'When I stopped racing I thought: who am I?'

Tour de France stage winner Pippa York talks about transitioning, the Gorbals, and alienation in the peloton

- Jeremy Whittle

Pippa 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 Espa a 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."

The book - part Tour de France travelogue, part memoir - is about "escaping working in a factory, escaping the real world, and escaping being born male". Cycling offered that escape and York went from "messing about on bikes" to serious road cycling in mid-teens. "I liked the freedom, the speed, the danger, the going fast."

She says that she had felt "different" from the age of five and with that feeling came shame and isolation. "You realise the others are going to beat you up. Then there's the fear of being outed and the shame of not fully fitting into the group that you're meant to be part of. Now, they have Pride marches, but I felt very little pride."

This was the early 1970s.

She says that if she could have stalled her physical development, she would have been "that young person, with no qualms, none at all".

"If you look at puberty blockers, that's going to start around 12. Young girls are given the pill, so are we going to say that's not OK? The decisions being made now over puberty blockers are purely political."