In Search of Robert Millar: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Britain’s Most Successful Tour de France Cyclist. Richard Moore
rivalry and the tribalism inherent in this. It is a rivalry that has its roots in religion – Celtic represent the Catholic community, Rangers represent the Protestant community – and inevitably, games between the two halves of the ‘Old Firm’ have tended, historically, to perpetuate the city’s violent reputation. Millar, Gibb told me, didn’t feature in the school football team, but not because he couldn’t play. ‘Although he was skinny and small, he was strong. You couldn’t knock him off the ball. He certainly wasn’t bad. But he didn’t seem to show a lot of interest in it.’
In fact, much like his father, whose big passion seems to have been ballroom dancing, at no stage in his life does Millar appear to have shown any interest in football, which more likely owed to a lack of interest, or rebelliousness, than to his small build. Indeed, some of the city’s finest footballers have been small – Jimmy ‘Jinky’ Johnstone, of Celtic’s 1967 European Cup-winning team, being, at 5ft 4ins, the most obvious example. Such players, though, tended to be fast as well as skilful. It is interesting that Gibb cites Millar’s strength as his main attribute. As a cyclist it would be this, along with his endurance, that allowed him to excel. Millar, according to Gibb, was a decent footballer rather than an outstanding one. He could hold his own but he didn’t dazzle. Moreover, he showed no interest in it – which would count as an act of rebellion in Glasgow, or at least as an example of not following the pack. When in 1985 he returned to Glasgow, having scaled the heights of the Tour de France, he was asked by the city’s paper, the Evening Times, whether he craved more recognition in his home country. ‘Football and rugby are the two main sports here so the top men must come from them,’ he acknowledged. ‘However, it’s nice to be appreciated.’
By the 1960s, however, there was an alternative weekend pursuit to watching football. In Glasgow, as in many working-class cities throughout Europe, the bicycle was becoming a reasonably popular, if marginal, pastime. Initially it was a handy and cheap mode of transport for the working man, getting him to the factory or the shipyard, and then home, often in wobbly fashion, from the pub. And for a few, perhaps those who weren’t wedded to the football culture, it also provided a means of escape at the weekends.
Surrounding Glasgow in all directions were more or less traffic-free roads that skirted spectacular lochs, climbed remote hills, hugged the coast, and delved into secluded parts of the country, all of which were perfect for cycling. Large groups of club cyclists began to meet on the outskirts of the city on Saturday and Sunday mornings to explore these roads, usually stopping for a ‘drum-up’ – a fire would be lit upon which soup could be heated and tea brewed – by the banks of Loch Lomond. Many of those who were drawn to cycling preferred solitude to crowds, such as football crowds. They also preferred green space to the urban environment. ‘Off to find some green bits,’ Millar would remark later of a 1980 photograph that showed him riding through Glasgow, heading out on a training ride. Cycling provided, literally and metaphorically, an escape for those such as Millar and another famous Glaswegian who eventually managed to move away from the city and his working-class roots, the comedian Billy Connolly.
For Connolly, humour was an effective way of surviving life as an apprentice welder in the Clyde shipyards, as well as eventually providing his means of escape. But cycling also provided him with more fleeting ‘escapes’. In an interview with The Independent in 2000, Connolly, agreeing with the description of himself as a ‘sociable loner’, explained, ‘I was never a joiner [of clubs or organizations]. Even when I cycled I never joined a cycling club, I just cycled around on my own and sometimes joined lines of other cyclists.’ He was referring to the club runs, which were organized and designed for socializing, down to the fact that riders went two abreast, as an aid to conversation. Indeed, contrary to the image of the cyclist as only a loner or escape artist, cycling, especially club cycling, was often a social activity that appealed to sociable types – or ‘sociable loners’, perhaps. The sport could therefore satisfy two apparently conflicting sides of a personality, the desire both for solitude and for mixing with others, especially those who were like-minded.
The proliferation of clubs reflected the interest in cycling in Glasgow at this time. There were touring clubs and racing clubs, men-only clubs and clubs for Christians, where Sunday rides would include a visit to church. The 1960s and 1970s constituted a peak period; the club scene has perhaps never been stronger. Jimmy Dorward, a leading light in this club scene for more than five decades, compares the clubs to clans. When, as a young boy, he showed an interest in joining a club he was told simply to ride up to Loch Lomond on a Sunday and find the spot where that club met. Each club had a different and clearly defined ‘drum-up’ spot by the banks of the loch. Dorward went in search of the Douglas club but couldn’t find them. ‘I found the Clarion instead and ended up joining them,’ he recalls. ‘The Douglas, which had been a very strong club, took a nosedive after that.’ Smiling, he adds: ‘But I don’t think that had anything to do with me not joining them.
‘Cycling was a way of life for a lot of people. It was more than a sport, and there was a tremendous social aspect. If you wanted to join a club you just turned up at the “drum” and someone would come and speak to you. If the newcomer got dropped [left behind] there was always someone who’d look out for them and go back for them. After the drum-up the scraps would start; in these big groups of thirty, forty or fifty, we’d race back to Glasgow and it would be every man for himself. But someone would still look out for the newcomer. You’d say, “Just stay with me, I’ll get you back.” And there was tremendous club loyalty. If you were even seen cycling with another club you’d be asked what you were doing. You’d be seen as a traitor.’
One of Robert Millar’s first cycling expeditions, before he became involved in the club scene, was when he was only 11, in the company of three friends, among them Willie Gibb, who had been inspired to take up cycling by the example of his racing father. The youngsters cycled away from Pollokshaws in the direction of East Kilbride, around ten miles away, though Gibb turned home early while the remaining trio of intrepid 11-year-olds continued in an easterly direction, with the benefit of a generous tailwind. It wasn’t just the stiff headwind that made things difficult on the way back. There was also the matter of taking the wrong road, which meant they came back into Glasgow through Rutherglen. To them, it might as well have been a different city. When they managed to stumble upon Bridgeton they were able to find their way home, late, but with their parents none the wiser.
It was with Gibb and Tom Brodie that Millar began to cycle on a more regular basis. ‘We used to run about on bikes that were like Raleigh Choppers,’ remembers Gibb. ‘We were on bikes all the time.’ The three young cyclists began to venture out of the city with greater frequency. They were beginning to enjoy going far and fast, and an element of competition was being introduced, not through racing one another but thanks to the buses that trundled up and down the main road to Ayr, a seaside town thirty miles south of Glasgow. ‘At that time the buses were pretty slow,’ explains Gibb, ‘so we used to tuck in behind them, sheltering in their slipstream. They could probably get up to about forty miles an hour, but they had no acceleration. So you could get in behind them as they left the bus stop and sit behind them all the way to Kilmarnock [twenty miles away] or even as far as Ayr, then turn around and catch another bus back to Glasgow.’
The bicycles were put to other uses as well, such as fishing. Illegal fishing, naturally. Gibb knew of a small loch owned by a syndicate comprising some of the movers and shakers of Glasgow society – ‘legal folk, judges, people like that’. ‘We’d go up and do all-nighters, especially during the school holidays,’ he recalls. ‘It would get light about three in the morning. We used to cycle there with our fishing rods strapped to the top tube of our bikes, and then hide the bikes in the long reeds. The loch was about eight or nine miles from where we lived. We caught loads of good-sized brown trout. There was an old folks’ home near where I lived and I’d keep a couple of fish myself then give the rest to the old folks. I don’t know what Robert did with his. The old folk never asked where they came from.’
One of the early stories that attached itself to Millar as he climbed the cycling ladder was the claim that he had become hooked on the sport of cycling after seeing the Tour de France on a television in a shop window. It’s a story that has been told and retold, but it isn’t true. In fact, Millar set the record straight