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| Human Interest | |
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Further Personal Information | |
| Residence | Girona, ESP |
Sport Specific Information | |
| Club / Team | Garmin-Sharp: United States |
General Interest | |
| Hobbies | Reading, listening to music, drinking mojitos, the comedy of Eddie Izzard and the art of Jackson Pollock. (itsmillartime.com, 06 May 2004) |
| Injuries | He broke his collarbone and a bone in his hand in a race in Belgium in March 2012. (telegraph.co.uk, 06 Jun 2012) He broke his collarbone in a fall at the 2009 Paris-Nice stage race. (espn.co.uk, 23 Mar 2012) |
Sport Specific Information | |
| Name of coach | Alan Peiper [sports director] |
Further Personal Information | |
| Occupation | Athlete |
| Languages | English |
General Interest | |
| Other information | DOPING BAN He was banned for two years in 2004 after he admitted to French police that he had used blood-boosting drug EPO in 2001 and 2003. He was stripped of his 2003 world time trial title and missed the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. He returned to cycling at the 2006 Tour de France and since then has been outspoken against the use of doping. "If I saw someone going down the path I went down, I'd try and take him under my wing and tell him not to, as it will rule your life." (BBC, 04 Sep 2006; Saunier Duval-Prodir, 18 Oct 2007; HARDtalk, 26 Sep 2011; slipstreamsports.com, 2012) OLYMPIC REPRIEVE He was initially ineligible for the 2012 Olympic Games in London due to the lifetime Olympic ban handed out by the British Olympic Association [BOA] to anyone found guilty of doping. After a lengthy legal battle between British athlete Dwain Chambers and the BOA, the lifetime ban was ruled to be illegal by the Court for Arbitration for Sport [CAS] which paved the way for Millar, who had decided not to get involved in the legal battle, to be selected for the Olympic team. "For eight years, I'd been through it all - bans, sanctions, being ostracised, legal problems - and the only thing left to hang over me was my lifetime Olympic ban and I didn't realise how much I hated living with it until it was actually lifted. It was like taking off the final handcuff." (dailymail.co.uk, 15 Jun 2012; telegraph.co.uk, 29 Apr 2012) NATIONAL FIRST He was the first rider from Great Britain to have worn all four jerseys from the Tour de France [yellow, green, polka-dot, white]. He was also the first British cyclist to wear the leader’s jerseys in all three Grand Tours, the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana. (olympics.org.uk, 03 Sep 2012) TURNING PRO He turned professional in 1997. (slipstreamsports.com, 06 Sep 2010) |
Sport Specific Information | |
| Why this sport? | "I started learning about the sport, reading about it, and I was just enchanted. It seemed romantic but also tragic – people would be winning but then lose it all, or crash but fight on, break bones but get back on their bikes and try to finish. Just getting to the end was seen as an achievement in itself. It's somehow old-fashioned, gladiatorial." |
General Interest | |
| Ambitions | To compete at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. (cyclingnews.com, 21 Jul 2013) |
Sport Specific Information | |
| When and where did you begin this sport? | He first purchased a bike at age 13 when he moved to Hong Kong with his father. Shortly after he started racing, he purchased a road bike at age 15. |
General Interest | |
| Sporting philosophy / motto | "Work hard and be patient." (heraldscotland.com, 13 Sept 2011) |
Further Personal Information | |
| Family | Wife Nicole, one son and one daughter |