robert millarrobert millar

honour .........................................................................................................................................................................................................

palmares | a funny guy | the stolen vuelta | a peiper's tale |the spanish years |
honour| the small yin | millar on motorbikes | the book |
robert millar colnago c40 review | 1988 winning magazine interview | training | the outsider |
2008 interview | british road champion | the 2011 tour de France

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King of the mountains still reigns supreme. Stewart Fisher says it's time to put the record straight on a Scots cycling legend.

robert millar at panasonic

first printed in the sunday herald in july 2004

Perhaps somewhere on the winding roads of the Pyrenees this weekend the name of Robert Millar will be faintly visible beneath the layers of paint which are annually daubed on the tarmac.

Twenty years have passed since the single-minded Scot dragged his wiry frame from the Gorbals to the peak of British achievement in the Tour de France with a fourth place in the General Classification and a podium place as King of the Mountains, not to mention a thrilling stage win from Pau to Guzet-Neige.

There are some apocryphal tales of the following year's Vuelta, and Millar making the mountains on either side of the Franco/Spanish border his own to such an extent that the Spanish teams had to conspire together with the aid of a TV blackout and possibly a tow car to prevent him from capturing overall victory.

Two conflicting images of Millar still stalk the collective memory. The first is the one indelibly marked on the mind of professional cycling's devotees, the Millar who on six occasions ended epic journeys to the Champs l'Elysees in the top 20, leaping in trademark fashion out of the saddle on another heroically unpredictable surge to the summit of yet another punishing incline as he kept such luminaries as Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon and Greg Lemond on their toes.

The second is somewhat less auspicious, however, dating back just four years to a Sunday newspaper 'investigation' which published lurid claims that Millar was undergoing a sex change, on the 'evidence' that he was wearing his hair in pig tails and 'friends' had claimed he was developing breasts.

Another way of putting it would be that a man who on one occasion had recorded an abnormally high testosterone level appeared to be showing signs of undergoing hormone treatment.

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For a painfully introspective character at the best of times, such intrusion only confirmed his jaundiced intuition to trust as few people as possible.

With a short-lived but controversial career in cycling management following his retirement in 1995 already behind him, Millar retreated still further - declining to appear even to acknowledge his induction into the Scottish sports hall of fame last December. Even his friends are unsure of his movements these days. But perhaps the 20th anniversary of his greatest achievement is an appropriate milestone from which to recognise that the latter image has been allowed to pollute the former for too long.

At least one of his former coaches is prepared to set the record straight on his behalf.

"I haven't been in touch with Robert for a couple of years," said Billy Bilsland, his coach at Glasgow Wheelers cycle club and whose Glasgow bike shop still affords the afore-mentioned polka dot jersey pride of place.

"The last time I was in touch with him was when the story broke that he was having a sex change, which as far as I am concerned that whole story was just nonsense. It would have cost Robert quite a lot of money to pursue him through the courts and what for? The guy didn't have any money to pay him damages. The story came from Scotland, and someone who hadn't seen him for 10 years supposedly confirmed the story. But he was never one for publicity. What he did, he did for himself. When he rode the tour, he was never one for the limelight.

"It is a pity things turned out like this," Bilsland said. "Particularly in Scottish cycling, Robert is a hero. Anybody who knows him has got great respect for him."

robert millar

The anecdotes of Millar's devotion to his profession have passed into legend. Whether it was deliberately brutal haircuts, to keep him out of nightclubs, or shunning small talk in favour of the Reader's Digest at elite French outfit ACBB, Millar always kept himself to himself.

"To succeed in cycling you have to go over the continent and sometimes it isn't just as simple as packing your bag and going," Bilsland said. "Not all kids can go to France and hack it on their own. It takes a special person."

Millar wasn't just special. He was more than that.

Copyright 2004 smg sunday newspapers ltd.

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palmares | a funny guy | the stolen vuelta | a peiper's tale |the spanish years |
honour| the small yin | millar on motorbikes | the book |
robert millar colnago c40 review | 1988 winning magazine interview | training | the outsider |
2008 interview | british road champion | the 2011 tour de France

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................