Very interesting stuff. Very sad though....
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cycling/story/0,10482,1269733,00.html
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cycling/story/0,10482,1269936,00.html
The wrong gear
He was known as the 'Boy Dave', a prodigious cycling talent who last year
became world champion and had his sights set on two golds in Athens next
month. But now David Millar is in disgrace, facing a ban from the sport for
using the illegal performance-enhancing drug EPO. Why did he do it? He tells
William Fotheringham about the pressure to win, the shame of his exposure -
and how, deep down, he wanted to get caught
William Fotheringham
Tuesday July 27, 2004
The Guardian
Had it not been for an oversight in packing his suitcase last September,
today David Millar would probably be celebrating finishing his fourth Tour
de France, in which he has won three stages and worn the yellow jersey. He
would be thinking about the Athens Olympics, about setting out to attempt
something no British sportsman has achieved: two gold medals at the same
games. He would also still be "living a lie", as he puts it: a highly paid,
prestigious lie.
Instead, he is sitting in a bar explaining lucidly and heart-rendingly how
he destroyed what could have been a glorious sporting career by using drugs.
His eyes are red at the corners and have a distant look. Occasionally, he
seems close to tears. One hand drums almost constantly on his knee. He has
always seemed somewhat distrait, but now he has the lost air of a man who
has fallen from the heavens into an unknown world, and is trying to figure
out where he is and what he should do.
On June 22, Millar was detained in Biarritz by drugs police investigating
his professional cycling team, Cofidis. He emerged 48 hours later after
confessing to having used the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) on
three occasions. The key to his downfall was a pair of syringes which had
contained the drug, that he had taken before winning the world championship
in Canada in October 2003.
"I used them, I forgot about them, left them in my bag, went to Las Vegas,
came back, was unpacking and found them. I thought, 'What the [censored] has my
life come to?' and put them on the bookshelf. It's my most private place, a
place no one touches. It had scarred me: I had won the World Championship by
a huge margin and didn't need to have used drugs. I had got to a point where
I had wanted to win so much that to guarantee my victory I did something I
didn't need to do. I didn't want to forget about it."
The drug police found them when they searched his Biarritz flat after his
detention, and put them in front of him late in his 48-hour detention. "At
first I made up a story. I thought I could still get out of it. After 47
hours they started threatening me, they were flipping out because I had not
admitted to anything. It was Thursday evening, they were going to keep me,
take me to Paris in a van, keep me in for three days then put me before the
judge on Monday.
"I could have carried on. I have a good lawyer in Paris and might have got
away with it. But I thought, '[censored] this, I can't live with this.' It wasn't
difficult. I was just thinking, 'I can't go through with this, I'm [censored]
whatever happens, it's not 100% my fault, but I'm not going to live like
this.' I could have kept fighting, fighting, fighting, but fundamentally,
I'm not a good liar."
He accepts that he hung on to the syringes partly because deep down inside
he wanted someone to catch him, because he had lost so much respect for
himself that he no longer cared if he were caught and it came to an end. "I
believe in the power of the subconscious. It was my get-out. I wasn't happy.
I wasn't enjoying it. I didn't like the point I'd got to. It was an extreme
way of doing it, but it's typical of my style of life."
Born in Malta, brought up in Hong Kong and west London, the 27-year-old
Millar is nominally Scottish but actually rootless, a charismatic young man,
part grunge kid, part art student, who opted at 18 to be a professional
cyclist rather than go to art college. Asked how he made the journey from an
idealistic youth who was adamant that he would never use drugs to a cynical
professional who needed "guarantees", Millar holds up finger and thumb. The
gap between them is half an inch.
"It's that. I was 100% sure I'd never dope. All of a sudden it escalated out
of control." It was, he believes, a form of adolescent rebellion against the
demands of his sport. "It was the only thing in life that defined me. I
resented that. I didn't think about it, there was no twiddling thumbs and
wondering if I should or I shouldn't. I just walked into a room one day and
did it."
The turning point came during the 2001 Tour de France. He had won the
opening stage in 2000, but a year later he fell in the first stage, and
barely clung on for another nine days. Eight days in, he greeted me with
hysterical laughter after one tough stage finish in Alsace. "By day nine or
10 I'd started to go mental, the managers said they would fly my then
girlfriend in, but when they asked her, she was, 'No, I'm not coming.'" That
night, he saw an older professional in the team who introduced him to EPO.
Before the Tour of Spain, that September, he travelled to Italy and was
shown how to inject himself with the drug. There was no risk of a positive
test, he says, because the drug was used in small quantities and taken well
before competition. Nor were there second thoughts. "You don't stop and
think, or it's game over. When the line is crossed, it's crossed. It stops
being a sport.
"I had taken on a load of responsibility" - his team was invited to the race
on condition that he start and perform - "and I was taking that on, being
professional." It was "mental insurance", and there was nothing to stop him.
"There was very little guidance, few options, no coach, no set-up in the
team to encourage you not to do that. No other team would have pushed me
through what I went through in that year. I was going bananas."
After winning another stage of the Tour in 2002 "clean", Millar used EPO
again in 2003. This time, there were financial pressures as well. In 2002,
he "had a [censored] year apart from winning a stage in the Tour de France. I'd
saved the team's [censored] there, but wasn't in the top 100 in the world
rankings. From making a lot of money I went to the basic that I had in 2002.
I felt it was wrong. My salary dropped by 300%. It was like, 'I'll make them
pay me a shedload of money and run this team.'"
The drugs he took that May and August were in order to keep going during
intense training over 10 days: courses of EPO taken to keep up the red-cell
count, plus the use of testosterone patches to keep his level of male
hormone up. Both red blood cells and testosterone drop as the body becomes
fatigued, impairing performance. If they are boosted, more intense training
is possible. "It's training hard and taking a certain amount of EPO over 10
days so you can keep doing the training." As before, stopping taking the
drugs well before racing removed the risk of a positive test.
In recent years, since the drugs scandal that almost stopped the 1998 Tour
de France, many top professional cyclists, particularly those specialising
in the great stage races such as the Tours of Spain, Italy and France, have
moved away from building condition through racing to high-intensity training
camps, but it is impossible to say whether or not they are on similar
programmes to the one that Millar used. He knows the solution: out of
competition testing, which is currently being beefed up by cycling's
governing bodies. People in the sport, he says, genuinely don't know whether
their fellow competitors are using the drug. "I only know about me. I didn't
ask questions of other guys. Everyone is so paranoid now."
In January 2002, I asked Millar about his attitude to drugs. I didn't ask
point blank: are you using them? Sports journalists, and particularly those
who work in cycling, don't: it is like asking if someone beats their wife.
Millar's answer was, "I don't need to dope. I don't have to live with myself
doing that. There will always be guys ahead of me who are one step ahead of
the rules. I have to live with it, because it's their choice." There was not
an untrue word in the sentence, but it was not a point-blank denial. He
looks back and says: "I hadn't refined my answers to be ambiguous." Later,
he managed that, but felt uncomfortable.
Ironically, from the start of this year, Millar had turned his back on
doping and begun racing "clean" under the influence of a British coach,
Peter Keen, and the Lottery funded World Class performance programme. "I
wanted to win the Olympics clean, for myself. I wasn't good with myself. I
had changed as a person."
He regrets what he has done, and seems relieved that, for the moment, he is
through with cycling. "If you go through such a big ethical change in one
day it's going to affect you on a deeper level. I was unstable, my
self-esteem started evaporating. I was living a lie and that's not good for
anyone. It is so hard to explain, because I was capable of winning big races
clean. I couldn't explain it to myself. It's very confusing. I haven't slept
well for the last two or three years."
More sleepless nights must await. On August 4, a disciplinary commission
will decide the length of his ban. He will be stripped of the world title.
He will probably sell his "dream home in Biarritz", which he has spent two
and a half years having restored, but will never sleep in. Where next? He
has no idea. He accepts what he has done, hopes the ban will not end his
career, and now wishes to offer his services "to prevent young riders doing
what I have done".
For seven years Millar has been known as "Boy Dave" to me and my colleagues.
He earned the nickname when he turned professional at the tender age of 19,
and brought a fresh face, glamour, and a bit of rock-star chic to the
two-wheeled world. Now, the boy faces a painful growing up.