How David Millar’s farewell film became a rage against the fading light | Richard Williams


Time Trial was supposed to document the rider’s last Tour de France but instead became a more compelling study of the waning of an elite sportsman’s powers

“And then everything just turned to shit,” David Millar said the other evening, after watching the first half of a documentary film called Time Trial, which records his final season as a professional bike racer in 2014. He was talking about the turning point of a year in which carefully laid plans to close his career with an extended lap of honour completely fell apart.

Time Trial records his despair at the discovery that, at 37, the first British rider to wear the leader’s jersey in all three grand tours – France, Italy and Spain – no longer had what it takes to compete at the highest level. “Why am I so weak,” he asks himself in a sequence capturing one among many moments of despair, “and why are the other guys so strong?”

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