David Millar - Doping

Doping

Millar was eating in a restaurant 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. Millar said:

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 said 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.

David Walsh, writing in the Sunday Times in Britain, said:

"Gaumont accused Millar of encouraging the team's doctor, Jean-Jacques Menuet, to give both him and another rider, Cedric Vasseur, a doping product. Gaumont said: 'Vasseur and I went to Menuet's room and were injected with a clear liquid. If Menuet agreed to do so, it was because Millar asked him to. He is the leader of the team, and leaders have such power.' Gaumont's statement implicated Millar in the police investigation into Cofidis. It was certain that the police would interview him."

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 also 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.

In 2001 he was in love with an Australian photography student. Shari traveled from Brisbane to France to see him race but he crashed on the first day of the Tour de France. The rest of the race barely improved. Millar said in his statement to police:

Millar said he went to Australia with his fiancée at the end of 2001 and returned not wanting to ride a bike. Their relationship ended. He consulted Jesus Losa, the doctor of the Euskaltel team in Spain, and had more sessions of EPO in May and August 2003.

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 said:

He was drunk for much of a year. He said he scraped by with the help of family and friends.