INTERVIEW: DAVID MILLAR
The British former yellow jersey looks back 20 years to his stunning debut ride at the Tour de France
PROCYCLING: IT’S BEEN 20 YEARS, DAVID. WHAT’S YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON THAT NOW? WHEN YOU LOOK BACK, WHAT DO YOU SEE?
DAVID MILLAR: How young I was, more than anything. I was a baby.
That ride was all the stars aligning. Everything aligned, from the moment three and a half years before in SaintQuentin, when Cyrille Guimard [Cofidis manager] took me out to lunch when
I was an amateur. He told me my first Tour de France would be in 2000.
Guimard was convinced that I was a proper contender. But he also said, we have to wait until you are 23. I was like, f*ck, that’s ages.
I wanted to do it in 1999, but they wouldn’t let me. So when I got to 2000 and - this is where serendipity kicks in - the first day was a 10-mile time trial, it was, like, are you f*cking serious? That’s my bread and butter. When I first raced in the UK I was doing 10-mile time trials.
Although the Tour de France was huge, when we look back at 2000, it’s tiny compared to now. But coming up to that first stage in Futuroscope and a 10-mile time trial, I felt, ‘I know how to do this. I literally know how to do this.’
I was so relaxed before I rolled off the start ramp. I was at the barriers signing autographs. Jean-Marie Leblanc [Tour director] was in the car behind me, and my mum was in with him. I remember rolling off the start ramp and thinking, I’m going to do my best ever time trial today, and I’m going to show everybody that I can go really, really f*cking fast.
But before that I was super chill. I couldn’t understand why everybody was so stressed.
IS THAT STRESS A LEARNED BEHAVIOUR?
Stress is expectations, isn’t it, I think? It’s fear. Fear of failure. I had no fear of failure because I didn’t think I was going to win. I had absolute belief that I was right and I was ready and I was going to do the best ride of my life.
GOING BACK TO EVEN BEFORE TURNING PRO AND MEETING GUIMARD, WAS THE TRAJECTORY ALWAYS THIS? WAS THIS ANOTHER STEP ON THE WAY YOU COULD SEE FROM 1996?
We didn’t have that culture of day-by-day then. There was a huge doping culture, so it was totally different.
That’s what Guimard said to me in 1997 when I turned pro. That’s why he wanted me to wait. He said, David, don’t do what everybody else is doing. Wait. You’re still young, you need to develop fully first, and then… then confront situations.
But it was a f*cking totally different world. There wasn’t step by step, there was: when will you take drugs? And then you’ll start winning properly. It’s all very nice and friendly these days but then, there was this underlying darkness.
I could win time trials, I could win rolling stages, I could win prologues but if I wanted to win GC in a three-week stage race I’m going to have to f*cking dope. That was always on my event horizon.
LET’S TALK ABOUT 1997 TO 1999. YOU TURNED PRO AT 20, WHICH IS QUITE YOUNG. YOU’RE A BOY AT THAT AGE. WAS THAT EASY OR HARD, IN THE CONTEXT OF YOUR UPBRINGING AND EXPERIENCES UP TO THAT POINT?
I was 19 when I turned pro. On January 1, 1997 I was 19.
It all happened so quickly. I was essentially the same age as somebody just going off to university, so it was all new. I wasn’t scared; I didn’t have preconceptions. I was excited. The life outside bike racing was very lonely and very weird. But I felt most at home when I was in the team environment. It’s the only time I could speak to people.
THE COLUMNS THAT YOU WROTE FOR CYCLE SPORT AT THE TIME ALWAYS SEEMED QUITE POSITIVE AND HAPPY- GO- LUCKY. DID THEY NOT REFLECT THE REALITY OR WERE THEY ONLY PORTRAYING ONE PART OF IT?
It wasn’t 2020 where we’d try and tell the truth and be transparent. It was wanting to live up to what I thought it was. I was using it as a projection tool to try and be what I wanted to read as a young person. The truth was I was f*cking lonely and scared. I think there are probably hints in there of what was happening
You know what it is, Ed. I just loved writing and being given that opportunity. Obviously I was writing it because I felt lucky to be able to do it and be able to give something positive to people, because it made me feel positive. It’s not like it is now, where we can just get a blog. Getting a column in a magazine was huge. To be able to write a page in a cycling magazine, you had to be the best version of yourself.
THE MYTH IS THAT WE BECOME MEN AT 18. THAT’S THE THRESHOLD OF ADULTHOOD. BUT PSYCHOLOGISTS HAVE LONG SAID A LOT OF DEVELOPMENT HAPPENS UP TO THE AGE OF 23, 24.... THERE IS A WHOLE GENRE OF LITERATURE ABOUT THAT TRANSITION. AT THE TIME, DID YOU HAVE AN IDEA THAT YOU WERE ON A JOURNEY AND CHANGING OR DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WERE FIXED BY THEN?
I think we’re pretty much defined at seven years old.
THAT’S THE JESUIT THING, RIGHT ?[ THERE’ S A SAYING ATTRIBUTED TO THE JESUIT FAITH: ‘ GIVE ME THE CHILD UNTIL HE IS SEVEN AND I WILL SHOW YOU THE MAN.’ ]
After that we become an accumulation of experiences and moments, which we label as memories, through the emotional impact they have on us. Then you go into Peak End theory, which says that most people stop, as you said, at 25, because that’s when they stop having ‘peak ends’. They’ve had all their first experiences. And then they are surprised that life goes into fast forward. Time goes the same speed but you’re not doing anything new any more, you’re not challenging yourself, you’re not feeling things.
This happened to me last night, Ed, we were talking and somebody said, ‘I still feel 22 or 23.’ I was like, ‘F*ck, dude, I feel 65.’
So to go back to what we’re talking about, I’d been a Hong Kong kid who’d fallen in love with the Tour, read books and watched videos and was so happy to be there. And I was so weirdly confident that
I’d be okay. Looking back, I was so little. And I wish, in that camping car, I could just give myself a hug.
CAN YOU EVER HARNESS OR RECREATE THAT FEELING? THE WEAPONS YOU HAD WERE YOUR CONFIDENCE, YOUTH AND FEARLESSNESS. WE ACCUMULATE BAGGAGE LATER ON WHICH STOPS US FROM BEING ABLE TO ATTACK THOSE THINGS IN THAT SAME WAY.
I did a TED talk in February and my whole concept was, nothing is impossible. In 2000 I was willing to challenge everything. I still try to harness that to this day. I try to tell my kids that nothing is impossible. I was a 23-year-old Hong Kong kid who turned up at the Tour de France and won on my first day. And here’s the magic thing – I finished the time trial in 19:03. 1903 was the first Tour de France. All the stars were aligning. At that point nothing was impossible. And then everybody beat it out of me. That me in 2000 was my ‘nothing is impossible’ version.
CAN YOU TAKE ME THROUGH 2000? YOU’ D WON L’AVENIR STAGES, THE DE PANNE TT, YET AT THE SAME TIME YOU MIGHT NOT THINK, ‘ THAT’S THE FAVOURITE FOR THE TOUR’S FIRST STAGE.’
It starts in 1999. At De Panne and Critérium International, I was killing it. I won the KoM at Valencia, second in Critérium International and should have won but my team f*cked up. I used my front wheel from the morning road stage in the time trial and lost it by two hundredths of a second to Jens Voigt.
I was getting more and more p*ssed off with my team. At the same time we had Frank Vandenbroucke and Philippe Gaumont in our team and I refused to race with them. I flew up to Lille to meet with François Migraine, the boss of Cofidis. I said I won’t race with them any more. In the meantime they raced the f*ck out of me and I was 22. I ended up being the de facto leader of the team.
They sent me to a training camp in Font-Romeu. I was p*ssed off. I’d bought my own SRM. The mechanic hammered it on and broke it. I was just hating my team but I had a four-year contract at that point and so at the training camp, on the penultimate night I got super drunk, jumped off a roof and broke my right heel in half. It’s still ruined.
“I WAS A 23 - YEAR- OLD HONG KONG KID WHO TURNED UP AT THE TOUR AND WO N ON MY FIRST DAY”
We kept it quiet. 1999 was written off. The whole of the start of 2000 was written off until I started to get my sh*t together.
I saw that 10-mile time trial and built my whole year around that. By the time of the Route du Sud I was a machine.
YOU WON A STAGE AT THE ROUTE DU SUD…
I started the year a bit crap. I hated the beginning of the year but I was so focused on the Tour. At the Route du Sud, all of a sudden I was like, f*ck. I’m really good. I’d been off the grid for eight or nine months because of my accident but at the Route du Sud I came smashing back. Banesto destroyed me on the summit finish, but I came out of that, and I was good to go.
WHERE DID THE FORM COME FROM?
Training, age and talent. I was getting stronger every year. Minus that gap, it was an exponential increase.
I REMEMBER YOU TELLING ME ONCE, TALKING ABOUT YOUR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL FORM AND YOU DESCRIBED IT AS A SPIRAL. IF YOUR PHYSICAL FORM IS GOOD I T MAKES YOUR MENTAL FORM GOOD AND THAT ENABLES YOU TO GET STRONGER AND SO YOU TRAIN HARDER AND GET MORE CONFIDENT AND SO ON. DID YOU HAVE OWNERSHIP OF THAT?
Going back to that lunch in St Quentin with Guimard, he said, when you’re 23 in 2000 you’ll do your first Tour. He knew that’s when you start to hit through. And that’s the sport at the time. He saw me and he knew I would start to find myself when I was 23.
CAN YOU REMEMBER THE DAYS LEADING UP TO THE 2000 TOUR?
We were staying in a Campanile in Futuroscope and I slept loads. I already had a huge recon habit – I rode the time trial course again and again. I didn’t go for social rides with my team-mates, I just rode it and rode it and rode it. I read books and slept and waited.
WAS WINNING IT A TEAM PLAN OR YOUR PLAN?
It wasn’t my plan either – I didn’t think I was going to win. I was going to go faster than I’d ever gone before. I knew that.
I felt it. I was strong. I’d done everything right and planned the whole year around it but didn’t think I was going to win. But you can see even in the footage, I’m in the camping car and Armstrong crosses the line and I’d won, and I still couldn’t believe it. I was crying on the podium.
Everybody was like, this won’t be the last time you wear the yellow jersey. This is just the beginning.
It was the last time I ever wore it – those three days.
Life just took control. But up to that point it was kind of nice. Up to that point
the trajectory was perfect. I was breaking down barriers, in a huge ascending spiral.
And then it turned into a tornado.
TELL ME ABOUT THE RIDE.
I remember it vividly. My cadence was 100. But I’d spent the previous three years as a pro being ordered and shouted at to put a bigger gear on. I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have the strength.
I put my head down and thought, f*ck you guys. I was always getting shouted at - bigger gear, head up. But my default setting was small gear, head down.
That day I decided, f*ck you all, I’m going small gear and putting my head down and I’m going to negative split the sh*t out of it. So it was head down, small gear all the way out on these false flat rolling hills – it looked slow, but I got to the top and it was crosswind and I started to feel, you start to use the wind, lean into it and clicked up a gear, changed my cadence by two or three, getting bigger, and I got to the turnaround point, with the tailwind and slammed everything down and went super small.
I went as fast as I could all the way to the finish line. In those 19 minutes and three seconds, my effort made me just explode on the finish line.
DID I T HURT?
Hugely. You can’t cross the finish line and have lost by one second and say, ‘I could have gone one second faster.’ I rolled off and it was like, okay, when I cross the line there will be no regets. It really, really, really f*cking hurts.
HOW WAS WEARING THE YELLOW JERSEY?
It was just surreal. Five years previously I was in Hong Kong watching videos and worshipping Miguel Indurain and now I was in the yellow jersey at the Tour.
I thought, this wasn’t supposed to happen.
DID YOU MAKE AS MUCH OF I T AS YOU COULD HAVE DONE?
I loved it. Everyone was very kind to me with my yellow jersey but one person out of all the hitters who never congratulated me was Pantani. I was just a kid, we’d ride next to each other and he didn’t pat me on the back or anything, while every single other person did. It was really disappointing for me. I thought that’s not cool – I’m a kid and you’re Pantani and you won’t congratulate me.
WHAT WAS THE REST OF THE TOUR LIKE?
It was good. I raced hard. It was a bit eye opening. At Hautacam, the first big mountain stage, I was going well. I finished, what, eight minutes down? I was like, Jesus, I can’t compete. And I was peaking, the best I could be. But I was having a great time. I could do what I wanted when I wanted, apart from the big mountains.
It was the last of the old school Tours. In the last week we had three stages over 250k, so it was maybe not physically demanding but hugely psychologically demanding. I’m still haunted by picnics. In that last week I could see families having picnics and I promised myself when I don’t do this any more I’ll bring my family and have a picnic in a field as the Tour goes by.
Then the final day I ripped it up on the Champs and had a party with my friends.
CAN YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU THOUGHT THE REST OF YOUR CAREER WOULD LOOK LIKE AT THAT POINT?
I thought I was going to win the Tour de France. The tragedy was that I knew what I was going to have to do to do that. I was on the ascending spiral and it would involve me going to the dark side and having to race against Lance and dope. I knew that was inevitable.
It was weird in that sense – I knew I had the genetic makeup, I had the wherewithal but I also knew the trajectory involved me doping. And
I was going to have to confront that at one point or another.
The 2000 Tour’s me. That was childhood’s end.
“I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO WIN THE TOUR. THE TRAGEDY WAS I KNEW WHAT I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO DO”