Читать книгу In Search of Robert Millar: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Britain’s Most Successful Tour de France Cyclist - Richard Moore - Страница 13

I realized that only Arthur Campbell and Billy Bilsland knew anything about where I wanted to go as a bike rider; everyone else was of the ‘You’ll never do that’ school of thought. It was as if they believed you had to be born in Europe to be a pro bike rider.

Cycling is a summer sport, but to racing cyclists it can seem that winter is the more important period. It is during the winter months that dreams are dreamt and goals are set. Rather than being a period of hibernation, it is a time of transition, when the hard work is done, long miles are accumulated, and real improvement, even transformation – from bad to mediocre, average to respectable, good to great – can seem possible. It is also the time of year that separates those who are serious about their dreams and goals from those who are not. The Christmas Day test is a useful barometer. Top cyclists say that they train on 25 December not because it will necessarily do them good, but because they know that some of their rivals will not. Similar tests of dedication, or character, can apply to days of torrential rain and interminable cold, and in the most extreme cases, when the roads are blocked with snow. At the highest level, it is all about attitude and the scoring of psychological points, even, or possibly especially, for your own benefit. And it is an area in which Robert Millar excelled.

It was over the winter of 1977/78 that he seems to have set a goal he knew would gain him a foothold on the ladder that would lead, eventually, to a professional career. He realized that the foundations, psychological as well as physical, needed to be laid during the cold months. Naturally, he trained on Christmas Day, riding the seventy-mile ‘Three Lochs’ circuit in the company of Jamie McGahan. For good measure, they did the same on New Year’s Day.

Willie Gibb remembers Millar telling him, in the middle of that winter, his main goal for the following season. It was out of character for him to talk about his ambitions, which is one reason why Gibb can recall this statement of intent. A second reason was its sheer audacity: Millar told Gibb that he would win the British road race championship. ‘It was bizarre, and I thought he was just being daft,’ says Gibb. ‘He wasn’t even the best in our little group in Glasgow. I couldn’t comprehend it. I thought he was talking nonsense because I would never even have dreamt of saying something like that. I think I put the top guys on a pedestal – not consciously, but I assumed they were better than me and I couldn’t beat them. But Robert had this attitude, I think, of believing that if he wasn’t strong enough now, he’d become strong enough. And that was obviously what he was determined to do that winter.’

There is a third reason why Millar’s winter prediction remains lodged so firmly in Gibb’s memory. To the astonishment of Gibb and everyone else – everyone except Millar, that is – he fulfilled it.

For the season-opening Girvan stage race over Easter weekend in 1978, Millar was selected to represent the Scottish ‘A’ team, alongside Sandy Gilchrist and Jamie McGahan. It was a race run off in, according to Cycling, ‘the worst conditions ever for Girvan’ – which was saying something. It was freezing cold, and it snowed, making one climb impassable, which instead of shortening the race added five more miles to the course, taking the distance for the stage up to a hundred miles and reducing the main bunch of riders to just nine. Tellingly, Millar was one of the survivors, placing fifth on the stage and eighth overall. In terms of scoring psychological points, he was already in credit.

From there he travelled to England for the Sealink International, a five-day stage race, where he finished eighth, with third-placed Des Fretwell the only other British rider in the top ten. His run of good form continued a couple of weeks later when he was fifth behind Fretwell in Llangollen-Wolverhampton, a counting event towards the Pernod series – effectively the national road race series. It was a result that earned Millar a quote in Cycling, and an unusual one at that, since it found him in confident, cocky mood. ‘Call me the flying Scotsman,’ Millar instructed the reporter, adding of the season that stretched ahead of him, ‘I’ll be riding the Milk Race and the Scottish Milk Race and I hope to ride the Commonwealth Games.’

The Milk Race represented a huge step up for Millar and some of his other young Scottish team-mates, including McGahan. Curiously, they had come in for some criticism in the midst of a tug-of-love between the Scotland and Great Britain teams over Sandy Gilchrist. The experienced Gilchrist, noted Cycling, would ‘do better in the GB squad than when “supported” by young Scots who lack stage-race experience’. How those inverted commas, dripping with sarcasm, wounded the young Scots’ pride! Who were those people at Cycling, mocking their aspirations to support a team leader such as Gilchrist in the Milk Race? A fortnight before the Milk Race started in Brighton, Bobby Melrose placed second in another Pernod event, the Lincoln GP, with Millar fifth. ‘Significantly, in every break there was a Scot,’ reported Cycling. ‘Such was their determination to answer detractors of their ability with actions as eloquent as a thumbed nose.’

The manager of the Scotland team for the Milk Race was that stalwart of the Scottish scene Jimmy Dorward. He had also managed Millar at the Girvan stage race, which provided him with an introduction to some of the teenager’s more curious behaviour, and his unwillingness to conform. When they left the guesthouse to go for a meal, Dorward and his riders walked down one side of the road, while Millar, alone, opted for the other. ‘The other side was more interesting, I suppose,’ Dorward, who presumably thought he had seen it all, remarks with a shrug.

But that was nothing. Before the Milk Race, Dorward encountered Millar’s stubbornly independent streak again, though this time he found it difficult to laugh off. The team had assembled in Glasgow for the flight to London. ‘I gave them a wee talk,’ explains Dorward. ‘The Milk Race was a major international race, fourteen days long, and they were a young team, so I was telling them what I was expecting and what I wasn’t expecting. I told them they weren’t going to win the race. I didn’t want them going up the road with the Czechs and Poles only to get an absolute hammering that would take two days to recover from. I suppose I was trying to calm them down, so they wouldn’t be overawed by the situation. But after I’d said my piece, Robert spoke up: “You’re talking a lot of fucking nonsense.”’ Dorward says that he was close to telling the 19-year-old to pack his bags. ‘But I thought I’d give him another chance, particularly since we hadn’t actually started the race yet.’

It turned out to be a wise decision. It was to prove an eventful Milk Race for the Scottish team and for Dorward, but, ironically, Robert Millar was the least of his problems.

By the time of the Milk Race, in late May, Millar’s working arrangements had changed radically. Having been little more than a virtual employee of Weir’s Pumps for some months, on account of his cat naps in the toilets and mysterious afternoon disappearances, he finally made the arrangement official and permanent by resigning. And, in keeping with the increasingly professional approach he was adopting towards cycling, this was no reckless decision financially. In an interview with Cycling later in the season, Millar said that he’d received £500 from Lorimer’s Brewery, which supported several Scottish athletes though, in Millar, only one cyclist. Given that his £26 a week from Weir’s was no longer coming in, it was his only significant income, prize money in races being modest. The money, he said, had come in handy in the light of his decision to leave work – which hadn’t been taken lightly, he added. But, as the 19-year-old explained, ‘You’ve got to commit yourself some time in your life.’

Millar did in fact have one influential ally among the senior members of the factory staff in Peter Johnstone, the union convenor. In just about every respect, Johnstone, who had previously worked in the Clyde shipyards, fitted the bill of the west of Scotland working-class male. A big, gruff, garrulous man, Johnstone’s accent leaves absolutely no doubt in your mind as to where he is from. He speaks as if he has nails in his mouth. He is a stereotypical Glaswegian, too, in being a good talker and a natural story teller. Crucially for Millar, Johnstone was also a cyclist, and as the convenor at Weir’s his role was to represent and fight for the interests of the workers. He admits that, because of their shared interest in cycling, he was perhaps more sympathetic to Millar’s quirks and foibles than he might otherwise have been – though only to a point. ‘I never really got to know him because he wasn’t a great communicator,’ he says. ‘Why would I bother talking to him? I had better things to do! I had everyone’s problems to deal with at that time.’

In the early months of 1978 Millar approached Johnstone with a request: he wanted time off for training. Which, in its own way, was almost as audacious as his stated ambition to win the British championship. ‘Nobody ever had time off at Weir’s for anything,’ states Johnstone, though he went nevertheless to try to negotiate some time off for Millar and Whitehall, both of whom were targeting selection for the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada. ‘I got them two and a half days a week,’ says Johnstone, a note of triumph still detectable. ‘Davie was tickled to death with that, but Robert came back and said he wasnae happy at all. I said, “Well, Robert, I cannae dae any better than that.” And he said, “Well, I think I’m gonnae have to leave.” I advised him against it. His apprenticeship finished in August – he only had aboot three months left.’

Arthur Campbell, by now taking an increasing interest in Millar, and beginning to play the role of mentor, also advised him against leaving. ‘Robert didn’t know it, but Peter Johnstone was keeping an eye on him on my behalf,’ he reveals. ‘When he told me he was thinking about leaving I told him to do his time and get his apprenticeship. Get your papers, I told him, and then you can go to France and try to be a cyclist. I told him to speak to his parents, at least, but he shook his head and said, “It’s my decision.”’

Ian Thomson, the Scotland team manager, remembers when Millar packed in his apprenticeship at Weir’s. ‘We were on a Sunday training run in early April and he was talking to me about it. I said, “You’ve not got long to go, do your time, make the effort, then you’ve got something behind you and you can do what you want.” And then he went in the next day and resigned. I thought, “So much for my powers of persuasion …”’

It is revealing to note that the language of working in the factory so closely resembles that of being in prison. But Millar didn’t care much for doing his time, or finishing his sentence, which was how he probably regarded the apprenticeship. He might even have derived some satisfaction from completing two years, eight months of a three-year apprenticeship – another gesture ‘as eloquent as a thumbed nose’. But a deeper reason was surely his unhappiness at Weir’s, and, more than that, the thought that working there might inhibit his cycling ambitions over a crucial period, starting with the Milk Race, continuing with the British championship and the Commonwealth Games, and concluding, if he could gain selection to the British team, with the world championship in West Germany. He knew that success in any of these events could be his passport to Europe, and that Europe, in turn, could be his passport to a way of living, and a way of earning a living, infinitely preferable to working in a factory.

In the background, partly offering a counter-voice to the pleas of caution from Campbell, Johnstone and Thomson, was the calm reassurance of Billy Bilsland. He was the one man, after all, who had done what Millar wanted to do: he had ridden as a professional on the continent. Wittingly or not, Bilsland provided tangible evidence that it could be done. ‘Back then there was a mentality that you needed a trade,’ says Bilsland. ‘I said to him, “You’ll be out of cycling a lot longer than you’re in it, so you have to think of the future. But at the same time, it’s a short time in your life and you’ve got to make the most of it.”’

Peter Johnstone certainly recognized that Millar was unhappy at Weir’s. ‘You could tell his heart wasn’t in it, and the better he got at cycling, you could see the direction he was going in. It was obvious to me, anyway. The last job Robert had was working in the test department with me. It was all big water pipes and steam pipes, and Robert would go in there and hide. There was plenty of heat in there so it was a good place for a wee kip.’ Lowering his voice to a whisper, he adds, ‘I know because I sometimes did it myself. You’d be “between jobs”, you know? But nobody would find Robert in there unless they went looking.’

‘But would they not go looking?’ I ask Johnstone. ‘Wasn’t Millar supposed to be doing something?’

‘Ach no,’ Johnstone replies with a laugh. ‘Robert widnae be missed.’

So Millar left Weir’s, and he wasn’t missed.

Johnstone, meanwhile, was left wondering if his fellow apprentice David Whitehall, whom he considered to be just as talented as Millar, might be tempted to follow the same path. ‘I asked wee Davie, was he not thinking about doing it,’ says Johnstone. ‘But Davie said, “I don’t think I’m good enough.” And wee Davie was the man, a multi-Scottish champion. Strange that Millar thought he was good enough.’

The Milk Race opened with a two-mile time trial in Brighton, before winding up the country in one-hundred-mile stages taking the riders into Wales, on to Birmingham and into Yorkshire before eventually finishing, two weeks later, in Blackpool. Bobby Melrose crashed out on stage 4, between Aberystwyth and Great Malvern, and on the same stage Robert Millar made his first appearance at the head of the race, making it into a short-lived four-man escape with an Irishman, a Swede and a Pole.

It was on the eve of the race’s rest day that the Scottish team, which had been performing respectably if not spectacularly, made the headlines. ‘Things had been going great,’ insists Dorward, his face falling and his head shaking slowly as he relates the story. ‘The team had great spirit, always laughing. But there was a stage that finished in Scarborough, with a rest day the next day, and the boys were wanting to go out on the town. We had a wee chat and I told them that if they went out they had to be back by eleven. I could see their faces light up – they were expecting me to say nine. Three in the morning, that’s when they came in. Robert Millar, by the way, was the first back – just before eleven. Jamie [McGahan] was close behind him. But the others I had to send home, and for all the wrong reasons I became a celebrity on the race.’ Millar and McGahan were thus the only Scots to finish the Milk Race, with Millar placing a fine twenty-first overall. It was, reckons the unfortunate Melrose, the making of both riders. ‘They came back from the Milk Race totally different riders,’ he says. Melrose still wonders whether he might have achieved his ambition of turning professional had it not been for the crash on stage 4. ‘It was a bit of a sickener for me.’

After the decidedly shaky start to their manager–rider relationship, Dorward could only admire Millar’s approach to and aptitude for stage racing. He seemed to have an uncanny knack of doing the right thing. ‘It’s something I always say to riders,’ says Dorward, ‘that in a stage race, when you cross that line, you head straight for your digs. No matter what anyone says, you head straight for your bed, and get in. But I didn’t need to tell Robert. When I got to the hotels after stages on that Milk Race there’d always be one key missing – Robert’s. He was always first to the hotel. He was completely focused on rest and recovery.’

Millar’s meticulous attention to detail was also apparent in his habit of surreptitiously removing ashtrays from the hotel bars – not for a sly cigarette, but to prop up the legs at the foot of his bed. Arthur Campbell had observed the top cyclists doing this on the Peace Race, the equivalent of the Tour de France for amateurs, and had recounted the story to the young Millar. The theory was that the blood would flow from the legs towards the heart, to be recycled and replenished. Millar took note. He began sleeping on a bed tilted at an angle, feet sloping down towards his head. It might have been uncomfortable at first, but if it worked, it was worth persisting. Millar persisted, and team-mates report that he was still propping up the end of his bed on ashtrays several years into his professional career.

The 1978 Milk Race left Dorward with another vivid memory of Millar, this one from the journey home. ‘Robert finished as the top young rider: the harder it got the better he did. But I remember coming home from Blackpool in the train with Robert and Jamie. We were talking, and what was strange – very strange, given what he went on to become – was that Robert was doubting his climbing ability. I said, “But you were climbing well, Robert.” Yet he was comparing himself to the very best climbers in the race, the real mountain goats. He was only 19, but here he was comparing himself to world-class riders, most of them much older than him.’ Dorward remains struck by this today and considers it to be enormously revealing, both in the sense that it provided the drive to work hard and improve, and also because it sheds a powerful light on one aspect of his personality: ‘He never made allowances for anything, and that was one of his problems, I think, in not getting on with people. He couldn’t make any kind of compromise.’

Now a full-time cyclist, and training most days – and often evenings too – with Bobby Melrose, Millar raised even more eyebrows with his performance at the end of June in the Manx International, one of the toughest and most prestigious races in the UK, held on the famous TT circuit (the world’s oldest surviving motorcycle racing circuit) and featuring a significant obstacle: Snaefell mountain, possibly the closest equivalent in the British Isles to an Alpine or Pyrenean pass. Coming near the end of the 37.75-mile lap, Snaefell rears sharply up from the town of Ramsey. The road winds up the mountain in a series of bends, in the process rising from sea level to a height of 1,300 feet (396 metres). It might not sound much, but it is a serious and, at close to five miles, a long climb. To anyone who has ridden the TT circuit (on a push bike rather than a motorbike) the names of its sections are highly evocative: May Hill (climbing out of Ramsey), Whitegate, Ramsey Hairpin, Gooseneck, Mountain Mile, Mountain Box, Black Hut. Adding considerably to its difficulty, Snaefell is climbed three times in the Manx International.

In 1978 the race largely held together over the first two laps, but on the third ascent of Snaefell, as the riders left Ramsey and were beginning the steep section of the climb, the 19-year-old Millar put in a sudden acceleration that carried him clear of the leading group. Only one rider reacted, or was able to react. Steve Lawrence, a prolific winner of the top British races, sprinted after Millar and had made contact with him by the Ramsey Hairpin, after which the slope levels slightly. Ian Thomson was in the Scotland team car that day, and he drove up alongside Millar to give instructions. ‘I remember saying, “Alter your pace.” If you ride steady a guy will always hang on and hang on; if you alter the pace, like the real good climbers can, you’ll lose him.’ Millar left it too late, only trying the tactic when the slope levels slightly, but for Thomson his performance on Snaefell was significant. ‘I was beginning to realize then what Robert might be capable of.’ According to Cycling, the Manx International confirmed Millar’s ‘growing stature’, even if he was beaten in the sprint by Lawrence. ‘The slightly built Scot, looking small against the well-built Lawrence, did his fair share of work until the closing miles when an England victory became a formality.’

An opportunity for revenge came just nine days later, at the British championship. Lawrence was the defending champion, but this was the race Millar had been targeting all season, the one he had told Gibb more than six months earlier, in the depths of a Glasgow winter, that he would win. Yet it seems that he neglected to tell his parents that he was even going, never mind that he was planning to win it. Indeed, Arthur Campbell seems as incredulous today as he was on the Saturday that he met Millar’s parents, the day before the national championship was held in Lincolnshire. ‘I met Robert’s mother and father in the centre of Glasgow,’ Campbell recalls, ‘and I said to them, “I hope Robert does it tomorrow.” His mother said, “Why, where is he?” I said, “You don’t know? Are you kidding me?” “No,” said his mother, “he never said where he was going. He never says where he is going.” Robert analysed everything, and he had a very retentive memory. If I said something that contradicted something I’d said a year earlier, he’d tell me. But his lack of communication, even with Billy and me, was a problem. He’s never had the acclaim he deserves, but a lot of it is his own fault.’

The national championship, held over 117 miles on a tough nine-mile circuit on the edge of the Lincolnshire wolds, began in drizzle, but Millar demonstrated his confidence by attacking as early as the second of thirteen laps. Jamie McGahan followed him, as did four others, and this six-man group stayed clear for thirty miles. 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 amateur, in tenth overall. He rode a characteristically aggressive race, but the event was also notable for the fact that he was on a new bike: a Harry Hall, built by the legendary Manchester-based frame-builder whose bikes were graced by so many of the top British cyclists. Hall was perhaps the biggest benefactor in the country, though his reasons weren’t entirely altruistic: he knew that if the top British riders were seen riding his bikes, other cyclists would follow suit. ‘I didn’t know Robert before he contacted me,’ says Hall, who had also worked as mechanic to numerous British teams over the years, including that of Tom Simpson at the 1967 Tour de France. When Simpson collapsed and died on Mont Ventoux, Hall was first on the scene. ‘Robert wrote a letter to me,’ Hall explains. ‘He said he’d seen one or two riders on my frames and he fancied one. So I looked around to see what he’d done and I was quite impressed. He obviously had some ability. I said, “I’ll build you a frame and won’t charge you. Give me your old frame and we’ll do a swap.”’

Hall’s sponsorship arrangement with riders was as original as it was ingenious. He allowed his sponsored riders to build up a ‘tab’ in the shop, which they would settle at the end of the year. However, the bill was reduced significantly if the riders got their pictures in Cycling magazine, as John Herety, one of the riders sponsored by Hall, told me. ‘Harry gave you a frame and you had to hand it back at the end of the year, but if you got your picture in Cycling you got £30 off your tab. If you got your picture on the front cover then it was worth £100.’ Herety, showing the cunning that later took him to a successful professional career on the continent and in Britain, was quick to work out how best to profit from this arrangement – and it wasn’t necessarily to win big races. ‘What I did was create really good relationships with the photographers.’

Millar’s relationship with Hall continued until he left for France, but it was resumed in 1985 when he made regular visits to Manchester to assist with The High Life, the documentary film made by Granada TV. ‘He was what you might call a canny lad,’ chuckles Hall, ‘a quiet lad. There were times he’d come into the shop before I got in, and he’d stand waiting in the back. I’d come in and say to the lads in the shop, “Have you offered Robert a tea or coffee?” And they’d say, “Robert who?” And I’d say, “Robert Millar!” He was very well known by then but he wouldn’t say who he was, just that he’d come in to see Harry. He was very unassuming.’

There were two big engagements left in 1978, both of which would take Millar overseas again. The first trip he took in the company of, among others, Ian Thomson, Sandy Gilchrist and David Whitehall, as a member of the Scottish team for the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada. They were to be away for three weeks, which gave Thomson an opportunity to get to know Millar a little better. Thomson was already sensing that he might not have as long to work with him, and select him for his teams, as he would wish; he recognized that Millar was destined to leave for France sooner rather than later.

This was a source of regret for Thomson. ‘He shone so brightly and so quickly that he was in and out of the national squad in no time,’ he says. ‘There was a limit to what you could do for him anyway. I remember I took him to the Girvan that year [1978] and he arrived on the Friday night with his bike in bits. I said, “Robert, you shouldn’t be building your bike the night before the race,” but he did it. Robert would not look for you to do things for him.’ What stood out, according to Thomson, was Millar’s focused determination to succeed. He possessed a singleness of purpose that others simply didn’t have, which led to charges that he was selfish, even ruthless, in pursuing his ambition of a career as a professional cyclist. But Thomson professes only admiration for Millar’s application, and doesn’t have much time for the theory that Millar sought escape from circumstances, at work or at home, which made him unhappy. ‘Unless you became one of the crowd it could be quite tough, but Robert wouldn’t become one of the crowd – that was his choice. He wouldn’t mix because he was focused on what he wanted to do. He was unique for someone that age in resisting peer pressure.’ Yes, agrees Thomson, Glasgow was a tough place. But the idea that the small, slightly built Millar might have been put upon, or bullied into leaving, doesn’t make sense to him. ‘I’ve got a theory,’ he says, ‘that the smaller the Glaswegian is, the harder he is. Because they’re smaller they have to fight harder. If you ever see a fight, it’s often the wee guy being the most aggressive.’

Unfortunately, the Commonwealth Games did not see Millar at his best. ‘He blew it,’ Thomson recalls. While the big favourite, the Australian Phil Anderson, made it into the break and won the race, Millar was left chasing shadows all day – though torrential rain made shadows unlikely, and turned the circuit into a skating rink. ‘He should have been there with Anderson,’ Thomson adds, ‘but he was still young.’

The Commonwealth Games might have been Millar’s first big international appearance, but his poor performance there doesn’t seem to have troubled him. He was relaxed for the three weeks they were there, according to Thomson. He even had a go at track riding, with a view to taking part in the pursuit – though in the end he didn’t. But it is probable that Millar wouldn’t have been unduly worried by his relative failure in Edmonton, and for two reasons. One was that the Commonwealth Games were unimportant as far as the European racing scene was concerned, and that was where his ambitions lay. His attitude towards the next major gathering, the 1980 Olympics, was even more blasé: ‘Why would I want to go to Moscow?’ he said. Like the Commonwealth Games, the all-amateur Olympics, though meaningful back home in Britain, were of little consequence to the professional road cycling scene. Some riders delayed turning professional until after the 1980 Olympics, but the possibility didn’t even cross Millar’s mind. The second reason was that he already had a clear idea about whom he’d be racing with the following year, even if he kept this information to himself.

Other than the race itself, Thomson has only positive memories of the weeks spent with Millar and the rest of the team. ‘I remember going and playing snooker with him one afternoon. I’d never played before; Robert obviously had. It was good; I never had any trouble with the boy at all. He knew by the time of the Games that he’d be going to France the following year, but he never, ever talked about what he was going to do. Other boys would say, “I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that,” and you thought, “Fuck off! You’ve never even been to the continent!” It’s another world over there, a hard game.’

Millar’s room-mate in Edmonton was Sandy Gilchrist, with whom Millar had travelled to races over the past couple of seasons. Gilchrist was the senior rider in Scotland, and Millar seemed to respect him. Years later, when Gilchrist was national coach, he asked Millar to return to Scotland to help run training camps. Millar, he says, was ‘only too happy to help’. Still, Gilchrist admits that he found Millar hard work at times. He didn’t say much, for a start. He would instead sit and listen to the conversation before ‘coming out with a couple of one-liners’. He could be funny. He had a way with words – his own way, naturally. Gilchrist, like Jimmy Dorward, remembers Millar complaining that he wasn’t a very good climber. ‘He thought he was mediocre,’ says Gilchrist, ‘but, in his words, he could “sprackle” over the top. I always remember him saying that. I think he meant that he would struggle up the climb and make a last desperate effort over the top to stay with the other riders. It was a good word, though, sprackle. Only Robert could come out with that. He would totally refute the idea that he was special. He just thought that he put a lot into his cycling, so he expected to get a lot out.’ And Gilchrist has a theory that his quietness, his reluctance to engage with people, might have been part of a carefully calculated strategy. ‘He put a lot into his mental preparation, and being anti-social, cutting himself off from people, was part of that. He would probably see that as being part and parcel of becoming a good rider.’

After managing only twenty-third in the Commonwealth Games road race, from Edmonton Millar flew to the world championship on West Germany’s motor racing circuit the Nurburgring, in late August. His first world amateur road race championship ended with him as Britain’s best finisher in fifty-ninth.

One of Millar’s last events in a busy season was the Raleigh Dunlop Tour of Ireland, which he rode for a composite ‘All Stars’ team that included Gilchrist and Phil Anderson and was sponsored by British Airways. The revelation of that race was a young Irishman called Stephen Roche. But Millar did well too, finishing fourth overall. A week later he won the Tour of the Peak by more than three minutes – a nice postscript to the previous year’s race, when a poorly timed bike change cost him his place in the leading break. Harry Hall still possesses a picture from Cycling showing Millar out of the saddle and climbing towards victory, resplendent in his British champion’s jersey, which was white with red and blue bands around the chest. Alas, the picture was on the inside pages rather than the cover and therefore would have been worth only £30 rather than £100 to Millar. He finished an outstanding season by winning the Tour of the Trossachs time trial, ending a seven-year run of wins by Sandy Gilchrist, and shattering the course record, set in 1964 by Ian Thomson.

A more significant item appeared in Cycling magazine on 7 October. ‘Millar Gets Paris Call’ read the headline. The story was reputedly prompted by a phone call to the offices of the magazine from Claude Escalon, deputy director of the Paris-based Athlétique Club de Boulogne-Billancourt (ACBB). ‘I’m very interested in taking an Englishman [sic] called Millar,’ Escalon told the staff at Cycling. ‘Have you any idea what kind of a rider he is, and where I could contact him?’