‘When I stopped racing I thought, who am I?’: Pippa York on leaving her old life behind

The Tour de France stage winner talks in detail for the first time about transitioning when her cycling career ended, growing up in the Gorbals and alienation in the peloton

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ippa York used to be Robert Millar, a stage winner and king of the mountains in the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia. Millar was also a podium finisher, in both the Vuelta a España and the Giro, a British national champion, and Tour of Britain winner. But Millar had also wanted to be a girl since the age of five, a secret that remained buried throughout childhood in Glasgow, the subsequent racing career, and beyond, into mid-life.

In her new book, The Escape, written in collaboration with David Walsh, the 66-year-old unflinchingly documents the long and painful process towards transition and the isolation, fear and loneliness that went with it.

“There was no LGBTQ community in the Gorbals where I grew up,” she says. “If I saw David Bowie on Top of the Pops, I thought: ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ but he wasn’t a role model. It didn’t make me think I could be whatever I wanted.”