In Search of Robert Millar: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Britain’s Most Successful Tour de France Cyclist. Richard Moore
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,