Millar detained by police in drugs investigation

DAVID MILLAR’S troubled season took a turn for the worse just days before the start of the Tour de France when it emerged that the British cycling world champion had been detained by the French police as part of a drugs investigation.

The 27-year-old, who rides for the French outfit Cofidis, was placed in police custody while he was dining at a restaurant in Biarritz, where he is based, on Tuesday night.

A local judge authorised the police to detain him for 48 hours as a witness in the investigation into claims that Millar and other Cofidis riders had taken performance-enhancing drugs.

The Scot, who has strongly denied the allegations and has never failed a drugs test, is being treated as a witness, not a suspect, and he was expected to be released last night but the timing could hardly have been worse.

The Tour de France, in which Millar was hoping to add to his three stage wins, begins on July 3 and an interruption to his training schedule so close to the start is bound to have angered Millar.

The allegations first surfaced when Millar's French team-mate Philippe Gaumount admitted to taking the banned substance EPO.

Gaumont also accused Millar and other Cofidis team-mates of having taken banned substances.

The police began an investigation into Cofidis' affairs which saw seven of their riders including Gaumont charged with doping offences.

All have either left or been sacked since while team manager Alain Bondue, who had been in charge since the team's foundation in 1997, and the team doctor Jean-Jacques Menuet, who was named in leaked transcripts of police interviews, resigned in early May.

As the senior rider in France's highest profile team, Millar will stay in the spotlight in his adopted homeland at least as long as the investigation continues but he retains the confidence of Bondue's replacement Francis van Londersele.

"This is not a Millar story," he told l'Equipe.

"It is, in fact, a continuation of the Gaumont affair. For the moment, David is being heard simply in the capacity of a witness.

"But I think it is a pity that waited they so long; a few days, indeed, before the start of the Tour de France. Justice needs to do its work, but I would have preferred it before now."