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, but Millar demonstrated his confidence by attacking as early as the second of thirteen laps. Jamie McGahan followed him, as did four others, and this six-man group stayed clear for thirty miles. When it was caught, Millar remained vigilant, and near the head of the race, refusing to panic when one rider built a lead in excess of two minutes. With twenty-eight miles to go, when most of the riders were no longer capable of making sudden bursts, Millar made his move. He was joined by Steve Lawrence, and the pair pursued the lone escapee, who was caught and dropped, leaving the defending champion and the young Scot to contest the title. The sprint, at the conclusion to a race described as ‘pulsating’, proved a formality: Millar ‘soared up the finishing hill well clear of Lawrence’. It wasn’t so much a sprint as a test of who could still, after almost five hours in the saddle, squeeze any remaining energy and strength from their legs. Lawrence, as he admitted afterwards, had nothing left, and he was full of admiration for his young rival.
The victory that Millar had forecast six months earlier led to conjecture that he was the youngest ever national road race champion. The records were inconclusive, but it was a record day for the Scots. Behind Millar, Sandy Gilchrist was fourth and Jamie McGahan fifth. ‘From novice to national champion in four years’ began the first ever profile of Millar in Cycling. Billy Bilsland’s opinion had been sought for the article. ‘He’s got tremendous determination and a really single-minded approach to his racing,’ said the recently retired professional. ‘He’s ambitious and knows exactly where he’s going.’ Yet Bilsland played down his part in the 19-year-old’s progress. ‘I give him advice, that’s all. The only person who deserves any credit for his success is himself.’
For his part, Millar explained that the Milk Race had given him the form that carried him to second in the Manx International and first in the national championship. ‘I found the first few days very hard. But then I started to find my feet and just seemed to get stronger every day.’ Of his win over Lawrence, he said, ‘I knew Steve was very tired, he’d worked hard early on, but I was feeling very good and I thought I’d stand a much better chance in an uphill sprint.’ His sudden improvement, he said, could be attributed to racing regularly in England. ‘We have to travel if we want competition. In Scotland you’re only racing against four or five riders of your own ability. In England there are fourteen or fifteen, and it makes it that much harder.’
Overseas travel followed. As a reward for finishing the Milk Race, Millar and McGahan were sent on their first international racing excursion, to represent Scotland in the Star Race in Roskild, Denmark. Millar excelled once again to place fourth, but it is not the result that McGahan, who was twenty-second, recalls most clearly. ‘It was a strange race – a Mickey Mouse event really. But what I remember most is Robert being gregarious, which was very unusual. After the race we went on these helter-skelters, big dippers … and Robert let fly. It was really out of character. He was roaring and laughing. I suppose we were let off the leash a little bit in Denmark. But I never saw him like that before or after.’
A much more significant international event, not involving Millar, occurred just a fortnight later, at the Tour de France. In what was one of the most newsworthy of the numerous drugs scandals to afflict the sport of cycling, the Tour leader, Michel Pollentier, was caught trying to cheat doping control following one of the mountain stages. The Union Cycliste International (UCI) and the French Ministry of Youth and Sport seized ‘apparatus consisting of a bulb and tube, which was operated from the armpit through the shorts …’ Pollentier had strolled into the doping control caravan with several capsules of old (‘clean’) urine concealed under each armpit. A plastic tube led from each bulb and was wrapped around his body before finally running through the groove between his bum cheeks
