trying to explain it all away. I am listening to him, but I can’t help thinking ‘So Gaumont wasn’t such a nutter after all, then Dave …’
I want to understand, empathise. Fran, his sister, sits beside him, sipping a beer, smoking, occasionally biting her nails. It’s only afterwards that I see her presence as a display of solidarity with her vilified brother, the dope cheat. She doesn’t say much, just listens and shares the burden of shame and guilt.
David’s new life as a self-confessed doper is evidently not easy, however. He tries to play it down. He shrugs, smiles, cracks jokes, still, albeit half-heartedly, the entertainer. At times he laughs a little too hard and long. I sense he is being ‘economic’ with the truth and still protecting others, while also blaming himself. Later, I learn that his father Gordon had slapped him full in the face over his use of drugs. Now he hangs in limbo, awaiting punishment.
Millar vacantly sips a beer. Across the square, a crowd is building outside a cinema, awaiting the arrival of a clutch of celebs. Passers-by crane their necks. Camera crews set up their equipment. The scene is not unlike the world Millar has now been exiled from, of barriered streets and autograph hunters, of fans waiting patiently, lining up for a snatched glimpse of their heroes.
But David is nobody’s hero any more. Because of that night in Biarritz, because of the syringes on the bookshelf, his world has collapsed. Dragged from his cell to the chambers of Judge Pallain, he confessed to doping himself. He was sacked by Cofidis, thrown off the Great British Olympic team for the Athens Games, pursued by the French taxman and sent scurrying back home to England. He is a million miles from that suite in the Bellagio. The British cycling establishment has pilloried him. Millar has been in a lonely place, forced even to sleep on his sister’s sofa. ‘I’ve realised who my real friends in cycling are: Baden Cooke, Matt Wilson, Stuart O’Grady, Bobby Julich and Lance. They have all been in touch. That’s all, but then a lot of them would probably be scared of calling me …’
Lance, says David, was ‘lovely to me, he was really good. We talked for ten or fifteen minutes. He was saying, “Keep your head high, it’s not the end of the world.” He offered help – he said if I needed anything, that I should call him.’
David Millar had once been the great white hope of British cycling, the flag-bearer of a youthful new generation of professionals who had learned the lessons of the post-Festina era.
Looking back though, I realise that prior to his bust, he had always sounded ambivalent. ‘Drugs are going to be in sport as long as there’s so much money involved,’ he told me in 2000. ‘You have to make a conscious decision whether to enter into that or not. I’ve decided I’m not going to enter into that.’
Yet even then, after just two years as a professional, David had sounded unsure. ‘I don’t know why,’ he added. ‘It’s nothing to do with being a “really decent guy”. But it just defeats the purpose for me. I’m a professional, but there are lines that have to be drawn.’
Yet in the end, the decision to dope had been taken easily.
‘I went from thinking one hundred per cent that I would never dope to making a decision in ten minutes that I was going to do it. It was an accumulation of things. I wanted to be accepted and to justify my status. Success gave me more power and the ability to control things. But there are so many reasons. It’s not black and white. We could talk about it for days, about all the little things, the things in my psychological make-up, the choices I have made.’
The choices …?
‘I could have been a lot easier on myself by going to live in Nice, but I always wanted to be my own person. I’d train really hard on my own in Biarritz and then hit a slump. There was no “meet the guys at ten in the morning and go and train”. If I
I want to understand, empathise. Fran, his sister, sits beside him, sipping a beer, smoking, occasionally biting her nails. It’s only afterwards that I see her presence as a display of solidarity with her vilified brother, the dope cheat. She doesn’t say much, just listens and shares the burden of shame and guilt.
David’s new life as a self-confessed doper is evidently not easy, however. He tries to play it down. He shrugs, smiles, cracks jokes, still, albeit half-heartedly, the entertainer. At times he laughs a little too hard and long. I sense he is being ‘economic’ with the truth and still protecting others, while also blaming himself. Later, I learn that his father Gordon had slapped him full in the face over his use of drugs. Now he hangs in limbo, awaiting punishment.
Millar vacantly sips a beer. Across the square, a crowd is building outside a cinema, awaiting the arrival of a clutch of celebs. Passers-by crane their necks. Camera crews set up their equipment. The scene is not unlike the world Millar has now been exiled from, of barriered streets and autograph hunters, of fans waiting patiently, lining up for a snatched glimpse of their heroes.
But David is nobody’s hero any more. Because of that night in Biarritz, because of the syringes on the bookshelf, his world has collapsed. Dragged from his cell to the chambers of Judge Pallain, he confessed to doping himself. He was sacked by Cofidis, thrown off the Great British Olympic team for the Athens Games, pursued by the French taxman and sent scurrying back home to England. He is a million miles from that suite in the Bellagio. The British cycling establishment has pilloried him. Millar has been in a lonely place, forced even to sleep on his sister’s sofa. ‘I’ve realised who my real friends in cycling are: Baden Cooke, Matt Wilson, Stuart O’Grady, Bobby Julich and Lance. They have all been in touch. That’s all, but then a lot of them would probably be scared of calling me …’
Lance, says David, was ‘lovely to me, he was really good. We talked for ten or fifteen minutes. He was saying, “Keep your head high, it’s not the end of the world.” He offered help – he said if I needed anything, that I should call him.’
David Millar had once been the great white hope of British cycling, the flag-bearer of a youthful new generation of professionals who had learned the lessons of the post-Festina era.
Looking back though, I realise that prior to his bust, he had always sounded ambivalent. ‘Drugs are going to be in sport as long as there’s so much money involved,’ he told me in 2000. ‘You have to make a conscious decision whether to enter into that or not. I’ve decided I’m not going to enter into that.’
Yet even then, after just two years as a professional, David had sounded unsure. ‘I don’t know why,’ he added. ‘It’s nothing to do with being a “really decent guy”. But it just defeats the purpose for me. I’m a professional, but there are lines that have to be drawn.’
Yet in the end, the decision to dope had been taken easily.
‘I went from thinking one hundred per cent that I would never dope to making a decision in ten minutes that I was going to do it. It was an accumulation of things. I wanted to be accepted and to justify my status. Success gave me more power and the ability to control things. But there are so many reasons. It’s not black and white. We could talk about it for days, about all the little things, the things in my psychological make-up, the choices I have made.’
The choices …?
‘I could have been a lot easier on myself by going to live in Nice, but I always wanted to be my own person. I’d train really hard on my own in Biarritz and then hit a slump. There was no “meet the guys at ten in the morning and go and train”. If I
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