London Sports Writing Festival 2015 - David Millar on retirement, the Spring Classics and his final Tour de France moment

David Millar has raced bicycles professionally at the highest level for 18 years, competing in the Grand Tours, the World Championships and Olympics for Great Britain and represented Scotland at the Commonwealth Games. And yet the man I see in front of me on the stage in the Thomas Lord suite of Lord's Cricket Ground, being interviewed by ITV's Ned Boulting, has an air of depression about him.

Depression in retired athletes is not a new problem but still remains a big taboo, in the main because it's hard for the general public to feel sorry for sports men and women who've earned a lot of money over the course of their career. It's Millar, though, who has a genuine, heart-breaking reason to be upset about how his professional cycling career came to an end.

Millar and Boulting reporting on the 2015 Tour de France

2014's Garmin-Cervelo team selection came as a shock, both to Millar, who was 37-years-old at the time, and cycling fans, when Millar's Director Sportif, Charlie Wegelius, told him at the last minute he wasn't going to race in that year's Tour de France. Millar recalls: "I can't let that go. From my experience of 12 Tours de France and how I could turn that kind of fitness around, I could have gone. It wasn't the first time I'd been so terribly unfit and out of shape so close to an objective and turned it around; that was my thing. My biggest problem was Charlie. I was like, 'You know me!', and he was just saying, 'Yeah...not good enough, Dave. You've been terrible the last few months, you haven't finished a race'. I told him, 'This was my objective to get ready for the Commonwealth Games and the World Championships, I'll be fine, I've done this my whole career, without fail. Give me a break maybe? I'll do it'." According to Millar, his close friend and former team mate, Matt White, Sporting Director of Orica Green-Edge, would have given him the chance to get his fitness back: "He [Matt White] would have said, 'Dave, don't worry mate, you'll be fine, I trust you, you'll turn it around', and I just heard his voice in my head all the time".

Having essentially been retired by his boss, Millar, rather handily, was called by Boulting and asked to join their ITV coverage of the 2014 Tour de France. Although he'd left the sport, it wasn't on his terms and he felt angry, so his sister - Director of Business Operations at Team Sky - demanded he see Dr. Steve Peters, the well known sports psychologist, who'd he'd only seen a few times before, the first time being 2005 when Millar was released from jail in Biarritz: "My sister basically said, 'David, sort your shit out!'." It wasn't until he sat down and spoke to Steve over Skype that it suddenly dawned on him what was happening. "I sat down to talk to Steve for an hour and immediately he asked, 'How are you?', and I was just like, 'I don't know, I don't know how I am'. He was just like, 'Okay', and then he talked for 45 minutes. He said, 'David you have to recognise that you achieve things, and it's a good thing, but you have to put it to bed'."

Millar riding with Garmin-Sharp in the 2012 Tour de France

To achieve anything in any sport you have to train, but training as a professional cyclist is particularly excruciating. In a sport where ultra-endurance is the key factor in winning, it becomes even more important to train your body to cope with the pain of converting high pedal revolutions into maintained speed. In a typical 180km stage of the Tour de France, the peloton will travel at speeds up to 40kph and gradually increase the pace to drop weak riders until the sprint finish during which specialised sprinters will reach going on 70kph. It's brutal to say the least. Millar explains his relationship with training and how his opinion of it has changed over the years: "I loved racing when I was fit, I hated getting fit. But I think that's the same for all of us as human beings not just athletes. I started to like racing more than the training which is odd because you like the training and the results, what happened to me was I started preferring the racing and I didn't care about the results."

In anticipation of the Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana - Millar's staple calendar Grand Tours - Millar rode the 2014 Spring Classics; Milan - San Remo, Tour of Flanders and Paris - Roubaix. Boulting points out as he asks about them, that he knows Millar has a love/hate relationship with the Spring Classics - although it's love with a lower case L and hate with an upper case H: "I got it as I got older and I loved it when I was a junior. The reason I got into bike racing was Belgium when John Barclay (who also mentored Ian Stannard and Mark Cavendish) took me there on a trip, and it was while I was there I was just like, 'Oh man, this is bike racing!'.

"I've said it, and even Bradley Wiggins has, Flanders is the ultimate bike race. Paris - Roubaix is such an iconic event, but Flanders for any bike racer is like" - at this point Millar exhales to demonstrate he can't think of a bold enough word to describe it - "Why?" ask Boulting, inquisitively. "It's so...BONKERS!" says Millar with look of wonder on his face and marvel in his voice which brings a chuckle from the audience around me. "There are times even as a pro, and I've been there at the sharp end of the race in 2010 with [Philippe] Gilbert and [Fabian] Cancellara, you just think to yourself, 'I have no idea where I am!'."

Millar had ridden Paris - Roubaix only three times before 2014 but never finished and so made it his mission to at least finish, not matter the cost, in the that year's edition. However after crashing within 15 kilometres from the finish inside the velodrome at Roubaix, Millar's mind set changed completely and then ultimately ended the race in rather embarrassing fashion: "I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna enjoy this now, I'm just gonna ride to the finish and soak this up. I got into the velodrome and there was a bunch of four or five riders but I didn't want to finish with them, I wanted to do it on my own. As I was coming round they'd all stopped, and I thought oh God this has ruined my whole moment. Instead of unclipping and asking them to move, which I didn't do because I have too much self respect, I just peeled off the track and said I'm done. I was like, 'Yes I've finished', but then my wife said, 'No, you haven't finished'. So I put my helmet back on and got back on the bike and rode my lap of shame to the actual finish line."

Even 18 years on from being a junior, Millar states he was still learning about how to ride the cobble stones of Paris - Roubaix even up until 2014: "All you have [to ride the cobble stones] is stronger wheels and wider tyres with lower pressure. For the first time last year I relaxed and everything becomes so Zen. You get on the cobble stones and you relax your fingers. In the past, I'd been holding on so tight that all the vibrations would hurt my fingers and I'd have to stretch all the knuckles. And then the last year, I didn't hold on. I just relaxed and was floating and I suddenly got it...18 years too late. The guys that practice Roubaix, they teach themselves to relax, but I'd never done it."

Some won't know how the Spring Classic differ, as Millar explains: "What sets Flanders and Roubaix apart is Roubaix is a war of attrition whereas Flanders is for that finale moment. San Remo has the best finale moment but each one has a thing that makes it stand out individually."

As the last question, Boulting asks what Millar misses the most and Millar repeatedly comes back to "my friends" - but not in the way you or I would use the word friends. Millar reels off name after name of pros and ex pros with whom he grew close to, but now he's retired, he never sees them anymore: "The weird thing about professional cycling is you make friends", he pauses and brings forward his hands to count, "Matt White, Christian Vande Velde, Dave Zabriskie, Brad McGee, Ryder Hesjedal, George Hincapie, the list just goes on and on, and these are guys I'd've never met in any other walk of life. We had such wonderful life experiences and I miss the comradery. Thing is we never bump into each other and we never will, it's not like we're all old university friends who hook up because we're all weird dudes anyway. We're not on Facebook, we don't hang out. I miss my friends and I miss my team. Don't get me wrong, riding was super hard, but it was superseded by the friendships we made."





Millar and Flecha on the Champs-Elysees in 2013 - his final TdF stage

The evening before stage 21, the final stage, of the 2013 Tour de France, Millar, admittedly in rather an alcohol induced state, proud announced to his team he was going to break away on the iconic Champs-Elysees. As the race began, Millar asked team mate Stuart O'Grady if he wanted to join him in the break. O'Grady refused, with Millar not knowing his best friend was going to confess to doping the very next day and with that, retire. Millar describes the feeling of riding alone at the front of the race down the Champs-Elysees: "I was with Stewie in the neutral zone and I said, 'I'm gonna go in the break, I'm gonna attack on the Champs, do you wanna come?', and he said, 'No, I can't Dave', and I didn't know why. The funny thing is I got to the point to attack and I thought, 'I can do this', and then as I went to attack and thought, 'I can't do this!' - this raises a massive ironic laugh from the audience - 'How the hell am I going to do that?! How am I going to break away on the Champs?!' But once you see the Eiffel Tower you become a racer again and think, 'Oh God, yeah! I'm not tired anymore I'm going to race this!'
"A group of four of us swung onto the Champs-Elysees, [Juan Antonio] Flecha, Cameron Meyer, I can't remember the fourth unfortunately. And I remember feeling stronger than I'd ever done in my entire career as we got onto the Champs. We dropped Cameron and the other guy and it was just me and Flecha. Up until then I was just focused on myself getting into the break to impress my team mates - Millar puts on a voice in mockery of his own idea - that I hadn't taken anything else in. We came round the Arc [de Triomphe] and Flecha was tapping me and said, 'You go'. At that moment I forgot my team mates, I forgot everything else and just enjoyed it. I was flying down the downhill section at about 70kph, slightly flicking the barrier and was just thinking, 'WOW!'. Coming out from the tunnel and back onto the main road was like entering Ben Hur - just a sea of people with flags cheering. It was that moment when I thought, 'This is fucking bike racing!'." Unfortunately, Millar wasn't able to cap his career with a win on the Champs-Elysees as Marcel Kittel won the sprint finish.

As the event draws to a close what becomes evident is how much of a tortured soul Millar sounds, like he had something precious viciously snatched from him. And the truth is he did. His final hurrah on the Champs-Elysees, already planned and after party booked by his sister, was coldly pulled out from under him. But Millar looks back reflectively on what was his final Tour de France with fondness, because he didn't know it was his last and therefore got the chance to actually race, rather than see it as a career coming to an end which would have happened had he been picked for the 2014 Tour.

It's a shame Millar's career ended so bitterly, but in a way it's a relief because he got to enjoy his final Tour de France moment on his own with the people of Paris shouting for him. It may have happened a year earlier than he'd wanted but at least one of Britain's most talented cyclists got it.