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Commonwealth Games 2010: David Millar shows there is a way back for drug cheats

It has been a morbid and shocking month or so for those who despair of drugs in sport. Tour de France winner Alberto Contador is firmly in the dock – although he vehemently protests his innocence – while four other Spanish riders have been suspended.

David Millar - Commonwealth Games 2010 David Millar shows there is a way back for drug cheats
Role model: David Millar has transformed his life and has become a strong role model in troubled times following his ban for using EPO Credit: Photo: GETTY IMAGES

British hurdler Callum Priestley received a two-year ban for using clenbuterol – the drug found in Contador’s urine sample – while former Great Britain rugby league player Terry Newton was found hanged at his home after being banned for two years for using human growth hormone. And on Tuesday Commonwealth Games 100 metres champion Osayomi Oludamola was stripped of her gold medal after testing positive for the banned substance methylhexaneamine.

Noxious substances are seemingly everywhere – clenbuterol, erythropoietin (EPO), testosterone, methylhexaneamine, nandrolone, human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), stanozolol and God knows what else – and few countries and sports are immune.

But there is one good news “drug” story out there. In the last fortnight Scotland’s David Millar won a magnificent silver medal in the world time-trial in Geelong, took a surprise bronze medal in a cracking men’s road race in New Delhi on Sunday and now the 33 year-old has won gold in the Commonwealth Games time trial.

And all this at the end of a season in which he has ridden all three grand tours - the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España. There is no more respected or popular member of the peloton than Millar, yet six years ago he was slowly drinking himself into an early grave and waking up on friends’ floors as he tried to obliterate his drug shame, which basically amounted to a couple of moments of weakness. EPO was his poison.

Millar has come through the other side – and how. The Scot coped firstly by immediately admitting his guilt and taking his ban on the chin. Highly articulate, he spent hours being debriefed by British Cycling and International Cycling Union (UCI) doping officials as to what led him to stray and the practicalities of obtaining said drugs.

Better still, without prompting, he started volunteering for British Cycling workshops with young riders and similar projects with UK Sport, where he pinpointed all the early warning signs of a young “athlete” beginning to feel the possible need to try performance-enhancing drugs.

And better still, after an initially frosty reception back into the peloton in 2006, because some felt his open admission in some way implicated them, he started to win around the new generation who are much more inclined to ride clean. He became their champion and for the last couple of years Millar has been sitting as a respected member of the World Anti-Doping Agency athletes committee.

By any criteria Millar has transformed his life and has become a strong role model in troubled times. Still Britain remains one of the few countries in the world whose Olympic Association will not countenance a once-banned athlete competing in the Games.

Millar is too laid back to aggressively challenge the dubious legality of such a decision but his supporters point to precedent: 400m runner Christine Ohuruogu was banned for a year for her drug offence – missing three tests – yet the British Olympic Association (BOA) allowed her to compete in Beijing.

Scotland’s Commonwealth Games Federation is to be congratulated for offering Millar, amid some criticism, the chance to compete and he was touchingly grateful afterwards.

Very little compares with representing your country. In recent years, and particularly in recent weeks, he has banged out a loud message for those riding clean and you do wonder if the BOA should not have a rethink on this issue and make him eligible for 2012. Millar’s tale is worthy of a wider audience.