by David Millar
Ned: Two attacks from Kis˘erlovski: did they worry you? Or did they play perfectly into your hands, ultimately?
Me: No, I’d already decided I was going to go after every single attack. I knew I could win the sprint, so my tactic was to shut everything down. So that’s what I did.
Ned: And on the forty-fifth anniversary of Tom Simpson’s death.
Me: Yeah, I mean, that’s particularly poignant, I think, especially after what I’ve been through, as an ex-doper who’s now clean and who loves his sport. I’m very proud to have done it today because I think we mustn’t forget Tommy’s memory and what happened and also what this sport’s been through … now, we’re the cleanest we’ve ever been, with Brad [Wiggins] leading the Tour, and Chris [Froome] in second, and now four British stage wins. I mean, we’re clean riders and we’re dominating the Tour de France.
Two years on I still had the power within me if I got everything right. But I had a month without racing while my main competitors were en tour around France. Even if they had a bad Tour they would have accumulated a ridiculous level of fitness and strength; rarely in my career have I come out of a Grand Tour weaker than when I started it. Knowing how hard the Glasgow road race course was, this weighed heavily on my mind. I trained as hard as I could in order to give myself every possible chance, and I loved every minute of it. I’d forgotten what a simple pleasure it can be being on training camp. There is nothing to distract, everything is focused on physical wellbeing from dawn till dusk. Only when we’re there do we remember how simple life can be. You’re stripped of your normal routine. On training camp we find a new routine, created solely to make us faster, lighter, stronger. The best bit about it is that everybody respects the fact you’re on training camp: you’re left alone as if you’re in deepest India on a yoga retreat. It’s a safe haven from the real world. I appreciate this more than ever knowing it’s perhaps for the final time. I treat it as a luxury rather than the job I once considered it. After ten days of training, dieting, saunas and, of course, juicing, I left the mountains and returned to Girona. My sister had to return to her real life; the last Sunday of July, as the Tour de France entered Paris and rode along the Seine past the Eiffel Tower and began its last laps of the Champs, I set off for the airport and my plane to Glasgow.
Velo Club Rocacorba
A TGV ride to Paris on the morning of the final day of the 2009 Tour de France. I was sitting chatting away, terribly excited about the day and evening ahead, proud and borderline euphoric about the amazing Tour we’d had. Bradley Wiggins had finished fourth overall (later corrected to third after the Armstrong USADA Reasoned Decision); Christian VdV (after breaking his back at the Giro less than two months before) had finished seventh. Behind them we had ridden as a world-beating team – in total contrast to our first Tour de France the year before where VdV had finished fourth (in my eyes first) on his own. He had nobody with him, we were all hopeless; he’d had to rely on his good relationships with other riders and directeur sportifs to help him out when shit got heavy.
The tone of our 2009 Tour de France was set with our mind-blowing team time trial in Montpellier. Two days later I came surprisingly close to winning my home stage, from Girona to Barcelona. Every day we were active. I’d be placing Julian ‘Kiwi Guy’ Dean and Ty Farrar in perfect position for bunch sprints one day, then dropping Brad and VdV into the foot of their decisive general classification mountain the next – while, of course, being road captain all the time. The rest of the team were always phenomenal: everybody had a job and did it, without fail. The only reason they hadn’t been able help us in the team time trial was because VdV, Wiggo, Zab and myself were just so fucking fast they couldn’t ride with us.
It had only been eighteen months before that I’d lined up at the Tour of Qatar next to that weird bloody castle in the desert with the weight of the world on my shoulders. We’d been outsiders back then, we didn’t even have a place at the Tour de France at that point, what with being a second division team. To think that I was now sitting on a train to Paris on the final day of the Tour with a British teammate, Bradley Wiggins, who had just become one of the greatest-ever British Tour de France riders, was astonishing. I’d helped persuade Brad to come to our team, and I believed in him completely. We roomed together most of the time, and had formed a close bond. During the race he may as well have been a brother, the same way I felt about VdV, Zab, Ryder, Ty and Kiwi Guy. No question, we were a team. And all of this meant that on that TGV ride up to Paris I was overflowing with pride. More than that, I was happy. We were all on a cloud, even VdV with his broken back and ‘what ifs’. He was proud, like me, because at that moment we no longer cared about the ‘what ifs’ – we’d lived too long with those. Brad was doing it for us, he was better than us, but in us he had the perfect guys around him to guide and protect him.
On this, the last day, Brad seemed to have relaxed for the first time since we’d started, over three weeks before in Monte Carlo. He’d carried not only the professional burden of being our leader for the race, but also his personal ambition and the weight of a nation. The day before had been the general classification judgement day, with a summit finish atop Mont Ventoux. The podium was out of reach, but he had to hold off one of the best climbers of the time, Fränk Schleck, from taking his fourth place. A lesser man would have crumbled. He didn’t. He defended his position on that most British of Tour de France mountains, Tommy Simpson’s photograph taped to his stem. For that reason the final and twenty-first stage became his own personal holiday which, looking back, is probably why he didn’t help us in the lead out that day when he was supposed to. I can understand that now, years later.
In this jubilant mood we rode the train to Paris. We were on top of the world: that’s how fourth and seventh can make you feel if you’ve fought that hard for it. Brad and I started discussing the fact that our quirky little eccentric sport that nobody in the UK had either known or cared about had suddenly become the dog’s bollocks. How all of a sudden we kept hearing of these interesting people who were fans of cycling – yet we never really got to meet them, and if we did it was in some super-uncomfortable situation where nothing clicked.
So I said, ‘We should start a club, Brad. A cycling and dining club. Invite people we want to be friends with.’
He nodded in agreement: ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what we need to do. What would we call it?’
I looked at him, shaking my head, ‘I don’t fucking know! I just came up with the idea ten seconds ago.’
We spent the next hour deciding who we’d invite and what we’d call it. Rocacorba seemed a no-brainer as that was our training and testing mountain in Girona, but should it be Rocacorba CC or Rocacorba Wheelers? Or GS Rocacorba? Or even Velo Club Rocacorba. Yes, Velo Club Rocacorba. VCR. Wait, VCR doesn’t work, that’s a videotape, VCRC? YES. I’m not even going to go into our list of imaginary members. I remember it vaguely becoming exactly that, imaginary.
Over the years, the club has grown into exactly what I imagined and hoped it could be on that train ride to Paris. Bradley’s input didn’t go beyond that day – as soon as he left the race he slipped back into his anti-social self – Michael Barry stepped in and together we spent months, nearly a year, in fact, creating it. There are close to forty members now, from all over the world. The one thing we all have in common is a love of cycling, and also the likelihood we’d never have known each other if Velo Club Rocacorba hadn’t given us a reason to become friends.
The Style Council
The one thing almost every member of Velo Club Rocacorba has in common, beyond the cycling, is a creative sensibility. Those were the sort of people Michael and I wanted to recruit because they were the types of people we rarely got to meet or know, living ensconced in the professional cycling world as we were.
Four become the VCRC Style Council: Richard Pearce, Max Broby, Kadir Guirey and Douglas Brooks. Richard and Max are from architectural and design backgrounds, and have known each other for years
, while Kadir is an actual real-life prince with a near Forest Gump-like ability for being in the right place at the right time over the last forty years. He was the first professional skater in the UK back in the seventies, was in a successful band in the eighties before becoming a producer, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of art and, of course, it goes without saying he knows everybody who is anybody in every London scene. He’s just a cool dude, and perhaps the gentlest and kindest person I’ve ever met. Douglas Brooks is a phenomenal man, a scholar of Eastern religions and languages, who happens also to be one of the world’s most respected yoga gurus. He has a brain the size of a planet. All of us have learnt more from Douglas over the years than any teacher has ever taught us.
Richard and I had started working together after I’d had a mad idea with my shoe sponsor, fi’zi:k, to make a different pair of shoes for every race I did in my final season, and then auction them off for charity. I wanted each shoe design to be a mini-story of my history or vision of the race it was representing. Between the five of us we came up with the design for nearly every shoe, as well as the Team Scotland Commonwealth Games cycling kit. What began as a fun little side project became an almost full-time job for Richard, who took it upon himself to make sure every design was up to the standard we all wanted.
Arriving in the Commonwealth Games village and seeing the fruits of our labour in the newspaper cuttings on the wall of the Scottish team common room was a magic moment. Racing for Scotland meant so much to me. I’d now be racing through the streets of Glasgow in front of my countrymen and family and friends dressed in a kit of my own design. It felt like the ultimate honour. Now I just had to hope and believe I’d be good enough on the day to make my country proud.
Glasgow
I felt like a younger version of myself when arriving in Glasgow. I was fit, motivated and refreshingly excited. Getting to the athletes’ village brought back all the memories of previous games. There’s a school summer camp feel about them – although having never been on a school summer camp I can’t be entirely sure if that’s the case, but it’s how I imagine they’d be.
The ‘village’ feels like a film set. Everything has been built especially for the occasion, and it looks like it. Everything is new, and, although finished, it doesn’t quite feel completed: because it isn’t. There are no kitchens in the houses or apartments – every door is a self-closing fire door with its own lock and key, there are connecting passages between buildings. Every wall is painted the same colour, every sofa, bed and wardrobe identical. Nothing there is designed to be permanent except the structure of the buildings and their layout on site. Once the games vacate, the contractors will be back to convert the ‘village’ into the housing development it is destined to be.
In the middle of it all is the food hall – the biggest canteen you’ve ever seen. Choosing where you sit, even after all these years, is difficult. It’s like your first day of school, but a school where the turnover of athletes is so high and the schedules so random you don’t actually know anyone. Even those from Scotland, wearing identical tracksuits, are strangers because within each country there is a multitude of different teams who rarely, if ever, cross paths. Being a professional cyclist I never mix with any other sport. I haven’t grown up knowing other athletes; I’ve been on the road since I was eighteen, of my own volition, and away from national teams and international games. I’d often choose to sit on my own in the food hall, because I never really treated it as a social experience. I treated it as a competition.
All of which is contrary to what the media may have outsiders believe. Certain newspapers regurgitate the same story, every major games, of massive partying and vast sexual promiscuity within the village. This may be the case for some, but they are few and far between – and for professional cyclists it’s never the case. We come in, race, party together afterwards, then fly out the next day to race for our pro teams once more. Even though it’s such an emotional and rare event for us we can’t help but be professionals (our treat being that we don’t fly out straight after the race, hence the rare opportunity to party together, but even then we don’t mix with other sports).
The food hall reminded me of being a boy again. I’d get self-conscious, even shy: I didn’t want to go and sit with people I didn’t know. Occasionally I’d try the get-to-know-you conversation that meeting people for the first time involves, and every time it would end up being uncomfortable and forced. I’d have dined with the Scottish cycling guys, but they always ate too early – I was accustomed to Spanish time so that never worked. The only time I didn’t eat alone was when the Aussie cycling team were in the food hall at the same time: I had more friends in that team than any other. Their manager/coach, Bradley McGee, is one of my oldest friends and two of their team were my pro teammates; the other four were friends. They made me feel at home, in my home country, which was confusing.
The Scottish team were fantastic, though. My mechanic, David Sharp, was one of the best I’ve ever had, and Alastair MacLennan, the Scottish Cycling president, was the same guru he’d always been. The Scottish team felt like home, even if I felt like a stranger in the food hall. The memory of my redemption at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi lived on – possibly this was why I’d even been given the honour of designing the Team Scotland cycling kit for Glasgow. I saw it for the first time in its final form on arriving in the village.
I’d wanted us to have a navy blue kit, like the football or rugby team, and even incorporate a Lion Rampant somewhere. Those things for me are Scotland.
Unfortunately it wasn’t possible. We had to adhere to a particular Pantone that had been chosen as the blue for every Scottish kit. Then we weren’t allowed to use the Lion Rampant – it being sovereign property. This was all news to me. The Lion Rampant is the royal banner for Scotland, and, although used as a secondary Scottish flag by Scottish sporting fans, apparently it can only be officially used by Great Officers of State who represent the sovereign in Scotland. Which seemed a bit unfair, but these were the things we had to respect. Once we understood these restrictions we decided the only way to represent Scotland in Glasgow was by wearing the flag. The kit was designed as such; Richard Pearce took it upon himself to make it the best possible. He visited the factory, learnt their manufacturing techniques and designed the kit accordingly. For what was ultimately a very simple design there was an enormous amount of work.
The cycling events had already begun the week before my arrival at the velodrome. In fact, by the time I’d got there the majority of them had been completed, their medals already awarded. My two events, road race and time trial, were, as at most of the major games, two of the final events.
The time trial came first. I didn’t expect much as I hadn’t trained specifically for it, having decided to hedge all my bets on the road race. The weather on the day was beautiful enough to bring more people out to the roadside than any of us could have ever imagined. It felt like a Tour de France stage, only there was blue everywhere instead of yellow, and everybody was cheering my name. As defending champion I was last man off. I felt good right from the beginning, yet even though that was the case I was well off the pace.
Alex Dowsett of England, who had finished second to me in the previous Commonwealth Games, won it convincingly. Personally, I was just glad to get it done – although it was an amazing experience racing in Scotland for Scotland, I couldn’t help but feel like I was disappointing everybody by not being in the race for the win. After the time trial I tracked down Nicole and the boys in the area near the finish. It was the first time I’d seen them since they’d left for the UK nearly a month earlier. Somebody captured the moment and kindly sent me the photos. While Alex Dowsett was preparing to receive his gold medal I lay on the grass in the park, blissfully happy.
I was determined to rectify my lacklustre time-trial showing in the road race a few days later. It was to be held on the final day, practically the closing event of the Games. I knew it was a long shot. As is often the way th
e dedication and self-belief I’d needed to commit fully to the training camp had blinkered me to the harsh reality. Having not competed in over a month meant I’d be at something of a disadvantage compared to the guys who’d been racing – no training camp in the world could replicate the Tour de France – but there was nothing I could do about that. I had to believe it was still possible.
Come the day, the good weather of the previous week has vanished. It is apocalyptic, the rain relentless and the clouds so dark it feels like night. At my best this would have been my dream scenario. With the course being so technical and the peloton made up of such mixed abilities it is in the interest of the big teams to make sure the race is hard from the very beginning, in order to cull the weaker and more dangerous riders.
One of the great things about the Commonwealth Games is that the spectrum of talent is so broad. There are riders who have just finished the Tour de France lining up against guys from small and faraway countries who have never even ridden in a peloton before. As charming as this may sound, it’s also quite disconcerting: the professionals don’t want to be crashed into and injured by a less skilful, possibly reckless, competitor. Wet city-centre roads and a technical circuit are perhaps the worst combination. For this reason the strongest team in the race, the Australians, go from the gun.
By the end of the first lap, over half the peloton has been dropped, and the shredding doesn’t stop there: every lap there are fewer and fewer riders. It’s a classic war of attrition. The weather makes it all the harder, as each lap is peppered with crashes, so you have to stay right at the front all the time in order to make sure you are safe, or at least safer. I feel in control for the majority of the race, and still believe it possible that I can be in contention for the finale, but when the real race starts with four laps to go I can’t react. The riders who’ve come from the Tour de France are simply on another level; their condition allows them to handle the load without much difficulty, and the longer and harder the race the easier it becomes for them. I’d feared that would be the case but have refused to let myself think about it, knowing there is nothing to be done. I’ve trained as hard as I possibly can, and that is all I could’ve done in lieu of racing.
