Millar Faces Ban From Tour

Britain's leading cyclist David Millar faces exclusion from the Tour de France and Olympics after unconfirmed reports that, during his 48-hour questioning by police in Biarritz, he confessed to the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Sources close to the inquiry allege that during a search of Millar's flat before he was taken into custody by Paris drugs police, the gendarmes found two empty syringes of Eprex, the form of the blood-boosting hormone erythropoietin most commonly used by professional riders. Millar is reported to have admitted to police during his detention that he had used the drug.

He emerged late on Thursday in a state of shock after questioning sessions which police sources described as "strenuous". According to eyewitnesses, his flat was "taken apart" after three plainclothes police escorted him from a restaurant at 8pm on Tuesday.

The organisers of the Tour, which starts next Saturday in Liège, said yesterday they would not accept any riders "implicated in a legal process or police drug inquiries".

The Scot and his lawyers were unavailable for comment. "We cannot say anything until he has been to Paris, seen the judge and consulted his lawyers," said his sister Frances, who manages his affairs.

Millar has always maintained he does not use drugs and he has never tested positive. "Drugs are always going to be in sport as long as there's so much money involved," he said in an interview at the start of his professional career. "I've decided I'm not going to enter into that."

Millar was holed up in a Biarritz hotel yesterday but is expected in Paris early next week to meet Judge Richard Pallain, who has led the investigation centred on Millar's professional team, Cofidis, since March 2003.

Pallain will go over Millar's statements to police during his period of detention and decide whether to put him under for- mal investigation under French anti-drug laws.

Millar, the world time-trial champion and three-times stage winner in the Tour de France, was one of the first athletes selected in Britain's Olympic team last autumn. He has been provisionally named for the individual time-trial and 4,000m individual pursuit.

The British Olympic Association and the national governing body, British Cycling, are awaiting further information. "Until the facts are presented to us by British Cycling the athlete remains a member of Team GB," said a BOA spokesman yesterday. Dave Brailsford, British Cycling's world- class performance director, said: "We have no notification from any official French legal source and, unless we have notification and confirmation of what has been written in the press, we cannot take action."

He added: "Once the procedure with the judge and everything else is concluded we will seek to speak with Dave to find out where we go from here."

There is no precedent for an athlete who has admitted taking drugs being excluded from a British Olympic team. However, since the Festina scandal of 1998 the International Cycling Union has treated an admission of drug-taking as a positive test. If the confession is confirmed, Millar may face a two-year ban from the sport.

Unless police say he has no case to answer before the Tour starts Millar will be out, as will be his team-mate Cédric Vasseur, under formal investigation as part of the same police inquiry. The same applies to eight Italian professionals.

Millar has been called to his team's base in northern France to explain the allegations. The Cofidis managing director François Migraine said: "Ten days before the Tour the timing could not be worse."

So far eight people have been placed under formal investigation in the Cofidis inquiry. They include Vasseur, the Cofidis cyclist Médéric Clain and another Cofidis rider, Philippe Gaumont, whose implication of Millar in his testimony to police in the spring is likely to have led to Tuesday's detention and search.

Also under investigation are the team's former masseur Boguslaw Madejak and two former team riders, Robert Sassone and Marek Rutkiewicz.

Elsewhere the French team Saint-Quentin Oktos said yesterday their rider Jean-Michel Tessier, a former Cofidis rider, had given a positive A test for amphetamines.