If you like watching professional cycling then, to a certain extent, you like watching other people suffer. The British (sorry, proudly Scottish) rider David Millar has always been a gratifying subject in this regard. While some road racers make a point of never letting their mask slip, Millar shows the onlooker exactly how much it hurts – and, if you miss the hints, he tells you explicitly in eloquent, often volatile post-stage interviews. For the past decade or so, the 34-year-old has specialised in two elements of the sport: one, time trials, the so-called "races of truth", which break up major races like the Tour de France and are the most concentrated pain you can inflict on yourself on a bike; and two, suicidal solo breakaways, which are not far behind. Fans have been waiting for his autobiography for a long time.
Racing Through the Dark: The Fall and Rise of David Millar (Orion £18.99) does not disappoint. Millar has not always been celebrated for his candour and honesty. In 2004, police raided a restaurant where he was dining with British Cycling head David Brailsford in Biarritz and he was arrested as a drugs cheat. It was one of the saddest falls from grace in a particularly bleak era for cycling, but what happened next has defined Millar's legacy and made him one of the most influential individuals in cleaning up the sport.
From a peripatetic upbringing in Scotland, Aylesbury and Hong Kong, Millar has always been an idiosyncratic cyclist and something of a loner too. He had a talent for racing and won the prologue of his first Tour de France in 2000 – long before he used performance-enhancers. In fact, he was idealistic about not doping and although he could see signs of its use – the delivery of ice bags day and night to the rooms of team-mates to keep the EPO cool was a clue – he never thought he would be tempted. But in Racing Through the Dark, Millar depicts how his resolve slowly weakened: starting with "legal" récup injections of vitamins and iron, through his increasing dependence on sleeping pills before finally committing to "prepare properly", as the euphemism had it.
Where Millar's narrative differs from so many riders, however, is what happened when he was busted. Almost immediately, he admitted everything; then, and this really is unprecedented, he decided to use his experience as a cautionary tale. He talked openly to the press about the prevalence of doping, he became a mentor to young riders and he even harangued Lance Armstrong at a drinks party for not being hard enough on convicted dopers. After serving a two-year suspension from racing, he came back riding on "bread and water" and scored some of the greatest successes of his career. His tale – bizarrely – has become just about the most inspiring in all of cycling, perhaps any sport.
If you want to find out how cyclists dope, it's here; if you want to discover why they do it, there has never been a more vivid account. But the defining achievement of Racing Through the Dark is that it makes you believe in cycling again and, through his career, Millar shows that maybe all that suffering is worth something after all.
Millar is a recurring character in another new book, Ned Boulting's How I Won the Yellow Jumper (Yellow Jersey £12.99): in fact he even inspired its tongue-in-cheek title. Boulting, a football reporter for ITV, was deployed on roving duties for the 2003 Tour de France. He could probably have picked out Lance Armstrong but knew precious little else, so when Millar narrowly missed out on winning the prologue of the race, Boulting announced breathlessly to a live audience that he was "kissing goodbye to his chance of winning the yellow jumper". Of course, he meant "jersey", a mistake he has never lived down.
Boulting may be little known to the vast majority of television viewers, but among cycling fans he is accorded near-iconic status for his work on ITV4's untouchable coverage of Le Tour. This is the story of eight years on a job that might involve being stranded halfway up a mountain overnight with only crazy Basques for company, hiding out on hotel fire escapes waiting to catch disgraced riders and sporadically being sworn at by Mark Cavendish. A whole chapter is dedicated to toilets; there is a substantial section on laundry. But what Boulting's book lacks in obvious narrative structure it makes up for in funny anecdotes and strange, revealing insights, like Team Sky giving their riders entirely blue packs of M&Ms to match their new kit.
Most of the cyclists in Timm Kölln's wonderful book of portraits, The Peloton (Rouleur £50), look more like coal miners at the end of a shift than professional sportsmen. For six years, Kölln has hung around major races with a white backdrop and photographed riders just before they climb on their bikes or immediately after they clock off, caked in muck and grime after a long day in Flanders or weather-beaten and broken by the Alps. The 96 stark black-and-white images collected here are wonderfully expressive and are supplemented by brief interviews that never outstay their welcome.
The subjects include all of the big names of the last decade, minus Armstrong, but perhaps the most interesting are the lesser-known domestiques, the much-abused support riders finally given equal billing with the superstars of the sport. "You get used to not winning," admits Charlie Wegelius, a British rider who has been a professional since 2000 and never won a race. "Otherwise it's like waiting for Christmas every day, and it never comes."
There is long-term suffering at the heart of another cycling book, One Man and His Bike (Ebury £11.99), written by my colleague Mike Carter. This time, however, it appears to be working at the Observer that is the cause of the existential anguish, and cycling that provides the outlet, as the unstoppable Carter undertakes a 5,000-mile solo journey round the coast of Britain. It is a formidable endeavour – the distance from London to Calcutta – but anyone familiar with his previous odyssey, where he battled a midlife crisis by taking off across Europe on a motorbike, will know what a satisfying travel companion he is, a magnet for surreal happenings and unexpected acts of hospitality. As with Millar, the message is clear: redemption and a new life is just a (very long) bike ride away.
