thank you . . .?’

  He smiled at that. Thanks to him my last few months at Aylesbury Grammar School were not nearly as miserable as they might have been.

  Dad’s new life took shape. France and I went to Hong Kong to visit him at half-term, enduring the YPTA (Young Person Travelling Alone) system of flying around the world. Even now, Frances and I feel a pang of empathy for these kids when we see them in airports with their little travel packs around their necks.

  You’ve probably seen them too, pre-teens chaperoned on and off flights by cabin crew. They label you, putting a packet around your neck containing ticket and passport. Then you board a flight, seated alone, often surrounded by other kids with their mums and dads, heading off on holiday – together. It’s a crushing experience. From the moment of leaving one parent and then meeting the other at the final destination, you are in limbo, between families.

  Yet it was worth that humiliation to get to Hong Kong, because from the moment the plane landed, I fell in love with the place. I’d stepped from a black and white world into life in technicolour and I knew that was what I really wanted.

  Frances and I were there for less than a week but it was enough time for me to decide that I wanted to move there. Dad had made it clear that it was an option for both of us, if we were interested. Hong Kong offered an escape and I didn’t hesitate, even though I knew that when I got back home I’d have to tell my mum.

  I can’t remember exactly how I told Mum, but I can remember the distress it caused. She cried every night for weeks. France was the collateral damage in it all. She didn’t want to leave Mum after seeing how upset she was, and this would be what always kept her from Hong Kong. My leaving her behind was to weigh on our relationship for a decade.

  Leaving Mum was hard, but I guess that part of me held her responsible for Dad moving out and for us moving houses. This wasn’t – isn’t – necessarily true, but believing it made it possible for me to even consider leaving.

  Now, from a distance, I look back and see that it was a lifechanging decision. I was a selfish, damaged 13-year-old determined to take his life into his own hands. It changed me, hardened me, and laid the foundation for the person I was to become.

  Hong Kong was my escape, I was going to the Far East for the same reason as so many before me – to start afresh in a faraway place. The dreariness of Aylesbury was made all the more profound by the knowledge I was leaving for a new life. I felt sorry for everybody who had to carry on.

  I didn’t return to live permanently in Britain for fifteen years.

  3

  FLYING BALL BICYCLES

  Hong Kong – ‘HK’ – is a strange and magical place, one of the wonders of the world. It was especially so during the years I lived there. The British lease on the territory was nearly over and the 1997 handover back to China was rapidly approaching.

  HK’s residents lived with the ever-present ticking of the countdown to Chinese rule as the backdrop to their everyday lives. It made for vibrant times. At first, I didn’t understand this – I just loved the atmosphere and thrived in the city’s electrified air. Everybody and everything seemed so much more alive than what I’d left behind in England.

  The people that I met were generally positive, dynamic people, and the two cities, Hong Kong on the island and Kowloon on the mainland, were ever-changing beasts in their own right.

  I never grew weary of sitting on the Kowloon waterfront, gazing across the harbour at that most famous of skylines, admiring the sheer scale of it all. I’d go to the far end of the Ocean Terminal car park, perch on a wall and look out over the water. It was an oasis of peace amongst all the chaos and noise. At night, HK was other-worldly, particularly if the clouds were low. The city’s neon lights would reflect off them and illuminate an upside-down, snowy mountain range shrouding the tops of the tallest buildings. It was, and I’m sure still is, sublime.

  Kowloon’s growth had been stunted because of the presence of Kai Tak airport. Development could not shoot skywards because of the planning limitations imposed by the flight paths. But what it lost in height, it made up for in intensity. The most densely populated place in the world, Mongkok, was only a 5-minute walk from where I went to school. Ten minutes in the opposite direction took me to theWalled City, a self-governed, mythical enclave that over a century had grown into what, to me, looked like the most ambitious post-apocalyptic film set ever created. It was governed by the triads and was a total no-go area for a gweilo like myself.

  I lived with Dad and his new wife Ally in the New Territories, near Sai Kung, in a marina development built into the sea on reclaimed land and comprising s
cores, maybe hundreds, of big terraced town houses. The development was brand new and had attracted many expat families. There was a big group of us who would hang out and have fun. My first few years there were some of the happiest I’ve had – K61 Marina Cove, the home and resting place of my adolescence. I’m sure if I were to return there now I would see the ghosts of my youth.

  School – the King George V, or ‘KG5’ – was a Hong Kong institution, built in the 1930s amongst paddy fields and farmland. KG5 sat under the flight path of one of the busiest airports in the world, sandwiched between two of the most densely populated places on the planet. We studied an English curriculum and were taught by mainly English teachers. We also wore English-style uniforms, and were the only school kids in HK to do so.

  The school itself was the antithesis of what I knew. I had come from a single-sex school and was essentially a well-mannered, chivalrous boy. I was something of a novelty to my fellow students, especially as I had started halfway through the year. I’d never had much attention before and I was surprised to find that I liked it. In fact, I loved it. Initially, the curriculum itself wasn’t challenging as I was about a year ahead of what was being taught, so I just sat back and luxuriated in my new life.

  Unfortunately, I continued to luxuriate for the next five years.

  It didn’t take long for my report cards to begin their slippery downward slope. First to tumble were the effort marks, followed, before too long, by my grades. But I was having too much fun to care or even bother to try to make a difference.

  I have to say that I wasn’t always well advised. One of my dad’s most memorable pieces of good counsel revolved around my decision to continue studying French.

  ‘Come on, David,’ he said. ‘It’s not something that’s going to be of any use to you in the future, is it?’