Tour de France: Redemption ride as Millar tries to make clean break with the past

Seven years ago the grotesque and grotty space-age-style giant domes and turrets of France's Futuroscope theme park near Poitiers were witnesses to a key moment in British sport. Against the backdrop of what looked like a bad film set for the French version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Scot David Millar hurtled into the upper echelons of the pro scene with a victory in the Tour de France's opening time trial. He was 23.

In one way the space-age scenery did seem appropriate, because at that point the sky seemed to be the limit for Millar. Young, talented and as able to talk the talk as he was to walk the walk, Millar (below), in his first Tour de France, beat no less a figure than the defending champion, Lance Armstrong, in the prologue. The Boy Dave, as he was then nicknamed, had just gone galactic.

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Fast forward to this July, after a two-year ban for doping, and the Scot remains Britain's reference point in cycling's showpiece events such as the Tour. No other current British rider has even one stage win, let alone Millar's three, in the event. No other British rider in action knows what it feels like to wear the coveted leader's yellow jersey.

It is appropriate, then, that when the Tour visits London for the first time in its history next Saturday, Millar, at 30 Britain's elder statesman of stage racing, will be one of the firm favourites for the opening prologue. But it would be a big mistake to think that, seven years on from his first Tour stage win, all that has changed for Millar is the prologue's setting - from the surrealist oddity of Futuroscope to the ancient splendour of central London's biggest monuments, Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.

Of the six British riders due to be starting the race this Saturday, Millar is alone in having had direct experience of cycling's dark side as well: an arrest and 48 hours in a French police cell as the gendarmes investigated drug use in his former team, Cofidis, followed by the humiliation of a ban for doping and the ruining of his reputation.

But it is to Millar's huge credit that he learnt how to crawl out from underneath the wreckage of a career and start again. Rather than blame the world, Millar has always taken full responsibility for the time he took drugs, and is using that experience and knowledge of cycling's murky underbelly to underpin his crusade against doping.

As for London, Millar is determined, so he says, to make such an emblematic victory as this Saturday's would be into one of the high points of his career. "I've been training specifically for the prologue, which I've never done before," he says. "Really, you have no choice. Because the Tour in London doesn't give it added importance, but it does have hugely added value.

"I've eradicated all long rides, [and done] no endurance, no mountain work in order to be 100 per cent focused on the prologue. It's strange for me, but that's how I've done it, and by this point it's just a question of doing the fine tuning."

However, Millar is not looking at the prologue as his only race objective. He is also arguing that he can "do something" in the 20 other stages, too. Winning overall is out of the question - Millar knows his limits now - but there are other possibilities.

"I proved then [in the 2000 Tour], and I've proved several times in the past, that I don't let it go to my head. As soon as we're out of England then another race begins. And I'll be looking to win stages."

It is a policy that paid dividends back in 2003, when he lost the Tour prologue in Paris by a hair's breadth when his chain came off with just metres to go, but then won a stage, in Béziers.

But first comes the prologue. Millar has been round the London circuit, but so far only once. "I just rode around it with my sister [Fran]. I'm not too concerned about not knowing it, because it's very easy to get caught up in the prologue too early on. In Paris, when I rode my fastest prologue, I didn't even see the circuit until the day of the race."

As the winner of a time trial in the Spanish equivalent of the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, last year, followed by the Paris-Nice prologue this spring, such a charismatic rider as Millar bidding for success on English soil would normally have been the main focus of media attention.

But he has been overshadowed by the Londoner Bradley Wiggins, another potential winner on Saturday, whose career has been radically different to the Scot's: that of a former track specialist and multiple Olympic medallist who has never had even the remotest of brushes with the sport's anti-doping laws.

Wiggins' recent victory in the prologue of a crucial warm-up race for the Tour, the Dauphiné Libéré, plus the fact that he grew up in Maida Vale, have been largely responsible, but Millar does not seem too bothered. "In a way it's good for me, because Bradley has kindly taken away a huge amount of media respon-sibility," he argues. "It makes my life a hell of a lot easier."

As for the 8km opening route itself, Millar describes it as "a definitive grand-occasion prologue, in terms of the course. Broad boulevards, great surroundings, no dangerous corners - for me it's the way it always should be, rather than zigzagging us round crappy little roads."

One thing has not changed since 2000; now, as then, Millar will go into a "bubble", as he calls it, in the final days building up to the race. There is one official press conference, but other than that his mobile will stay firmly disconnected and he will be as incommunicado as possible.

"It's the only way to get through it," Millar says. "You either have to give everybody a slice of the cake, or nobody. It's just hectic, so crazy. This year even more so." Perhaps as a way of ensuring the pressure is limited, Millar refuses to describe the London prologue as the most important race of his life.

"It's going to be the weirdest of my life, that's for sure - the Tour de France in London. It's not something I ever imagined doing when I got into cycling. I wouldn't call it the most beautiful race of my career, but it's going to be a very special day."

He also claims that, given the fact that parts of his career were so murky, for a sport so troubled by banned drugs a win for a reformed anti-doping crusader like Millar in London would be "very important". "I think it would be good for the Tour as well, not just for me. If Wiggins won, not me, it would be great for British cycling, but I don't think it would have the same impact on a world stage.

"I think that I'm very representative of cycling in general, the fact that I've made mistakes and am trying to redeem myself. Cycling can do that as well. It's a beautiful sport, but it's been fucked up. Everybody's made mistakes, but we can turn it round still. I turned my career around completely and the sport, like me, can make it back."

Next Saturday will be the confirmation that Millar has truly done so. Cycling, regrettably, may take quite a bit longer fully to follow the same path.

Further reading: Alasdair Fotheringham writes for 'Cycling Weekly'