Rehabilitated Millar ready for Le Tour, but Olympics can wait

In fact, the 31-year old Scot sounds almost smug in his contentment as he looks forward first to tomorrow's British road race championship in Yorkshire, where he will defend his national title, and then to the Tour de France, which begins in Brest next Saturday, with Millar dreaming of winning a stage, perhaps enjoying a spell in the yellow jersey, but otherwise just pleased to be there, in the thick of things.

Dwain Chambers must look at him and think: "Hang on a second."

As rehabilitations go, Millar's has been spectacular. On Tuesday evening he appeared on prime-time American television, when HBO's Real Sports programme turned its gaze to cycling and, inevitably, doping. Millar was presenter Bryant Gumbel's main interviewee, and he talked honestly, engagingly – at times almost poetically – about how chaotic his life had been before he used EPO, and how his use of the blood booster precipitated a decline into further chaos. That TV appearance followed feature interviews in the New York Times and Washington Post.

He puts the Stateside interest down simply to him being "the talisman for an American team", though, equally, you can see why the American public might warm to Millar, whose eloquence and turn of phrase marks him out as someone a little bit different – and with a story worth hearing.

Back to the contrasting case of Chambers, though. The sprinter, who, like Millar, served a two-year ban and returned to his sport, is, in stark contrast to the cyclist, a pariah. It is true that Chambers, again in contrast to Millar, has done himself few favours, opting to reveal the full extent of his doping regimen in dribs and drabs, and when it has suited him to do so, whereas Millar, on being caught, purged himself with what he insisted then, and still insists now, was a full and frank disclosure. But it still seems a little odd that, while Millar has managed to reinvent himself as an ambassador for drug-free sport, and sits on the World Anti-Doping Agency's athletes' commission, Chambers is persona non grata.

Millar admits he has been watching Chambers with interest. Specifically, he is watching to see whether he appeals against the British Olympic Association's lifetime Olympic ban for drugs offenders. "I keep an eye on it," says Millar, "and if he does challenge the ban, and overturns it, then yes, it opens the door for me.

"But," he adds, with a sigh. "To be honest, the BOA ban was something I wanted to challenge when I first came back, but it's not a battle I want to fight at the moment. It would cause a lot of trouble and generate a lot of negative headlines for British cycling. They did so much for me when I had my problems that I don't want to do that – they don't deserve it. It's the last thing they need going into the Olympics."

There are lessons for Chambers, and for UK Athletics, in the Millar case. Few doubt that Millar is now clean – though some, inevitably, remain sceptical – but it has taken time and considerable effort on Millar's part, as well as an openness and willingness to listen and learn on the part of the organisations – British Cycling, UK Sport and WADA – who have accepted him back. While Millar planned a strategy for rehabilitation during his suspension, Chambers only initiated a tell-all meeting with UK Sport in May – four years after being caught.

Then again, there does seem something almost Lazarus-like about Millar. Even when things go wrong, they go kind of right. In last month's Giro d'Italia, for example, Millar found himself in a five-man break that formed near the beginning of the fifth stage. Nearing the finish, with the five still away, it became clear that one of them would win the stage. If it came to a sprint then Millar fancied his chances. The others, he knew, would have to attack him. So he watched them, and marked them when they launched their attacks.

All was going to plan until, with a kilometre to the finish, disaster. As he began to sprint, his chain snapped. He crashed down on the crossbar – as the song goes – and the pain was enough to make him, in one impressively fluid movement, pick up his bike and lob it over the advertising boards lining the road. It was a stunt – available to view on YouTube, under the heading 'How to get rid of your bike' – that inevitably stole all the publicity from the rider who eventually won the stage.

Not that there was anything calculated about it, says Millar. "It was just pure anger," he explains. "At that stage of the race you're physically so depleted that to get yourself 'up' for winning you have to go into an almost primal state. You have to feel rage. I was literally preparing for a final charge to win the stage; I was about to unleash all that energy and then the chain snaps. I don't even remember much about chucking the bike; it was instantaneous. But it flew quite a distance. I don't think I could throw my bike that far now, if I was just walking down the street.

"It actually helped me get over it," he continues. "As soon as I'd done it I felt better. It was frustrating but I came to terms with it pretty quickly."

Since the Giro, Millar has been preparing for the Tour. "I've been at altitude the last few weeks," he says. "We went straight to St Moritz after the Giro for ten days of recuperation, and then to La Molina, a ski resort in the Pyrenees, for the final bit of training.

"It's been good, non-stressful; everything's going really well. I came out the Giro in a good mental state and 3kg lighter. I can't wait for the Tour. The first week is pretty important – I like the look of the (stage four] time trial. Then after that I'll be winging it…"

There has been good news for Millar, and the sport of cycling in general, in the past few weeks, with the Scot's team, Slipstream, of which he is part-owner, attracting a new title sponsor. Garmin, the global leader in satellite navigation, has agreed to back the team – to be known as Team Garmin-Chipotle – for three years. It follows Saxo Bank agreeing to take over the world's top team, CSC, and Columbia sportswear signing up to bankroll the squad formerly backed by T-Mobile.

It is no coincidence, says Millar, that these three teams all have rigorous anti-doping programmes, which, in the case of Millar's outfit, "costs a significant chunk of our budget – about $500,000 a year – but worth every penny.

"There is a cultural shift," he continues, "and we need that to ensure cycling has a future." But after two scandal-hit Tours, he isn't confident this year's will be controversy-free.

"No, I'm not optimistic. There's been so much crap the last ten years, and there are enough of the older generation still in the peloton, that you never know what might be dug up. That's my biggest concern. It is a worry and it should worry us all. You'd be nave and irresponsible not to be concerned. Our commitment to anti-doping was an integral part of Garmin's decision to sponsor us, and that's the future. No big corporation is going to back a team if that team isn't committed to clean sport."

Overall, though, Millar is optimistic. "I said last year it would be ten years before we could believe in the Tour de France again," he says. "Now I'm more optimistic. I'd put it at five years. Things are changing fast, the culture is changing, but some people take longer to change than others."

The ultimate rehabilitation for Millar could be to lead a British professional team, a prospect that moved closer to reality on Thursday when Dave Brailsford, the British performance director, hinted that he was close to securing 24 million over four years to run a Tour de France squad from 2010, with a "medium term" ambition of "winning the Tour with a clean British rider".

Brailsford said he'd have no qualms about Millar being involved. "We've got an open mind," Brailsford told the BBC. "A guy of Dave Millar's stature and performances – what a fantastic guy he'd be to have on the team. He's doing a great job, and has become a great ambassador, and although I think he's tied in with (Garmin-Chipotle], yeah, why not?"

As a part-owner of his current team, it might be far-fetched. But Millar wishes the project every success. "If anyone can do it, Dave Brailsford can," he said. "He could run an excellent team that would fit very well with the way professional cycling is going. I'm certainly willing to help in any way I can."