The Racer

by David Millar

  Some years they had a hit squad of riders, yet there was never a concern there’d be a clash of egos; they were always able to work as one. The Italians in the meantime would be arguing among themselves while buying-up competitors, as well as each other.

  The Vuelta embodies the Spanish style of racing. I’ve always said that I’ve felt it to be the bike racer’s bike race. We can go there and race our bikes without any of the peripheral stress that often comes with being a professional. It’s probably always felt like that to me because I’ve come to it from the recently finished Tour de France, where pressure and stress are inherent and where it’s easy to feel like a tiny cog in a colossal machine. I was one of the very few Tour de France riders who really wanted to go to the Vuelta. It was always my race. I could go there and race without expectation or pressure to perform. More often than not whatever team I was on was just happy to have one of their big riders putting their hand up to go. It’s helped that the majority of times I’ve raced there I’ve won a stage or come close.

  The Final Grand Tour

  Arriving at a Grand Tour is different from every other race. For starters we arrive days in advance rather than the standard day before that we allow for most other races. This is mainly due to the fact that we have a blood test two days before the start. This is a UCI quarterly test, rather than a random control, and is a remnant of the first-ever blood controls (referred to as ‘health checks’ at the time) that were brought into our sport (well, any sport actually) back in 1997, my first year as a professional.

  At the time there was no test for EPO (an injected hormone that replicates the effects of altitude training) so, in an attempt to curb the blatant abuse of EPO, a limit was put on the effect it had: the 50 per cent haematocrit limit means you aren’t allowed to have more than 50 per cent of your blood cells made up of the oxygen-carrying red type. A higher percentage of oxygen-carrying red cells is considered dangerous, likely to result in blood thickening. That thickening, in extremis, can cause heart failure. It’s worth mentioning here that Bjarne Riis won his Tour de France in 1996 with a haematocrit of over 60 per cent. He was taking vast quantities of EPO at the time.

  Those initial quarterly tests helped educate the authorities as to the effects of EPO and other drugs. They began to realise that in the long term the only way to stay ahead of the doping curve was to bio-mark athletes – in other words to monitor them with regular blood tests that would eventually give them sufficient data to create a biological passport for each rider. They didn’t need to build this passport for ever, they simply needed to do it for long enough to see natural trends that identified their biological make-up – then they could randomly blood test to monitor for anomalies. If any were spotted they could then begin random anti-doping blood and urine controls, in and out of competition. These would target whatever drug or drugs the UCI perceived to be creating the anomalous result they spotted in the passport data.

  The pre-Grand Tour test is done on the Thursday morning before the race starts on the Saturday. So the latest we will arrive is the Wednesday evening. When there’s a team time trial on the first stage, as is often the case these days at the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España (but not so the Tour de France), we will arrive even earlier to allow us an extra day or two to recon the course and do some final training exercises to be sure the team is well drilled and everybody is on the same page regarding their role within the team. Hence, when we arrive on the Tuesday, Nathan and I hardly feel like we’ve stopped since Eneco, which is never the ideal way to arrive at the start of a Grand Tour – we were hardly fresh as daisies after tapering the previous week. But we just had to suck it up and try to ignore how tired we were.

  The buzz of arriving at a Grand Tour is always the same. They’re the only races where each team will bring a full arsenal of staff and vehicles. For Garmin this meant twenty-six people and nine vehicles at the 2014 Vuelta:

  9 x riders

  2 x directeur sportifs

  1 x sports scientist

  1 x doctor

  1 x chiropractor

  4 x mechanics

  5 x soigneurs

  1 x bus driver

  2 x chefs

  1 x bus

  5 x cars

  1 x truck

  1 x van

  1 x kitchen truck

  At the Tour de France there’d be even more support, as we’d have extra hands on deck to handle media and sponsors. This is one of the reasons the Tour de France can become so hectic: beyond the fans, media and the race itself each team is operating at a level that it doesn’t come close to at any other time of the year, which makes for a slightly strained working environment when things aren’t going so well.

  Whereas at the Vuelta, when things don’t go to plan nobody really gives a shit. For a team like ours, with its American owners and sponsors, the Tour de France is the be-all and end-all. A close second is the Tour of Colorado (where our team is from), which takes place three weeks after the Tour, and which means that the Vuelta begins just as the pressure is released, with the completion of the race in Colorado. We are left to our own devices, almost operating like a splinter group. To use an American expression, it’s awesome.

  It’s always possible to judge how the atmosphere for the next month will be from the first evening meal at the hotel. It’s the only time in the day when the riders really get to sit down and spend time together. Breakfasts are fairly freestyle in that we’re given a deadline to be there, but it’s up to us what time we eat (as long as it’s not after the deadline). I’m always up so early it’s possible for me to go through an entire Grand Tour without ever sharing the breakfast table.

  Dinner in the evening, however, is where we relax; the day is done. The Vuelta being the Vuelta means that everybody is fairly chilled in the days leading up to the start. The fact that it’s my twenty-fourth Grand Tour means I’m particularly relaxed, the trepidation of younger years a distant memory. Immediately I can see everybody has a similar disposition. From that first meal we are all on the same page: we are in hysterics, riffing on random subjects, taking the piss out of each other – the usual banter of a happy team. This doesn’t mean we are carefree – we have serious ambitions for the race: Ryder and Dan Martin are riding for the general classification, while I want to win a stage; Talansky is here to redeem his poor showing at the Tour de France, while Cardoso, Nathan, Koldo and Vansummeren are present to work for the team and seize any opportunities that arise. We have one Grand Tour virgin in the young American Nate Brown – and even he seems pretty blasé about the whole thing. That said, there is an elephant in the room.

  The team time trial on the first stage has us concerned, largely because of the fact that, out of the four previous Grand Tour team time trials Garmin have undertaken, we’ve crashed in three of them. In fact, five of our team starting the Vuelta had been involved in the ‘car bombing’ of the Giro earlier this year.

  The team time-trial course in Jerez does nothing to alleviate the nerves. It is highly technical, with roundabouts galore on a road that looks like it has been polished to within an inch of its life. A glass of water spilled on a corner could take out a whole team – well, that’s how most of our team are talking. It’s not that they are worried: they are shit-scared. That much fear breeds humour; we can’t help but find it funny, me especially considering in my eighteen years of racing I’ve never once been involved in a team time-trial crash. On the bright side it somewhat lowers expectations: our primary goal is not to crash. My final team time-trial, and that’s what we were aiming for: to stay upright. Oh, how the mighty fall.

  Team Time Trial (2)

  I’ve never been one for team talks – that’s the job of the directeur sportif. As riders we don’t really have a moment to rally together where we huddle and high-five like in the movies. Ultimately, our loner personalities aren’t designed for such flagrant displays of solidarity. The only time there is the opportunity for such a call to arms is before a team time trial. We
arrive at the ramp ten minutes before our start time and sit around uncomfortably, waiting to be called up. It has crossed my mind many times in the past to speak to the guys during that moment, but we used to win team time trials without such cinematic behaviour so I’ve always thought better of it. This time I didn’t. We were all sitting there, nervous, but not in a healthy way, so I thought, ‘Fuck it. It’s my last team time-trial anyway. I may as well go all American.’

  ‘Guys, let’s have a chat.’ I gestured for them to pull their chairs closer, and we found ourselves in a sort of circle, sitting there with our baby blue Alien helmets, all bent over as it was so hard to hear with all the noise. ‘I know everybody is nervous, but there’s no point, it’s not gonna change anything,’ I continued. ‘We’re not here to race for the win, so already that makes our life easier. We only have one objective, and that’s to make sure Ryder and Dan lose as little time as possible.’ I nodded to the two of them; they and everybody else nodded back. ‘Everybody does their job and does it to the best of their ability. You can’t do any more and you shouldn’t think about having to do any more. We ride as a team, and we look after each other. It doesn’t matter what our result is when we cross the finish line as long we all know we gave everything and we did the best we could – as a TEAM. Honestly, that’s all that matters. OK?’ They all nodded their heads, some of them repeated ‘OK’.

  I finished off with ‘All right! Well, this is the last team time-trial I’ll ever do. I’m proud to be doing it with you guys.’ I then smiled, ‘Please, let’s try not to fucking crash.’

  We didn’t crash. As sad and sorry a goal as that may have been it still felt good to fulfil it. We finished in eighteenth place, forty-one seconds down. We crossed the line pleased.

  Day 2

  Started out from Algeciras. A classic Grand Tour sprint day. Break went, teams rode, break caught, sprint contested. It’s so hot that racing has become secondary to drinking. I’m drinking 3 x 700ml bottles an hour, a total of twelve litres over the duration of the race, and still I lose weight from dehydration. Nathan Haas saves the day for us by winning the one and only mountains classification point up for grabs, so at least people are aware we’re in the race after our invisible team time-trial result.

  Day 3

  Cadiz. Fucking hot. We start on an aircraft carrier today. Ryder gets a selfie of us while I’m filming a video for Archibald and Harvey. That is the highlight of the day.

  Dan is second to Michael Matthews in the uphill sprint to the finish line. The run-in to it is sketchy as hell, so much so that it splits the bunch up, causing minor gaps. My job has been to position Ryder and Dan before the sketchy section. I do this, then roll in at my own pace, treating it as my warm-down.

  Day 4

  On the way to sign-on today I see Dave Brailsford. I see him at a lot of races, but we haven’t actually spoken in what feels like years now. We used to be damn-near best friends. It all went a bit pear-shaped when I publicly spoke out against Team Sky’s zero-tolerance policy. I didn’t think it was realistic or ethical in a sport with a history like ours. Unfortunately, I was proved right on more than one occasion as Sky kept falling foul of its own policy by recruiting people who would soon after be found out to have had a doping history. It was inevitable. Dave and Sky came into the sport with the best intentions but without a true understanding of the history of professional cycling. They’ve since learnt, yet, oddly, zero tolerance remains. I’ve let it go somewhat of late, understanding that we both want the same for the sport, only we have different ways of doing it. Our relationship was damaged significantly because of it, though.

  Dave had been one of the first to get in touch with me when I wasn’t selected for the Tour, expressing his sympathies as well as his incomprehension. The rekindling of the friendship has been one of the best things to have come out of that situation. Although we’ve been in touch we haven’t actually spoken face to face. For this reason when I see him I stop and call out. He hears me immediately and comes over, spilling his coffee on the way: ‘Ah, shit, that burns! Dave, how are you?’ I can tell he’s a bit nervous, as am I – we’ve been at loggerheads for a long time. I tell him I’m good – and that his boys are looking good.

  ‘Yeah, Froomie’s injury was worse than we’d thought. He gives everything, though. It’s great for the younger guys to see him try so hard. What about you? Near the end, huh?’

  I say that, yeah, this is it, the last race with Garmin anyway. ‘I’d love to do the Worlds, though. We’ll have to see how I come out of this.’ I shrug.

  Dave replies nonchalantly, ‘You want to do the Worlds? Well, you should do the Worlds. I’ll speak to Rod and Shane. They’ve asked me to manage the team. Leave it with me.’

  I was shocked. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll speak to them. You just stay healthy. I see no reason why you won’t be there.’ He smiled knowingly.

  That was that then. Dave and I were back!

  We finish in Córdoba, one of the legendary Vuelta a España stages. It’s a classic finale, a bit like Milan–San Remo in that it’s flat most of the day before hitting the final climb that precedes the finish. I flew up there in 2003 to win solo. I don’t fly today. I’m overheating so badly that my eyeballs feel like they’re on fire. Never before have I experienced that. The whole day we are in survival mode till we get to the final forty kilometres and start racing for real. It’s hard to switch from ‘off’ to ‘on’ in those conditions.

  Unlike 2003 we aren’t finished when we cross the finish line; we have a circuit to do which takes us back up the other side of the climb we’ve just completed. I decide to shut it down. My whole mission in the first week is to do my job helping Ryder and Dan and then pull the pin the moment I can’t help them any more. This should conserve as much energy and prevent as much damage as possible in order to allow me to be at my best for the last week. It’s a method I’ve often used in Grand Tours – race hard then sit up and roll in when my job is done. I’ve never understood battling in, continuing to push myself, if it isn’t serving a clearly defined purpose.

  Day 5

  What a shit day. The heat is still oppressive, cauldron-like, and the peloton slips into a full state of lethargy. We bear more resemblance to wandering Bedouin than a peloton of racing cyclists. Two riders slip away early on, normally the perfect scenario as we could allow them to take a big advantage before slowly reeling them in. Unfortunately one of the two is Tony Martin, World Time Trial Champion, meaning there is no chance the peloton will allow the pair to get much time as Martin is too strong to be allowed anything but the smallest of margins. It doesn’t matter how long he’s been out there, he can’t be expected to weaken. He’d broken all the rules twice in the previous year. The Vuelta 2013 had seen Tony break away solo at the beginning of a stage, then spend the whole day out there on his own. The teams chasing him were confident in their ability to reel him in. After all, a solo rider is no threat to a full team when they decide to chase him down. The maximum gap Tony got that day was seven minutes; the sprinters’ teams then took control, and with twenty kilometres to go his gap was down to one minute. There’s a rule of thumb that exists when it comes to hunting down a small, stage-long break – once the concerted chase to bring the rider back begins he’ll lose approximately one minute every ten kilometres. The gap decreases exponentially the closer it gets to the finish, as the breakaway rider(s) tire and slow and fresh teams increase the speed behind.

  When, twenty kilometres from the finish of Stage 6 of the 2013 Vuelta a España, the peloton had reduced Tony Martin’s advantage to one minute it seemed like a foregone conclusion. A typically unfair game of cat and mouse. It was impossible for one rider, no matter how strong, to hold off a charging peloton after a day-long solo breakaway. According to the laws of pro bike racing anyway.

  What happened next was one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen, in any sport. I was in Canada with Ryder. We weren’t watching bike racing at the time, b
ut VdV called and told us to turn on the TV. With ten kilometres to go Tony’s gap was down to ten seconds, the peloton were as near as dammit on top of him. Then he did something nobody should be able to do, or has ever done in modern cycling before or since: he went faster. It was possible to see the panic at the front of the bunch; whole teams started doing peel-offs. They were throwing everything they had into the chase and still they couldn’t get closer. He increased the gap to eighteen seconds. What had been an organised team pursuit at the front of the peloton turned into a bunch of solo kamikaze efforts as each team exhausted their resources and found themselves forced to engage their protected riders in the chase.

  By this point I’d slid off the sofa on to the floor in front of the TV in Ryder’s living room, hands on my head in disbelief. With two kilometres to go Tony had nine seconds, but the teams behind were spent. It looked like he was going to get it; with one kilometre to go he had six seconds. By now I was on my knees, fists clenched, willing him on. Then the final lead outs began, much earlier than any of the sprinters would have wanted, but they had no choice: it was either lose their lead-out man before the sprint and risk the mayhem or save him and sprint for second place.