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