David Millar entered the 2000s as one of cycling’s most gifted time-trial specialists, but the pressure surrounding his Tour de France ambitions eventually drew him into a wider Cofidis doping investigation. On 23 June 2004, while dining with Dave Brailsford near Biarritz, Millar was detained by three plainclothes Paris drug-squad officers. Police searched his home for roughly two and a half hours and found empty Eprex phials—Eprex being a brand of erythropoietin, or EPO, used to increase red-blood-cell production—as well as two used syringes. Millar initially claimed that the items had been given to him as souvenirs after the 2003 Vuelta a España and denied allegations made by teammate Philippe Gaumont, who had told investigators that he supplied Millar with drugs and syringes. Millar also rejected claims that riders on the team used combinations of Stilnox and ephedrine, calling Gaumont’s account “absolute crap.”
After four months of police phone taps and questioning, Millar confessed on 24 June 2004 to using EPO in 2001 and 2003. He later attributed the decision to intense psychological pressure, including his defeat by Jan Ullrich at the 2001 world time-trial championships and the crushing disappointment of losing the 2003 Tour de France prologue after his chain dropped off shortly before the finish. Under cycling’s rules, his confession was treated as equivalent to a positive test. British Cycling imposed a two-year suspension in August 2004; he was stripped of the 2003 world time-trial title, disqualified from the 2003 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and the 2001 Vuelta a España, and fined CHF2,000. The Court of Arbitration for Sport refused to shorten the ban but backdated it to the day of his confession. Cofidis dismissed Millar and temporarily withdrew from racing while investigating the allegations; several riders and staff members were fired, while team director Alain Bondue and doctor Menuet departed. In a 2006 French criminal trial involving Millar and nine other defendants, prosecutors were unable to establish clearly that he had taken the drugs in France, so the charges against him could not proceed. Millar lost his job, income, and home, later describing a period of heavy drinking, but returned to racing in 2006 and became a prominent anti-doping campaigner and advocate of cleaner team structures.
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