In Search of Robert Millar: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Britain’s Most Successful Tour de France Cyclist. Richard Moore
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When it was caught, Millar remained vigilant, and near the head of the race, refusing to panic when one rider built a lead in excess of two minutes. With twenty-eight miles to go, when most of the riders were no longer capable of making sudden bursts, Millar made his move. He was joined by Steve Lawrence, and the pair pursued the lone escapee, who was caught and dropped, leaving the defending champion and the young Scot to contest the title. The sprint, at the conclusion to a race described as ‘pulsating’, proved a formality: Millar ‘soared up the finishing hill well clear of Lawrence’. It wasn’t so much a sprint as a test of who could still, after almost five hours in the saddle, squeeze any remaining energy and strength from their legs. Lawrence, as he admitted afterwards, had nothing left, and he was full of admiration for his young rival.
The victory that Millar had forecast six months earlier led to conjecture that he was the youngest ever national road race champion. The records were inconclusive, but it was a record day for the Scots. Behind Millar, Sandy Gilchrist was fourth and Jamie McGahan fifth. ‘From novice to national champion in four years’ began the first ever profile of Millar in Cycling. Billy Bilsland’s opinion had been sought for the article. ‘He’s got tremendous determination and a really single-minded approach to his racing,’ said the recently retired professional. ‘He’s ambitious and knows exactly where he’s going.’ Yet Bilsland played down his part in the 19-year-old’s progress. ‘I give him advice, that’s all. The only person who deserves any credit for his success is himself.’
For his part, Millar explained that the Milk Race had given him the form that carried him to second in the Manx International and first in the national championship. ‘I found the first few days very hard. But then I started to find my feet and just seemed to get stronger every day.’ Of his win over Lawrence, he said, ‘I knew Steve was very tired, he’d worked hard early on, but I was feeling very good and I thought I’d stand a much better chance in an uphill sprint.’ His sudden improvement, he said, could be attributed to racing regularly in England. ‘We have to travel if we want competition. In Scotland you’re only racing against four or five riders of your own ability. In England there are fourteen or fifteen, and it makes it that much harder.’
Overseas travel followed. As a reward for finishing the Milk Race, Millar and McGahan were sent on their first international racing excursion, to represent Scotland in the Star Race in Roskild, Denmark. Millar excelled once again to place fourth, but it is not the result that McGahan, who was twenty-second, recalls most clearly. ‘It was a strange race – a Mickey Mouse event really. But what I remember most is Robert being gregarious, which was very unusual. After the race we went on these helter-skelters, big dippers … and Robert let fly. It was really out of character. He was roaring and laughing. I suppose we were let off the leash a little bit in Denmark. But I never saw him like that before or after.’
A much more significant international event, not involving Millar, occurred just a fortnight later, at the Tour de France. In what was one of the most newsworthy of the numerous drugs scandals to afflict the sport of cycling, the Tour leader, Michel Pollentier, was caught trying to cheat doping control following one of the mountain stages. The Union Cycliste International (UCI) and the French Ministry of Youth and Sport seized ‘apparatus consisting of a bulb and tube, which was operated from the armpit through the shorts …’ Pollentier had strolled into the doping control caravan with several capsules of old (‘clean’) urine concealed under each armpit. A plastic tube led from each bulb and was wrapped around his body before finally running through the groove between his bum cheeks to his penis. ‘It took the medical team fifteen minutes to dismantle the apparatus,’ reported Cycling. ‘I had no intention of defrauding,’ explained Pollentier, ‘but with all these new products that one uses, one never knows …’
Though the Pollentier case had an irresistibly humorous aspect to it – it still does – it also highlighted an issue that, even then, cropped up with alarming regularity on the pages of Cycling. Quite simply, nobody who followed the sport could be oblivious to the suspicion that, at the top level, the use of performance-enhancing products was prevalent. Whether it was Jacques Anquetil, the five-time Tour de France winner, claiming that the Tour was impossible on bread and water, or Pollentier pleading that his bulbs of old urine amounted only to a policy of prudence and caution, the association between drugs and cycling – continental cycling especially – has always seemed uncomfortably close.
Though news of positive tests and scandals tended to disappear as rapidly as they appeared, the issue did prompt the occasional bout of soul-searching. In a post-mortem of the 1978 Milk Race, Cycling dwelt on some of the ‘concerns’ of the home-based riders. With the exception of the young Millar, they had under-performed, or been outperformed by their overseas rivals, and the analyses and explanations were couched in euphemisms and mysterious dark utterances. The riders, said the magazine, were ‘wary of the dangers of speaking out’. Specifically, they were ‘concerned about their rivals, particularly the East Europeans, drawing further and further ahead. They talk of the Russians, Poles, Czechs and East Germans being “on something” … They worry about dope testing – not about being tested themselves, but about the efficiency of the tests. They hear about miraculous “blockers” which hide proscribed substances from the testing procedures. And they get twitchy about anabolic steroids.’
Their fears were not unfounded, as history has demonstrated. But it was also recognized, even accepted, that professional cycling in the European heartland – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain – was no stranger to le dopage. Again, history, particularly recent history, has demonstrated that such beliefs had more than a little basis in fact, though it is difficult, now, to know how widespread this knowledge was, and whether those who believed it – or think now, with the benefit of hindsight, that they believed it then – had anything more than hearsay and rumour to go on. The tales of drug taking did, after all, add another layer of intrigue, as well as a certain mystique, to the exotic world of continental cycling.
David Whitehall says today that the reputation of the continental scene was one reason for his not giving up his apprenticeship at Weir’s and following Millar to France. ‘I was tempted, but the drugs and all that …’ He tails off. ‘I remember someone saying that if Robert didn’t take the stuff he’d be back on the next boat – but that was the kind of thing people said. I don’t know how true it was. I did think I could make a go of it. But I wanted to have a normal life as well, and be attuned to what was happening in the world. These guys are so wrapped up in what they’re doing that they don’t know if there’s an earthquake or a war going on. They think what they’re doing is real life. But they’re in a bubble.’ Whitehall also recognized that, though he might have had the talent, he possibly didn’t possess the hunger. ‘You have to have the will to win in your stomach,’ said Millar in 1985. Whitehall admits he didn’t have that; he had doubts instead. ‘Robert was a wolf on the bike,’ he adds, with a mixture of admiration and bewilderment.
With his national title, Millar’s 1978 season could already be declared a success. A 19-year-old winning the country’s senior road race was exceptional, and news of his sudden emergence reached some of the British riders who were pursuing careers on the continent. They included Paul Sherwen, a professional with the French Fiat team, and Graham Jones, a leading amateur with France’s top club, the ACBB of Paris. It was Millar’s desire to join them, but there were other ambitions to fulfil first. First up, in July, was the Scottish Milk Race, the race that had represented something of a breakthrough for him the previous season with his second place on the final stage.
A very strange thing happened at the start in Strathclyde Park, to the east of Glasgow. The opening stage was a prologue, a short individual time trial, but as the clock ticked towards Millar’s start time he was nowhere to be seen. The meticulously organized and thus far utterly professional 19-year-old had gone AWOL. The unfolding of events was reported in Cycling. ‘“Where is Millar?” officials shouted as the timekeeper counted down to one, and the 400-crowd waited. It was a late flying start for him, handlebars on automatic as arms struggled to rid himself of tracksuit top, but he stormed out and came back … gasping like a fish out of water.’
The five-day pro-am race, dubbed the ‘Race of Friendship’, ended with Millar the best British