In Search of Robert Millar: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Britain’s Most Successful Tour de France Cyclist. Richard Moore
IN SEARCH OF ROBERT MILLAR
Richard Moore
HarperSport
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in hardback in 2007 by HarperSport an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright © Richard Moore 2007
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Source ISBN: 9780007235018
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007283880 Version: 2017-01-12
In loving memory of my mother, Katherine Moore
(1946–2005)
Contents
1 It’s the Grit that Makes the Oyster
3 The Smaller They Are, the Harder They Fight
11 You Don’t Put Ordinary Fuel in a Sports Car
About the Publisher
‘… remaining unknowable is the only true way to be known …’
Colum McCann, from Dancer
I can remember, quite clearly, my first encounter with Robert Millar. It was at lunchtime on Saturday, 21 July 1984. I was 11 at the time. Robert Millar will remember the occasion more vividly, because while I was watching television with my dad in my family’s living room, he was in the Haute-Ariège area of the Pyrenees, climbing a steep, winding road that ended at the ski station at Guzet Neige – the finish of stage 11 of the Tour de France.
We had recently moved to England from Scotland, and my Scottishness was being pointed out to me repeatedly. A PE teacher nicknamed me ‘Jock’, and it stuck. I hated being singled out. On the other hand, I quite liked it too. But I was desperately, urgently looking for allies – namely, fellow Jocks – wherever I could, even on television, even participating in obscure sporting events. I looked at the TV screen but couldn’t really work out what was going on. There was a small group of sweating cyclists straining against a steep gradient and suffering in the blazing heat. So this was the Tour de France. It looked pretty boring.
I asked my dad, who was receiving his weekly fix of the Tour de France on ITV’s World of Sport, whether any Scottish cyclists were competing in this strange event. ‘There is one Scot,’ he replied, a note of surprise in his voice. ‘Robert Millar, from Glasgow. That’s him there.’
Now I was interested. I was struck by the name, by its ordinariness. He didn’t sound like he belonged there. ‘Robert Millar’ jarred alongside the exotic-sounding Laurent Fignon, Bernard Hinault, Pedro Delgado, even the American with the French-sounding name, Greg LeMond. And yet, although I didn’t know it at the time, in the wiry, compact form of Robert Millar I had just stumbled upon someone who was not only Scottish but most certainly – and defiantly – different; someone who didn’t just mind standing out, or apart, from the crowd, but actually seemed to want to.
‘Will he win?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said my dad, with good old-fashioned Scottish pessimism-realism.
But