David Millar: Racing Through the Dark: Book Review

Racing Through the Dark, David Millar, Touchstone Books, 2012.

It is immensely refreshing to read an anti-doping tome that is not all about Lance Armstrong.  It is also nice to see that the Millar family is a normal group without the inherited trait of self-righteous honesty, unlike the pious Tyler Hamilton family.  Indeed!  David Millar's father was a Royal Air Force wing commander, his mother was a common housewife. David Millar was a military brat, rootless.  David Millar's parents were divorced.  David lived in Hong Kong with his father.  Fran, his sister, lived with her mother in the United Kingdom.  Nothing untoward here.

David Millar was an amateur sensation.  His greatest skill was time trials.  He signed a professional multi-year contract with Cofidis in 1997.  The first lesson neophyte professional David Millar learned when leading out a training ride was, these guys are fast!  When Millar rode on point at a pace that totally destroyed amateur racers, he noticed that his teammates were barely winded.  Welcome to stark top professional cycling rank reality!

It didn't take long for David Millar to become acquainted with the doping culture in professional cycling.  After the training ride, David Millar's Cofidis teammate Frankie Andreu immediately broke out ampules of assorted "legal" recovery products and syringes! "d prefolic, epargriseovit, and ferlixit could boost your blood values one point, completely naturally."*  But don't tell Betsy Andreu!

All well and good, after all, what harm could an injection of iron in the rump do?  But Cofidis had a unique philosophy, a concept called being prepared.  A preparation might consist of injecting harmless vitamin supplements, perhaps increasing hematocrit values one point, or may consist of injecting dangerous illegal drugs.  There were illegal products available; cortisone, testosterone, human growth hormones, synthetic EPO, and a combination of unknown drugs euphemistically called "Italian recovery products," if needed.  Cofidis was a results-driven team and they paid cash to riders based on UCI bonus points accumulated during the season.  But since Cofidis and other professional cycling teams have no culpability when a rider tests positive for illegal performance-enhancing drugs, the methods used to acquire UCI bonus points were of no concern to Cofidis.

Millar Time!  2000 Tour de France.

David Millar smoked Lance Armstrong in the Futuroscope Time Trial and became an instant sensation as maillot jaune; and he did it riding clean!  There were endless discussions of David Millar, he was so young, he had ample time to win a future Tour de France.  He gave interviews in fluent French, his mother complained that the odds of him winning the 2000 Tour de France at fifty to one odds was an outrage.  Millar was a remarkably charismatic character who became immediately loved by the cycling community as the greatest time trialist on earth.

The Fall of Dunkirk! 2001 Tour de France.

David Millar suffered from several crashes during the 2000 Tour de France and abandoned, but he was still riding clean at this point.  But this would soon change, after abandoning the 2001 Tour de France.  Cofidis suggested that Millar go home, rest, and prepare for the Veulta d' Espana (Tour of Spain).

David Millar was introduced to EPO by a teammate known as L'Equipier.  L'Equipier owned disposable syringes of EPO, purchased through black market contacts.  The EPO was stored in a faux soda can with a cap that screwed on.  The best part of this recollection is where David Millar and L'Equipier were searching through the seedy ghetto area of town looking for drug contacts, and how this whole episode disgusted David Millar.  L'Equipier would later provide the French police with information that David Millar was using performance-enhancing drugs.  This intelligence would instigate a raid on David Millar's personal home.  This raid would lead to David Millar's arrest and eventual two-year suspension from cycling.

My Personal Jesus. 2002 Vuelta d' Espana.

Jesus Losa was a sports do/ctor who specialized in doping who worked with David Millar to prepare.  They were using EPO, cortisone, testosterone, and an unknown cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs euphemistically called, "Italian recovery products."  Millar and Losa also used high altitude training to increase endurance on the cols.  But there were pitfalls, Millar says he became so focused on losing weight to increase power, he lost too much weight, which decreased his power.  Then, of course, karma intervened on the Angliru climb, a vicious col with leg-breaking grades up to twenty-five percent.  Worse, it rained, the surface of the road was covered with coal dust from the local mines creating dangerous racing conditions, and multiple road crashes occurred during this stage.  David Millar crashed three times during the stage, the third time his bicycle was run over by a team car while his feet were still clipped into the pedals.  At the summit, a concerned fan attempted to cross the barriers and assist a battered and bloodied David Millar, but the heroic fan was tackled by a police officer and thrown to the ground.  David Millar protested the unsafe conditions of the stage by ripping off his race number, abandoning his bicycle on the course, and by quitting the race.  All of his preparation was a pointless waste of time and effort.  After all, the goal of his preparation was to win the Vuelta d`Espana.

2003 Tour de France: The Dropped Chain.

This wouldn't be the last time that karma would intervene to foil David Millar.  The 2003 Tour de France prologue time trial dropped chain added to the misery.

David Millar says Alain Bondue modified the time trial bikes by removing the small chain wheel, the front derailleur, and the front derailleur shift lever.  To make things worse, Bondue decided to change the large chain wheel to a chain wheel manufactured by a sponsor at the last moment.  The problem was that the chain wheel and the chain were incompatible.  Millar says he watched in horror when his teammates lost their chains on the cobblestone sections of the course.  In the final corner, Millar dropped his chain and went from first through the time checks to 110th overall for the stage.  Alain Bondue and Cofidis originated one of the strangest time trial bike modifications in history, a modification that will never be repeated, and a modification that cost Alain Bondue his Cofidis job at David Millar insistence.

2003 World Championships. David Millar: UCI World Time Trial Champion.

David Millar stated in interviews that he could have won the World's time trial without using any performance-enhancing drugs, probably true given his talent.  But he did use EPO; disposable syringes which in a moment of carelessness, instead of throwing away, he placed the syringes into the lining of his suitcase.  This carelessness would later sow the seeds of doom for David Millar when his home was searched by the French police.  Millar stated that he placed the syringes behind his personal library books and simply forgot about them.**

David Millar's home was raided, David Millar was arrested by the French police.  His telephone had been tapped by the French police and his conversations were recorded before the raid.  Cofidis fired David Millar.  David Millar's life began to spiral out of control into an alcohol-induced haze.  The French tax authority was ready to seize all of David Millar's personal property as payment over a tax dispute.  David Millar thought his cycling career was over.  David Millar thought that his life was over.

Redemption.

There are human beings in cycling too.  David Millar after serving his suspension went to Jean Marie LeBlanc and asked if he could return to the Tour de France?

Le Blanc: 'you have served your time, that is punishment enough'.  But: 'Mais alores, David.  You can not ride the Tour if you do not have a team'.

Jean Marie LeBlanc pointed to a photograph of the Catholic Pope visiting a man in prison who shot the same Pope, as an example of how ASO should treat miscreants.  Too bad Christian Prudhomme, in spite of his pious name, could not have followed LeBlanc's example.

David Millar found a team; Sunier Duval, low budget, low pay, full of misfits, low-quality riders, and ex-dopers making a comeback.  Sunier Duval considered David Millar a big name bargain.  But David Millar began to suspect that riders on Sunier Duval were experimenting with performance-enhancing drugs, which was a direct violation of his new philosophy of "ride clean."  David Millar sent several letters directly to the UCI expressing his concerns as to the suspicious behavior of certain riders on Sunier Duval.  The UCI responded that they were aware of the situation.

Time for David Millar to move on.  Jonathan Vaughters and Slipstream decided to start a new cycling team that would have a "no tolerance" policy toward doping.  David Millar was eager to join a team that promoted clean cycling and a team that would go beyond the UCI out-of-competition doping controls by employing internal random blood and urine tests of team members; a prototype biological passport system that would employ longitudinal measures as safeguards against doping.

The Persuader.

David Millar expressed his outrage that Discovery Channel would have the audacity to hire Ivan Basso; even though there was an unwritten rule in cycling that riders who were under investigation for doping offenses would not be employed.  Ivan Basso was then under investigation for links to Operation Puerto.  Millar scolds Lance Armstrong at a cycling function:

Millar: "Look, Lance.  I know how much you love the Tour, but you're alienating yourself from it more and more.  What are you going to do twenty years from now if you're not welcome back?  How can they invite you back as a past champion if you treat the sport like shit and are clouded in controversy?"

Lance Armstrong scoffs and says that the sport needs to do a better job and police it's self.  Lance Armstrong says that he is now focused on exciting projects away from cycling.  Millar rejoins:

Lance, that's bullshit.  You will always come back to cycling."

Yes.  Much to his regret.

David Brailsford and Team Sky.

David Brailsford, is the King Midas of cycling, everything the man touches turns to gold.  Team Great Britain became the golden team during the 2008 Beijing Olympics; Bradley Wiggins, Chris Hoy, and Vicki Pendleton dominant; mountains of gold poured onto the velodrome floor.

David Millar was torn, he loved the purity of Slipstream, but he wanted to join British sponsored David Brailsford lead team Sky where Bradley Wiggins and most of the Slipstream riders were destined.  But, alas, as David Millar describes it, the decision was made for him:

In the end, the decision was made for me.  Dave Brailsford told me that team Sky couldn't take me because of my doping past and that he would be enforcing a zero-tolerance policy toward any members of the Sky professional cycling team having any prior doping history.

Quaint logic that even David Millar could not understand.  Millar reasoned that as an experienced doper who had run the gauntlet that he would be an invaluable influence for novice cyclists who might be tempted to circumvent the rules.  Of course, there may have been even more sinister reasons to exclude David Millar from Sky.  Perhaps Dave Brailsford did not appreciate a man who had a tendency to blow the whistle to the UCI when he suspected doping and cheating.  After all, team Great Britain, with the piles of gold it accumulated in Olympic track races and the improbable domination by team Sky in the 2012 Tour de France, was, as Lance Armstrong would express it: not normal.

Finis

David Millar has a message for all of you neophyte riders.  People are human beings who are capable of making mistakes and they should be forgiven if they succumb to temptation.  But it is never too late to learn from your mistakes and reform.  And the most important message of all?  You can win without using performance-enhancing drugs.  David Millar proved it when he beat the most doped man in the world, Lance Armstrong, at Futuroscope, riding clean.  David Millar came full circle, he is a survivor and a man who should be emulated by every young rider.  David Millar's memoir should be required reading for every aspiring cyclist and serve as a blueprint for what not to do.

UPDATE:

*In a cycling Internet forum discussion that references this passage, from this blog post, a person states that these drugs are harmless vitamins, and in subsequent printings of the book, the drug names were edited out of the text and replaced with the word vitamins.  Apparently, people derived the sinister impression that Frankie Andreu and his Cofidis teammates were unabashedly schooling neophyte cyclists like David Millar into the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, in plain sight, and with Cofidis knowledge and approval.

**This behavior seems suicidal, but from David Millar perhaps this careless behavior had a purpose.  I believe David Millar wanted to be caught.  He wanted to keep the syringes as a reminder, a sort of self-laceration, to remind himself that his world time trial championship was a fraud.  David Millar was an honest man.  When he was caught he confessed everything.  No denials, lies, and prevarications.  David Millar accepted his punishment like a man.  David Millar told the truth, dopers are frauds, and he was true to his word to ride clean.  David Millar pontificated the philosophy of clean riding from the pulpit, not as a hypocrite, but as a true practitioner.  A truly remarkable man.