EXCLUSIVE: Once disgraced Millar will bow out as a symbol of cycling's reformation



David Millar will star in a sold-out event at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the Mall in London on Monday evening, an idea that is simultaneously improbable and appropriate.

Certainly, it would have been unimaginable in 1996, when the 19-year-old Millar headed from the cycling backwater of Great Britain to the promised land of France with only his dreams and a meagre grant to sustain him.

Back then, Millar was choosing the possibility of a career as a professional cyclist over the safer option of art college. And so it seems fitting that one of London’s top arts venues will host an evening in which he will reflect on life in the peloton, discuss a potential film starring him, and look ahead to his final season.

Golden oldie: David Millar, at 37, will retire at the end of 2014 after an 18-year career

Millar will be 37 in January. And he has decided that 2014 will bring the curtain down on his 18-year career, recognising that he has carried on longer than he might have done had he not had an enforced two-year break from 2004-06.

It is this, his doping ban, which has defined Millar the cyclist, but in a surprising way. In the eyes of many, cycling’s original ‘reformed doper’ will bow out of the sport as a force for good rather than a source of contamination.

First, however, there is one more season to race, one that Millar hopes will climax in Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games, where he will ride the road race and defend his gold medal in the time trial.

He talks of 2014 as though it is his first: ‘I’d like to be good in the spring Classics, to race them well. Then I’ll have a break and do the Dauphiné [a traditional Tour tune-up], then the Tour de France.

‘The Tour will be 100 percent because it’ll be my last one and that’s the event that’s really shaped everything for me. Then the Commonwealth Games, which are a very big objective, as well.

‘That’s what next year’s really about -- June, July, August. That’s the big peak. Then I want to do the Vuelta [Tour of Spain] and the world championships.’

British revolution: Millar alongside 2012 Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins

Talk about going out with a bang. ‘Oh, absolutely,’ laughs Millar. His enthusiasm is sky high, he adds, but only because he’s doing everything, including training in December, for the last time.

It does not mean he is having second thoughts about retirement. ‘Oh, hell no,’ he says. ‘I’m really enjoying it at the moment but I think if I was going for longer, I wouldn’t be enjoying it so much. I don’t think there’s any chances of me thinking: “This is amazing, maybe I should carry on”. I think the reason I’m enjoying it so much right now is because it’s the last year.’

Yet even Millar is surprised at how well his pre-season training is going after an unconventional off-season. In fact, he didn’t have an off-season — ‘It was straight from the world championships to filming.’

He has spent much of the past two months working on the new Lance Armstrong movie, based on David Walsh’s book, Seven Deadly Sins, and directed by Stephen Frears (of Dangerous Liaisons, My Beautiful Laundrette and The Queen fame), with Ben Foster as Armstrong in a cast that also includes Dustin Hoffman.

Millar is a consultant to the film, which has meant being on sets ranging from the Alps to Richmond Park, offering advice on the action sequences and other technical details.

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‘It’s been an amazing experience,’ says Millar. ‘Being on set, you see it’s a real hierarchical system. It’s like the military. But it was busy and long days, from 6.30 in the morning until seven at night. We had to do the cycling stuff in about two weeks, and it was to the wire, using every bit of daylight. But I think they pulled it off.

‘I think it’s going to be good,’ he adds of a film whose release date is so far unconfirmed. ‘I think one of the nice things, maybe, about it being a Stephen Frears film is that it’s about the human condition more than anything, so it’ll be a very balanced story.’

Sympathetic towards Armstrong? ‘Not sympathetic, no,’ says Millar. ‘Maybe empathetic towards the state of cycling. I don’t think you’ll end up feeling sympathy for Armstrong.’

Millar and Armstrong were once close, with Armstrong asking Millar to join his team in 2001. Armstrong also took an interest in Millar during his ban, at one point phoning his sister, Fran, telling her he was worried for him. It came after he had witnessed Millar having a drunken meltdown in a restaurant in Monaco.

They grew apart — or in opposing directions — when Millar returned to the sport determined to try and play an active part in ending the doping culture. When he confronted Armstrong at a party in Paris at the end of the 2007 Tour and told the Texan he had squandered his opportunity to change the sport, the pair ended up in a stand-up row.

Old times: Armstrong and Millar were close friends when this picture was taken in 2002

If Armstrong is now the symbol of all that is bad about the sport, Millar is the poster boy for reform. He is certainly the only Tour de France stage winner ever to introduce himself, in his post-stage interviews, as ‘an ex-doper,’ as he did after winning in Annonay in 2012.

That, he says, was simply putting his victory in its proper context. ‘Whenever I do well, I try to talk about my past. I don’t want to forget about it or pretend it didn’t happen. But equally I want to prove that it’s possible to ride and win clean.’

Coming back to the sport after his ban allowed Millar to reconnect with it emotionally, which he could only do by ceasing to be the cynical doper he had become in the early 2000s.

Now he is stopping not because he has fallen out of love with cycling again, but simply because he feels it is time. His wife, Nicole, gave birth to their second son, Harvey, in May, the day before Millar left for the Giro d’Italia. Archibald, his brother, is two, and Millar wants to spend more time with them at their home in Girona.

On Friday morning, Millar was inspecting their new property, which is being refurbished, and the neighbouring farmland he has also acquired — which suggests the much-travelled Scot is settled in Spain.

But beyond staying in Girona, he isn’t sure what he will do. ‘I want to stay in cycling for sure. But I need to get out of the professional racing circuit for a bit. For my own sanity, I need to step away and just be at home.

Caught: David Millar was banned for two years from 2004 to 2006 because of doping

‘I’m still a part owner of my team [Garmin-Sharp] and I think I’ll always have that involvement; I have such an emotional investment in that team. But I’d like to help young riders, perhaps in some kind of mentoring or coaching role.

‘Having a second child was definitely a contributing factor in deciding to retire now,’ Millar continues. ‘I didn’t like being away. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of being on the road all the time, but I’ve been living like that since I was 18.

‘It was a sudden realisation when Harvey was born: I need to stop. I want to be at home. And I need to have social groups here, where I live.’

After inspecting his new house, Millar was going to meet the Scottish Commonwealth Games squad, who arrived in Girona on Thursday evening for an eight-day training camp. Among the group is an 18-year-old, Tao Geoghegan Hart, who grew up in London but qualifies for Scotland through his family.

A rider of immense promise, Geoghegan Hart, who recently moved to Girona to pursue his dream of turning professional, has already impressed Millar, who says of him: ‘He’s curious, he has dynamic intelligence, and he has the mentality to be a good bike racer.’

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Millar doesn’t say it, but it could be that Geoghegan Hart reminds him of a young rider who also left home for Europe as a teenager — himself. If he advises him, he will tell him to make sure he makes the most of his talent — and doesn’t make the mistakes he did.

In the meantime, Millar’s visit to London tomorrow, and his appearance at the ICA, is to help attract investment for another film, this one being made by award-winning Scottish film maker Finlay Pretsell of the Scottish Documentary Institute. Following Millar in his final season, it promises ‘an immersive film that captures the very essence of cycling’ — think Douglas Gordon’s Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, but on bikes.

Millar is excited about the film, which could provide a nice memento of his career for his two children, and there is something child-like about his enthusiasm for his final season: ‘I can appreciate everything about it.