The Escape

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2025

A Sunday Times Best Book of 2025

A Guardian Best Sports Book 2025

A unique memoir from British cycling’s most fascinating competitor.

In the summer of 2020, sportswriter David Walsh invited Pippa York began a series of journeys following the Tour de France. A nostalgic voyage through the world’s most competitive bike race – for Walsh it was the chance to get to know the Tour’s most enigmatic riders. For York, it was a chance to revisit the race she had ridden eleven times as Robert Millar.

This book is the result – a unique and captivating sporting odyssey. The Escape blends the details of Pippa and David’s journeys with the iconic landmarks of the Tour de France to explore her early years in working-class Glasgow, her entry into competitive cycling, the psychological demands of the sport, and how they shaped her personality. It recounts her career highs and lows, life after racing, and her transition in her 40s.

Touching on doping, gender in sport, and the everyday magic of the Tour, The Escape is an unforgettable travelogue and a candid, one-of-a-kind memoir from one of cycling’s most enigmatic competitors.

Reviews

'The Escape is a book about one of Britain’s greatest cyclists and their hidden struggle — how they tried to run away from their dysphoria but wouldn’t find peace until it was dealt with. It is about one of cycling’s greatest journalists and his love for the race, despite the Armstrong years. It is also about the greatest sporting spectacle on earth, the Tour de France, and there are few better people to explore it with than with York and Walsh, in what is a tremendously engaging read'. – The Times

‘[The Escape] is a freewheeling, fascinating read that defies genre: part travelogue and part memoir, it dances between present and past, sporting observation and self-reflection, drugs that help you cheat and drugs that help you live. And for all the pain and anguish that gets unlocked here, this is a book without a bitter or hateful bone in its body.’ – Jonathan Liew, Guardian’s Best Sports Books of 2025

About the author

Born in Glasgow, Robert Millar was a professional racing cyclist through the 1980s and into the 90s. One of the most successful British riders of all time, they were the first English speaking rider to win a Tour de France classification, taking home the polka dot jersey of the King of the Mountains and achieving fourth place overall in 1984. That remained the highest British placing until 2009. They retired in 1995 and five years later began the process of transitioning to female. She has now lived as Philippa York for over two decades.

David Walsh is chief sportswriter at the Sunday Times and one of the most respected sports journalists working today. His previous books include Inside Team Sky and Seven Deadly Sins – one of the key texts in the takedown of Lance Armstrong.