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How Philippa York changed from Robert Millar to her new, true life
The complexity of one of British sport’s most extraordinary stories is only reinforced shortly before our interview when, having just completed a film at the Soho Theatre for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the cycling fan who has appeared alongside Philippa York produces a book.
It is full of beautiful black and white photographs of cycling icons and right there between Greg Lemond, Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon are two of Robert Millar. These were also the first four finishers in the 1984 Tour de France when Millar was the first native English speaker to win the race’s King of the Mountains jersey.
York pauses to look at her gaunt, young self before asking how the fan would like them signed. He says that York should decide and, with a smile, she settles on “Robert Millar” for the first and simply “Pippa” for the second.
“My life is basically in three parts,” she later says. “The career as a cyclist. The bit where I do the transition. And then now. That is how I deal with it.”
Part 1 “When I was out training, I would try to be Robert Millar” – Sir Chris Hoy, six-time Olympic champion
The theory that being happy is a prerequisite for success would find perhaps its ultimate case-study in York’s cycling career. It was aged five, when the boys and girls in her Glasgow primary school lined up on opposite sides of the playground, that York first felt different.
“But there was no way to communicate that without the other boys beating me up or picking on me,” she now says. “I had years of unhappiness, guilt and shame which I didn’t need to if I’d had the proper information.” This was working-class Scotland in the late 1960s and York’s reaction would be to obsessively pursue the virtually unheard of path to continental France where the comparable fame of professional cyclists was akin here now to Premier League footballers. “The competitiveness replaced happiness,” she says. “I turned off that emotional system. Operated like a robot.”
A maverick trailblazer, she was Britain’s leading Tour de France cyclist of her era and her second place in the 1987 Giro d’italia remains the best finish by a rider from these shores. She also all but became the first British winner of a Grand Tour at the 1985 Vuelta a Espana, only for virtually the entire race to collude for a Spanish victory. What is still known in cycling simply as The Stolen Vuelta could be the subject for an entire book.
“I would achieve something, not be overly happy but think, ‘yeah, I did the work’. I was so focused it was my normality. It’s strange because I look now and think, ‘I stood on that podium or rode up that hill in the front. That’s quite good’.”
It was an outlook that perhaps helped in adapting, aged 20, to suddenly being alone in Paris. York soon spoke fluent French and stories about her absolute but sometimes unconventional dedication are the stuff of cycling legend.
Yes, she really did have a deliberately extreme haircut to not get tempted into visiting nightclubs. “Who is going to find you attractive with a haircut that looks like you’ve had it done in prison?” Yes, her time as team leader during the mid-1980s at Panasonic under Peter Post – the Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson of their time – was never quite the same after a furious row over her refusal to follow an order that all riders should eat creme
‘I had years of guilt and shame which I didn’t need if I had the proper advice’
caramel at a team meal. “I began to question Post’s sanity.”
Yes, when one waiter delivered overcooked spaghetti to the table before a race, she registered her complaint by throwing it up at the ceiling. “And it stuck,” she says, grinning at the memory.
And yes, a team manager possibly did have a point when he said, “the challenge with Robert was getting him to tell people to f*** off courteously”.
Dealings with the media could be curt, even if there was always a certain logic to her behaviour. Having been asked how it felt to crash – “go down a hill at 30mph, jump off and find out” – or what her real job was, she regarded some as time wasters when she needed optimum rest. But, rather like a John Mcenroe or Eric Cantona, she could also be the most interesting interview in her sport. “There was a myth – the whole ‘you better not go up to him or he’ll tell you to piss off ’,” she says. “You can use that as a shield to weed out people you don’t want to talk to. I gave my opinion. People expect you to say the right thing but the question was never, ‘what’s the right thing to say?’
“I identified what I needed to do. The people trampled in the process were trampled. Racing is a competition. There is no politeness. Sometimes I didn’t have time to be socially normal. I couldn’t be influenced by that.”
As you might imagine from a rider whose preparation was years ahead of her time, York was never too impressed by how Team Sky’s ‘marginal gains’ were presented as something new. “We called that percentages,” she says, before explaining how she transformed her flexibility so, “the next time I fell off, I bounced better”.
Her recollections of life in the peloton remain startlingly vivid. After one of her 11 Tours de France, it took from July until November before she woke with energy. “Pain was part of your day – it was just whether there was an acceptable level,” she says. “I once figured I would be dead by 65. Nature only gives you so many heartbeats and, if you use them riding up mountains, where do you get extra ones? So when I stopped riding, I made a conscious decision to compensate with a fairly easy life.”
Part 2 “All life is transition – for everybody” – Elley West, ambassador for Equality and Human Rights Commission
That “easy life” applied only physically. Despite the macho outside image of power and strength in professional sport, York says she was “an internal mess”.
Gender dysphoria is not a choice but a medical condition. “It’s a deep-seated thing which says that the role you are seen as is one that every part of your brain is telling you isn’t right,” she explains.
The impact on her mental health was profound. She was 39 and four years into retirement from professional cycling before she talked with someone about it. “I’d lost the plot. I can see now that I’d already made the decision that I wasn’t going to die an old man but the reality that I wanted to see could only be achieved with difficulty. It’s fairly horrible. There was no easy way of becoming Philippa.” So could she have carried on being Robert Millar?
“No. I’d completely had enough of that. It was making me deeply unhappy. I didn’t hate myself. It’s just the whole level of unhappiness wasn’t worth trying to continue to pretend that I was going to fit into what everybody expected of me.”
Were there times when she doubted whether she would ever transition? “Yes. If you don’t have doubts there is something wrong with you. I was making decisions about my life, my children’s lives and my partner’s life. Are they going to be OK? Have I reached a low enough point I am going to have to do it despite what I hear? Eventually I reached that point. I didn’t see any other way out.”
Any transition is highly individual and, for York, there were two attempts. It took 3½ years. “I didn’t know where I would be on that spectrum,” she says. “You take little steps, the people around you do, and you recalibrate. Am I OK here? Am I still comfortable? Just dressing as a girl at weekends. You reach that part and think, ‘No, I don’t want to stop’. You want that euphoria to continue. Part of the hormone treatment is that, if it isn’t right, your brain will tell you to leave it.”
This very private process had to be managed amid York’s sporting profile. Intrusive tabloid stories appeared at the start of her transition in 2000 and again after it was complete in 2007. Her anger remains understandably intense. “Our daughter suffered a whole lot of bullying and guilt which would not have happened,” she says. The family no longer felt safe in their own home and relocated.
York largely severed ties to her former life and so began the 15-year mystery behind the public disappearance of an enigma once described by the cycling journalist William Fotheringham as “Shergar wrapped up in Lord Lucan on two wheels”.
A book – In Search of Robert Millar – was published and, while she would selectively converse by email and actually even went unrecognised while attending each of the annual Rouleur cycling festivals, her whereabouts and transition remained unknown. There would be rumoured sightings everywhere from Spain to Australia but York stayed silent.
“I would read that someone had seen me training on the Gold Coast with long hair and a dress when I’d never been to Australia,” she says. “People said things, invented stuff. It’s horrible, but I did not have the capacity to deal
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‘It’s a deepseated thing which says that the role you are seen as is not right’