David Millar

Early life and education

David Millar is the son of Gordon and Avril Millar, both Scots. He has a sister, Fran. His father was a pilot in the Royal Air Force and Millar was born in Mtarfa, Malta, while his father was based there for a three-year tour of duty. His mother worked as a teacher. His sister Frances also works in cycling, currently as the head of business operations for Team Sky. The family returned to the UK, and lived at RAF Kinloss in Scotland before moving to Aylesbury, 60 km north-west of London. His father and mother divorced when Millar was 11 and his father moved to Hong Kong, when he joined the airline Cathay Pacific, which is based there. Millar considers Hong Kong as his home. Millar moved to Hong Kong to join his father when he was 13. He rode in BMX bike races in Hong Kong "and did pretty well." He bought a road bike in 1992 and raced at 6.30 in the morning before the roads began filling with traffic.

At King George V School he chose mathematics, economics and geography as his A-level, pre-university, examination subjects, then switched to art, graphics and sports studies at his father's suggestion. He completed his A-levels and, having moved back to England to be with his mother in Maidenhead, enrolled at an arts college. He started cycling with a club in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. His mother, Avril, took him there so that he would make new friends and have something to do. At age 18, a week before he was due to start at the arts college, he went to race in France. He joined a club at St-Quentin, in the Picardy region, and won eight races. Five professional teams offered him a contract. He signed with Cyrille Guimard because his team, Cofidis, was based in the area and he knew of Guimard's skill in recognising young talent.

2000–2003: Early years

In his first professional season, Millar won the prologue of the Tour de l'Avenir and the competition for the best young rider in the Mi-Août Breton. He profited from his background in 10-mile time-trials in Britain to win the first stage of the 2000 Tour de France, a 16 km time-trial at Futuroscope. He held the yellow jersey for a few days. He failed to repeat his feat at Dunkirk in 2001 after puncturing in a bend and crashing. He finished fifth in the prologue in 2002 on a rolling course at Luxembourg. His attempt to win the prologue in central Paris in the centenary Tour of 2003 ended when his chain dropped off 500 m before the finish. He lost by 0.14 s to Brad McGee. Millar had ridden a bike without a front derailleur. He blamed his directeur sportif, Alain Bondue. "It wasn't a problem with my chainring; it was a problem with my team," he told journalists at the finish. He said Bondue had tried to save a few grams by removing the derailleur. Bondue said he had told Millar to use a front derailleur after other riders had similar problems. Bondue was demoted to logistics manager.

Hopes of winning the Tour de France were fuelled by his stage win in the 2001 Vuelta a España, when he was in a breakaway with Santiago Botero on a mountain stage. Millar won a gold medal for Malta in the 2001 Games of the Small States of Europe, held in San Marino. Millar was selected for the Scotland team for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, but withdrew to compete for Cofidis instead.

In the Vuelta a España the following year, stage 15 included the notorious ascent of the Alto de l'Angliru in rain. Team cars stalled on the steepest part, some unable to restart because their tires slipped on messages painted by fans. Riders were caught behind them and others had to ride with flat tires because mechanics could not reach them. Millar crashed three times and protested by handing in his race number a metre from the line. The judges ruled he had not finished the stage and he left the race. He regretted his temper—he had been ninth—and later apologised to his team.

2004: Doping

Millar was dining in a restaurant with Dave Brailsford in Bidart, near Biarritz, on 23 June 2004 when he was approached by three plainclothes policemen of the Paris drug squad at 8.25pm. They took Millar's watch, shoelaces, jewellery, keys and phone. After two and a half hours they found empty phials of Eprex, a brand of the blood-boosting drug EPO, and two used syringes. Millar claimed he had been given them as a gift at the Tour of Spain, that he had taken them to Manchester and used them. After that he had kept them as a souvenir. The detectives took Millar to the prison in Biarritz and put him alone in a cell.

The raid followed the arrest at the start of 2004 of Cofidis' soigneur, Bogdan Madejak. Police, looking to find out more about the drugs found on Madejak, turned their attention to another rider on the team, Philippe Gaumont, as he arrived at Orly airport in Paris on 20 January 2004. On 22 January 2004 the magazine, Le Point, published transcripts of police phone taps.

Gaumont said it had happened the day before the Tour finished on the Champs-Élysées in 2003, when Millar won the time-trial. Gaumont said he didn't know what was in the syringe but that "ça m'avait bloqué (that blocked me; i.e. kept me from going well)." Millar denied the claim to the investigating judge and said Menuet was the best person he had ever met and that he was "like a father to me at races." He denied Gaumont's claims that Millar had taken drugs trips by mixing Stilnox, a sleeping powder, with ephedrine, a stimulant. He called Gaumont a lunatic and said he was talking "absolute crap." But his phone calls had been tapped for four months and Millar eventually confessed to police on 24 June 2004.

He admitted using EPO in 2001 and 2003. He blamed it on stress, in particular losing the prologue, the opening time-trial, in the 2003 Tour, and being beaten by Jan Ullrich in the 2001 world time trial championship. Under cycling rules a confession equates to a positive test.

British Cycling suspended him for two years in August 2004. He was disqualified as 2003 world time trial champion, fined CHF2,000 (approx. €1250), and disqualified from the 2003 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and 2001 Vuelta a España. Cofidis fired him and dropped out of racing while it investigated other team members. Several Cofidis riders and assistants were fired. Alain Bondue, the team's director, and Menuet, the doctor, left the team. Vasseur was forbidden to start the 2004 Tour de France but later cleared.

Millar failed in an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to reduce his ban, but the court backdated the suspension to the day he confessed, 24 June 2004.

Millar was investigated in Nanterre in 2006 with nine other defendants, mostly from Cofidis. The court decided it was not clear he had taken drugs in France and that charges could not be pursued. The doctor he had consulted (see below) lived south of Biarritz but across the Pyrenees, in Spain. Millar's statement to the judge, Richard Pallain, told of a man torn apart by the pressure of racing, the expectations placed in him by British fans, and an inability to make close friends. He said he despaired of cycling in 1999 and began going to parties. At one, he fell down stairs and broke a bone. It put him out of cycling for four months and he didn't get back to racing form until the following year. Winning the prologue of the Tour de France made things worse; he had worn the maillot jaune of leadership – his "dream", he said – and when it was all over he was back in his apartment with no friends and just a television for company.

Doping had gained him 25 seconds in the championship, he said. He toasted his championship in the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas. But the suspension cost Millar his job, his income and his house. He was drunk for much of a year. He said he had scraped by with the help of family and friends.

2005–2007: Post-suspension

Millar moved to Hayfield, on the edge of the Peak District of northern England to be close to the Manchester Velodrome where British cycling has its headquarters. He joined a Spanish team, Saunier Duval–Prodir. Its manager, Mauro Gianetti, had contacted him nine months into his suspension.

Millar's suspension ended a week before the 2006 Tour de France and he rode with Saunier Duval–Prodir. He finished 17th in the prologue and 11th on the penultimate, time-trial stage. He finished 59th of 139 finishers, more than 2 hours behind the winner, Óscar Pereiro. In the 2006 Vuelta a España, Millar won in stage 14, a time trial around the city of Cuenca. On 3 October, he won the British 4,000m individual pursuit championship in 4m 22.32s at Manchester.

He left Saunier Duval–Prodir to join an American team, Slipstream–Chipotle run by Jonathan Vaughters, a former rider. Vaughters stressed the team's stance against doping. In the 2007 season, Millar won both the British road and time trial championships and came second in the Eneco Tour, 11 seconds behind Jose Ivan Gutierrez. His other victory of the year came in the Paris-Nice, during which he won the prologue.

2008–2014: Career with Garmin

For the start of the 2008 season, Slipstream became known as Garmin Slipstream, and Millar took on part ownership of the team, in order to foster their anti-doping stance. He helped orchestrate Slipstream–Chipotle's victory in the Giro d'Italia opening team time trial. Millar was part of a five-man winning break on stage five of the 2008 Giro d'Italia when his chain broke in the last kilometre. He flung his bike away. In the 2008 Tour de France, Millar came third in the time trial on stage four, 18 seconds behind the winner. Overall he finished 68th, 1h 59m 39s behind Carlos Sastre. His best results of the season came in the 2008 Tour of California in which he finished second overall.

Millar's 2009 season continued to bring solid performances in time-trials, though was hampered by injury in March 2009. He returned at the Giro d'Italia and put in an impressive performance at the subsequent 2009 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, finishing ninth overall. He competed in both the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, completing a hat-trick of Grand Tour entries for the year. His best performance in a stage was first, achieved in the stage twenty time trial at the Vuelta. The race was Millar's first win for two years, and his fifth at the Vuelta.

2010 saw Millar continue his strong time-trial form, with stage wins at the Critérium International and the Three Days of De Panne. De Panne also saw Millar gain his first multi-stage race victory since the 2001 Circuit de la Sarthe. Millar had a number of high placings in major time trials earlier in the season – he finished third in the prologue of the 2010 Tour de France and second in stage three of the Critérium du Dauphiné. Unfortunately, an injury in the Tour de France hampered the rest of his season, though he nonetheless repeated his achievement of finishing all three grand tours. Millar then matched his best clean placing at the Men's World Time-Trial Championships, finishing second behind Fabian Cancellara. Shortly after, at the Commonwealth Games, he won a gold medal in the time trial and a bronze in the road race.

2011 saw Millar suffer from illness early in the season, missing many of the classics. His best performance was a 3rd-place finish in the overall of the Circuit de la Sarthe. He recovered in time for the Giro d'Italia, finishing second on stage 3 to take the maglia rosa. Millar's lead, however, was overshadowed by the death of Wouter Weylandt in the Giro on the same day; in the role of race leader, Millar helped organise the tributes to Weylandt's during the subsequent day's neutralised stage.

He later won the time-trial stage 21 of the Giro, meaning that he became only the third British rider – after Robert Millar and Mark Cavendish – to achieve victories in all three Grand Tours during his career. In June he published his autobiography titled Racing Through the Dark, which Richard Williams in The Guardian wrote was "one of the great first-person accounts of sporting experience". Millar was team captain of the Great Britain team that helped Cavendish win the 2011 UCI World Championships road race.

Millar fractured his collarbone in a crash in the 2012 E3 Harelbeke one-day race in Belgium on 23 March. He returned to competition at the Tour of Bavaria and the Critérium du Dauphiné, where his best result was a 9th place on stage 4. Despite his injuries earlier in the season, Millar was selected to ride his 11th Tour de France. He won stage 12 by escaping with four other riders, arriving five kilometres (3.1 mi) from the finish line in Annonay-Davézieux with more than ten minutes of an advantage over the bunch. He took the win after much cat-and-mouse-play with Jean-Christophe Péraud of Ag2r–La Mondiale. He was the fourth British rider to win a stage in a historic tour, as Bradley Wiggins became the first British rider to win the event. Despite controversy over his history of doping, Millar was selected to race on the British Road Race Team for the London Olympics. He reprised his role of team captain from the 2011 World Championships, again aiming to steer Mark Cavendish to victory. Millar and GB team-mates Bradley Wiggins, Ian Stannard and Chris Froome were forced to set the tempo for the majority of the race, with little help from the other nations, and were eventually unable to reel back a thirty-man breakaway that had gone clear on the final climb of the Box Hill circuit, leaving Cavendish to come in forty seconds behind the winner, Alexander Vinokourov.

Millar was not selected to make the 2014 Tour de France team, a decision that left him 'devastated and shocked'. Millar retired from professional cycling after the 2014 season with his last competitive start being at the Bec CC Hill Climb in October.

In March 2015 Millar revealed he was coaching former teammate Ryder Hesjedal, and that he would represent the professional cyclists' body Cyclistes Professionnels Associes on the UCI's working group to establish an Extreme Weather Protocol to provide clear guidance on procedures in the event of severe weather affecting a race.

Personal life

On 9 September 2011, David Millar's wife, Nicole, gave birth to their son, Archibald Millar, their second son, Harvey Millar, was born on 2 May 2013. Their daughter Maxine Millar was born on 1 January 2016.

Millar's sister, Fran, is Head of Business Operations for the cycling team Team Sky.

Major results

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