![\"Philippa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/\/7f057524-0430-4207-8920-40c1db27adc5.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWe sit at an outside table at Le Patio restaurant on Rue de la R\u00e9publique in Albertville, a town in southeast France. A typical apr\u00e8s-Tour evening. Earlier that afternoon we\u2019d watched the Tour de France play out on the Col de la Loze. Like many mountain days this one was titanic, with Miguel \u00c1ngel L\u00f3pez of Colombia powering his way to a stage win. Now Pippa and I are having dinner, comparing our impressions of what we\u2019d seen. Idyllic, you might have said. <\/p>\n
Except that things are rarely perfect. This is 2020. Covid is still raging. So much so that the Tour had been moved from its July home to an August-September rental. We came to the race wearing masks, wondering if this annual pilgrimage was a good idea. President Macron took a different view, saying France should get back to the life it had before the virus. What better expression of French normality than the Tour. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re at a table for two. Six or seven metres to our right are another couple. The man strikes up conversation. \u201cYou\u2019re David Walsh,\u201d he says. \u201cI read your book, the one about Lance Armstrong.\u201d Any stranger offering this entr\u00e9e finds an open door and soon this one is telling us his life story. <\/p>\n
His name is Thomas. He\u2019s from Germany. Mid-fifties, I\u2019m guessing. He was once an elite amateur cyclist and says he would have done better if he\u2019d been prepared to dope. After that he coached an under-23 squad. He was now on a bike holiday in the Alps, riding two or three mountain passes each day. <\/p>\n
Thomas speaks English well and is eating with a female companion. Once he gets talking cycling, there is no slowing him. His friend sits quietly, as if she\u2019s been here before and is fine with temporary exclusion. Reasonably interesting at first, Thomas soon makes us wish we\u2019d sat at the other end of the restaurant. His companion winces when he orders a second bottle of wine. <\/p>\n
We listen with diminishing patience. Thomas can\u2019t see beyond Thomas. Doesn\u2019t appreciate that his bike career wasn\u2019t exactly stellar and doesn\u2019t pay any attention to the woman at my table. Pippa was once a great cyclist. Pippa had a career. Pippa rode the Tour de France 11 times and was one of the great climbers. Pippa even won the polka-dot jersey: in 1984, she was King of the Mountains. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
York takes a spin near her home in Dorset last month. Now a journalist, the Glaswegian cyclist competed in the Tour de France 11 times<\/p>\n
GARETH IWAN JONES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE<\/p>\n
During the briefest pause, I mouth a silent question to Pippa. <\/p>\n
\u201cIs it OK to tell him who you are?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
I turn to Thomas. \u201cI\u2019m surprised you don\u2019t recognise Pippa.\u201d <\/p>\n
Confused, he focuses on Pippa for the first time. As he flounders, I bring up Pippa\u2019s Wikipedia page on my iPhone and stretch it towards him. It begins: \u201cPhilippa York (born Robert Millar on 13 September 1958) is a Scottish journalist and former professional road racing cyclist.\u201d Thomas\u2019s expression conveys horror, as if he\u2019s discovered something that is broken and has to be fixed. <\/p>\n
\u2018I am a very different person to Robert\u2019<\/p>\n
Six weeks before our interrupted dinner at Le Patio, I met Pippa York for the first time. We went to a village on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire and for two hours we talked. Before that I\u2019d never had any interaction with a transgender person. Yet I knew her former self. More than 30 years before, I\u2019d covered the Tour de France when Robert Millar was one of the best. <\/p>\n
Back then Millar gave the impression he would rather have root canal treatment than ten minutes with a journalist. He also seemed more interesting than most riders. But in the way that you might leave a difficult crossword puzzle, I gave up on him. Going to see Pippa that day in Hampshire was in part motivated by a desire to know more about Robert Millar. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Philippa York: \u2018I\u2019d never deny Robert Millar existed but I was only 5 per cent happy\u2019<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n So when Pippa, now 66, is witty and charming, I mention that she seems different from the Robert I barely knew. \u201cI am a very different person to Robert Millar. I don\u2019t have to be competitive now. Professional cycling isn\u2019t a world that\u2019s open to friendliness between the people you\u2019re with, even if they\u2019re your team-mates. I was as competitive as anybody of my generation. I had the ambition and ego and selfishness that you need to succeed. But I wasn\u2019t a nice person. I wouldn\u2019t have classed myself as a nice person, because I couldn\u2019t be. The situations I was in didn\u2019t call for niceness.\u201d<\/p>\n We talked about everything. How Robert Millar, the young Glaswegian, knew from his first day at primary school that he wanted to be a girl. How that affected his childhood and everything that followed. Cycling was at once the means to a better life and an attempt to suppress feelings that refused to be suppressed. After making his way as a young pro bike rider in France, he married a French woman, Sylvie Transler, in 1985. Four years later they had a son, Edward. <\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t get married because I thought it wouldn\u2019t work. I thought it\u2019d be OK, this will sort me out. I will have a normal life and I will be a normal person. That works for a while and then eventually it doesn\u2019t because you aren\u2019t what is classed as normal. You have stuff to deal with that most people don\u2019t have to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n Millar displays his cycling jerseys at home in Troyes, northeastern France, 1992<\/p>\n SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n Stuff that would have to wait until Millar left the peloton. After retiring in 1995, aged 36, his life was darkened by depression and an overwhelming sense of failure. It felt as if he didn\u2019t have the courage to be the person he needed to be. The marriage to Sylvie ended and Millar set up home in England. <\/p>\n Without a career, Millar wilted. These were years she remembers as unrelentingly dreadful. Antidepressants seemed only to make things worse. But he\u2019d met a woman, Linda, at a bike race. She was everything he was not: chatty, engaging, fun. Naturally he fell for her. They became a couple and had a daughter, Lydia. This relationship didn\u2019t stop what was churning inside him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was getting worse and worse and worse and I thought, I have to deal with this transition stuff.\u201d In 1999 she sought professional help. In early 2000 the transition began. Linda asked for time to consider the changed circumstances. <\/p>\n On that afternoon in the New Forest I said I could see that transition was something she truly wanted. No, she corrected me, it was what she truly needed. After my interview with Pippa appeared in The Sunday Times a few weeks later, I called her. \u201cWould you be interested in travelling with me on the Tour de France?\u201d She was going to be working as an analyst for Cyclingnews, and said she might be. Without having any real idea what we were letting ourselves in for, we met on August 26, 2020, at Gatwick airport, boarded a flight to Nice, picked up a hire car, got our accreditation badges and that was it, together for almost four weeks. <\/p>\n It went so well that we did the same for the 2021 and 2022 Tours. In all, this amounted to 12 weeks of togetherness. Five or six hours in the car every day, seats alongside each other at the Centre de Presse and every meal eaten together. Since my first Tour in 1983 I\u2019d travelled with a multitude of journalists, predominantly male, and got on well with most of them. <\/p>\n The times with Pippa were the best. <\/p>\n \u2018Dad caught me in my sister\u2019s clothes\u2019<\/p>\n She did the driving. I did the questions. The story she told was desperately sad. I would listen back to the tapes and wince at my intrusiveness. How much do I need to know? She said the questions didn\u2019t bother her. <\/p>\n I had worried about how it would be when she took her place in the press centre and was pleased by the warmth of our colleagues. They ambled over to where we sat and introduced themselves to Pippa. It was their way of saying \u201cwelcome\u201d and there were a few who wrote sympathetic stories about her presence at the race. I joked that she made more time for journalists than Robert Millar ever had. <\/p>\n Handing out flowers at a sponsored event in Sheffield, 2000<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n Towards the end of the first week of our first Tour together, Pippa met Sandra Forgues, who \u2014 as Wilfrid Forgues \u2014 won a gold medal at canoe-slalom at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. \u201cSo how did it go?\u201d I asked when she returned. She said it went great. \u201cSandra talked about not wanting to die as an old man and that resonated. I too never wanted to die as an old man.\u201d<\/p>\n By now I had come to understand enough to know this was absolutely true. In the beginning I had no idea. Why would a man with a female partner and daughter, and a son by a previous relationship, choose at the halfway point in his life to transition? How difficult must that have been? <\/p>\n From her first days at Abbotsford Primary School in Glasgow, she knew she was different. Everything about the girls\u2019 world appealed to her. Not much about the boys\u2019 did. When the girls went to their part of the school yard, she wanted to follow but already sensed that sissies weren\u2019t tolerated. <\/p>\n She coped by creating a secret world, tiptoeing into his sister Elizabeth\u2019s room at their 11th-floor flat in Pollokshaws, south of Glasgow. Elizabeth was a year older and her clothes fitted Robert. Picking the moment carefully, he would sneak into his sister\u2019s room and put on her clothes. Dressed in his sister\u2019s clothes, he felt more comfortable and more secure. He liked that feeling. The difficulty was getting to see the result in the bathroom mirror, which was downstairs. <\/p>\n Once, when alone in the flat, Robert was downstairs, checking his outfit in the mirror. Then the sound of an opening door. His dad unexpectedly arrived home from work. Men in 1970s Glasgow never came home early from work. This day his dad did and there was 13-year-old Robert, dressed as a girl. Tights, skirt, top, make-up, the whole shebang. And Bill Millar in the hallway. For God\u2019s sake. <\/p>\n Neither Dad nor Robert said a word. The bathroom door closed quickly. Bill Millar went upstairs. Robert pressed his back to the door. <\/p>\n He hasn\u2019t seen me. He hasn\u2019t said anything. I\u2019ve got away with it. He began removing everything. De-girling. Clothes gone. Face scrubbed. <\/p>\n And then from upstairs, the shout: \u201cAre you finished in there yet?\u201d<\/p>\n Robert ran upstairs, sat on his bed and waited. It was late when his father finally came to his bedroom. A man wrestling with words and struggling. He could have said: \u201cYou know, I saw you dressed as a girl today, Robert.\u201d He could have said: \u201cWhat the f*** are you playing at, kid?\u201d He could have said: \u201cNo son of mine \u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cKing of the Mountains\u201d at home in Troyes, 1992<\/p>\n SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n Instead, Bill tried to understand. Tried his best to express something soft through the awkwardness of a working-class Glaswegian man in the 1970s. \u201cYou\u2019re going through puberty, adolescence. We all went through it. It\u2019s a natural time. It\u2019s confusing too.\u201d<\/p>\n And his son, the boy who wants to be a girl, isn\u2019t relieved to hear the pastoral tone. He\u2019s crawling under his bedsheets. It\u2019s excruciating. Oh Jesus. Don\u2019t, Dad. Anything but this. Be angry even, but not this. <\/p>\n Bill confirms that he and Mum have had a talk. Oh, no, he\u2019s told my mum. Oh Jesus. What\u2019s she gonna say? Why the f*** would you tell her?<\/p>\n \u201cSo, your mum and I, we don\u2019t want you to worry. You\u2019re a good wee lad. And this is just a thing that you\u2019re going through. As I said, lots of people go through it. Puberty and all that.\u201d <\/p>\n And then: \u201cI went through it. Yes, when I was growing up, I was a bit confused as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert is thinking: \u201cYou\u2019ve dressed as a girl as well? It\u2019s not just me, then? Why didn\u2019t you say that at the start? Maybe it really is just a phase? Maybe I\u2019m not a freak show like they say in the magazines or the papers. My dad was confused as well. It passed for him. Look at him, he doesn\u2019t wear dresses any more. Just look at him. He\u2019s fine now.\u201d<\/p>\n His dad gets up to leave. Bill Millar walks out of his child\u2019s bedroom in Glasgow in the 1970s. Touchy-feely is years away. Man-to-man is all there is, even if one man is a boy whose sole contribution to the conversation has been a mortified grunt. Bill Millar has that face on. The face says, it\u2019s OK, I\u2019ve talked about that. Whatever it was, I\u2019ve talked about it. I\u2019ve dealt with that. I\u2019ve done my bit. I\u2019ve asked you. You\u2019ve listened. I can report back downstairs. Job done. <\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s it, son. Yeah. Now go to sleep.\u201d Bill Millar\u2019s footsteps faded down the stairs. Robert lay there, a curled-up comma of a boy, fretting in his bed. Questions he wanted to ask now raised their hands \u2014 too late. <\/p>\n His mum never, ever mentions the subject. Nobody ever mentions it again.<\/p>\n \u2018I missed Mum\u2019s funeral\u2019<\/p>\n Only once in our hours of conversation on the Tour did Pippa get upset. Her mother, Mary Millar, died on July 30, 1981, of carcinomatosis. She was in her forties. Robert was then a second-year professional, riding for the Peugeot team in France. Though he knew his mum had been unwell, the thought of her dying hadn\u2019t crossed his mind. <\/p>\n Elizabeth called. \u201cMum\u2019s died.\u201d He replied flatly: \u201cOK, I\u2019ll be back for the funeral. Do we know when it will be?\u201d And his sister said: \u201cWell, she died a month ago. We\u2019ve already had all that. You know, the funeral and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n His first thought was: \u201cWhat the f***?\u201d His first words were: \u201cWhat do you mean? Why didn\u2019t you tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d Elizabeth said, \u201cwe didn\u2019t want it to get in the way of what you were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Pippa what her relationship with her mother was like. \u201cI thought it was OK. I was closer to my mum than to my father.\u201d <\/p>\n Did she call her family much? \u201cNo, no. I almost never called them, no. And they\u2019d never call me because it cost a fortune to make international calls.\u201d<\/p>\n Did her single-mindedness give them the wrong impression? \u201cYeah, I think it was that.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked how she remembered her mother. \u201cNow, there\u2019s a hard question. I don\u2019t remember her as the person that became ill\u2026 You\u2019ve just made me cry.\u201d <\/p>\n A long pause. \u201cI don\u2019t really want to answer that.\u201d <\/p>\n King of the Mountains<\/p>\n It was in the Pyrenees that I first stood on a mountain and waited for the Tour de France. Tenth stage of the 1983 race, Pau to Bagn\u00e8res de Luchon, 201km that traversed four mountain passes: the Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde. Intense heat for a stage that would last for 6 hours and 23 minutes. Just brutal. <\/p>\n A week or so before I\u2019d jumped on the back of Tony Kelly\u2019s BMW 1000 motorbike and from Dublin we headed south to Rosslare, took the ferry to Le Havre and then chased down through France to catch up with the Tour. It felt as if we were running away with the circus. <\/p>\n On the Aspin we waited for five hours, killing time with speculation about how things would play out. Rarely in sport is one\u2019s anticipation of action commensurate with one\u2019s experience of it. Tony and I were fans, there to cheer on our compatriots Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche. Kelly had the yellow jersey, Roche the white jersey given to the leading young rider. That day the two Irish riders were crushed, but in tandem with a tough 30-year-old Colombian climber, Jos\u00e9 Patrocinio Jim\u00e9nez, the 24-year-old Robert Millar rode the race of his life. <\/p>\n![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/\/8fca8b7b-0ae3-41b8-827d-9d2de34882fe.jpg\")
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