Interview: David Millar

On Saturday David Millar will climb up the Tour de France start ramp in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and sit there under the canopy waiting for the timekeeper's call. For the couple of minutes before the countdown he will be alone with the knowledge that the next few minutes could make or break his entire season, dictate which team he races with next year, with what status and for what salary.

For the third year in succession Millar will be the favourite to win the Tour's prologue time-trial, the brief lung-bursting solo effort that opens the race. He won it in 2000, crashed out when a likely winner in 2001 and came second last year. In this centenary year the yellow jersey carries even more prestige than usual.

The only Briton who will start the Tour, Millar spent much of his spring limping to and from the hospital in Biarritz recovering from the worst crash of his seven-year professional career. It ruined his start to the season and, he says, means "the Tour de France is more important than ever. I need a good ride in the prologue and a couple of the road-race stages. It just puts more pressure on."

The pressure is intensified, if anything, by the way that Millar returned after five weeks out at a crucial time of the season. In mid-May he won the Tour de Picardie and this month he finished an impressive third to Lance Armstrong in the Dauphiné Libéré stage race, eight days worth of mini Tour de France with its long time-trial and stages over the great Alpine passes.

Millar took second in the opening time-trial and in the longer contre la montre midway through the Dauphiné and, as a result, all eyes will be on him this Saturday, although a bout of stomach trouble has disrupted his preparations. But the Dauphiné also offered hints that he is finally coming to maturity. "It was time to show what I could do in a big race after winning a lot of smaller races. I wasn't going for just the time-trial or the prologue and the strategy paid off."

In the past two years Millar has acquired an unfortunate tendency to part company with his bike at precisely the wrong moment. A 30mph skid along the Tarmac on a right-angle bend cost him victory in the 2001 Tour prologue at Dunkirk and left him fighting a painful battle for survival. Last year's chute on a rain-soaked mountain descent in Spain involved a team car driving over his ankle and deprived him of a place in the top 10. That bitter end to his season came after an attack of glandular fever wiped out the spring. The most recent in the série noire on March 30 in the Criterium International at Charleville Mézières could not be put down to a lack of skill or judgment, because it was the fault of a motorcycle rider carrying a judge to the race finish.

"I was going about 55kph [34mph] on a slight descent and he [the motorbike rider] just floored it to get through a gap from behind, so he was going 30 to 40kph faster and I got no warning because he was behind me.

"He clipped my handlebars as he came by - one second I was riding my bike, the next I was sliding along the floor. What I can't accept is the fact that the driver didn't even apologise. He could have stopped to see how I was."

The following day he was in hospital. "There was 250cc of blood and stuff in my hip and thigh that they had to scoop out. There was a drain plugged in there for three days to drain all the stuff out and they kept me in for six days because they had to lift the skin off, so they didn't want me to move until it all healed." The gash in Millar's elbow took six weeks to heal but at least he stopped limping after three.

There is a great deal riding on the next few weeks and months. This is the year that Millar's contract with the Cofidis team runs out. Last year he turned down a new deal with the squad because he wanted to motivate himself to higher things this season.

In the spring he was involved in a very public dispute with them over their bonus system which has not increased his chances of remaining with them. The crash, he says, has ratcheted up the pressure a few more notches. "It's not the ideal situation in terms of getting a new contract," he admits, "but it can change quickly."

The young Scot accepts that, after the promise he showed on his Tour debut in 2000, he has not met expectations. "I have underperformed compared to my talent but in some ways it's been a conscious decision not to burn myself out. I'd rather have a steady progression and maybe two or three years of winning big races month in, month out rather than a lot of good third places like some riders I know."

The sentiment is apparently shared by his sponsor. The boss of the Cofidis banking company, François Migraine, said in the spring that Millar was "wasting his talent. I'm sorry for him. We've thought about him, never hassled him, but what really hurts me is that he doesn't think about himself."

Physical maturity for a cyclist comes in the late 20s. At 26 time is not exactly running out for Millar but it is no longer a luxury to be frittered away if he wishes to cease being an "eternal hopeful", as the French put it.

"I've always put in my head that 26 would be the start of the end of my career. I've had seven years as a pro, I turned when I was 19. It's been a long time, I've had the fun, relaxed-apprenticeship learning half; now it's on to the professional success, results, retire half.

"That's why I was so relaxed in the first few years. Everyone said I had to take it seriously or give up but I said no because I knew I wouldn't be ready until my mid-20s. It takes a while to believe in your physical ability but you get stronger physically and psychologically and I've started noticing in the last few years that there seem to be fewer and fewer people to be worried about."

Among the options for his future that Millar is pondering is a possible move to Armstrong's side in the US Postal Service squad. The two are friends and his plan would be to learn from the current master of the Tour while setting his personal ambitions aside for a short while.

"I'd learn a lot with Lance; it'd be a good relationship to have if I want to be a general classification rider in the Tour. I'd be going not to win races but to help Lance win a sixth Tour and for my own experience, which would be moving myself back a couple of years. It'd be interesting to go for as a short-term thing but it's a big decision because I'd lose money and status and liberty to choose my programme and objectives. It's a big decision."

Assuming Millar avoids black cats and wayward motorcyclists along the way, the decision will come down to the Tour. It always does. That is where contracts are negotiated and where a single stage win can put an extra zero on a cyclist's value. For Millar, however, la Grande Boucle is about more than mere cash.

He can talk about the stage he spent at the head of affairs through the Roussillon vineyards last year like a lovestruck adolescent rather than a professional sportsman. "I still get goosebumps thinking about being in a break with Laurent Jalabert with someone every 200 metres waving a sign saying 'Merci Jaja'. There's not another sport like it."

"There's a whole romantic side to cycling, it's a do-or-die sport. I love racing like that. Jalabert made a conscious decision to please the public, to give something back to the sport; he was visibly enjoying himself and that's the most beautiful way to race. If you're capable of finishing in the top 10 in the Tour, you can attack and put on a show. I know how much pleasure it gave me when I was young, watching guys race like that."

There will be another twist to this year's Tour for Millar. The 16th stage finishes in Bayonne, next door to his adopted home town of Biarritz, and for the first time he will share the pressures and pleasures of being a "regional". For a man who was born in Malta and brought up in Hong Kong, Scotland and London, the sedate Basque country resort has come to provide much needed stability.

"It's a nice eclectic place and it's turned into a nice solid home to come back to, which is what you need with the life we lead. What I like is that I can live in the centre of town and have a town life but in five minutes I can be out on nice quiet country roads for training."

It was not always so. "In the first few years I was here I didn't know anyone, so I'd travel to visit people," he says. "But the last 18 months I've made a conscious effort to maintain a social group of people who live here. It means I have a slightly normal life."

Inevitably the Biarritz locals began thinking about their stage as soon as the centenary Tour route was announced last October and much of that focused on their adopted Ecossais .

"I had people coming up to me in the market back in February telling me they expected me to win. It's going to be huge because they love me here but I'm bricking it."