Millar believes clean can win
Scottish ‘ex-doper’ takes 12th stage as Wiggins holds onto yellow jersey
ANNONAY, FRANCE – Selfavowed “ex-doper” David Millar won friday’s stage of the Tour de France by leading a five-man breakaway, and said he hopes it helps fans believe that riders can win clean.
The Scottish rider won the 12th stage of the Tour as the race left the Alps on the longest stage this year, and his compatriot Bradley Wiggins kept the yellow jersey.
Millar’s victory came exactly 45 years after Tom Simpson, the first Briton to wear the yellow jersey, died on the slopes of the daunting Mont Ventoux after using a lethal cocktail of amphetamines and alcohol.
For years, the 35-yearold Scotsman on the U.S. Garmin-sharp team has been the peloton’s most vocal critic of doping, saying he learned hard lessons after “making a mess” of his life through drug use.
The 226-kilometre ride from Saint-jean-deMaurienne to Annonay-Davezieux featured two big climbs, but did not change the top standings because Wiggins and his main rivals for the title finished together.
Millar edged Frenchman Jean-christophe Peraud at the line in a two-man sprint – five seconds ahead of three others in the breakaway that dusted the pack on the Granier pass.
Millar collected his fourth career Tour stage victory – his first since 2003. He’s also the fourth Briton to win a Tour stage this year, after Mark Cavendish, Christopher Froome and Wiggins.
The victory was also a vindication for GarminSharp, which had a terrible first week when it lost two top riders to crashes: Giro d’italia winner Ryder Hesjedal of Victoria and Tom Danielson of the United States.
“We fought from the beginning in this Tour,” said Millar. “Today I kinda wanted to show that we’re still here, and show that Garmin-sharp is still one of the best teams in the world.”
Millar sped ahead of the others in the breakaway with about t wo kilometres to go. Peraud chased. In the last kilometre, it was a two-man battle for the stage win.
With a few hundred meters, the Frenchman struck and wheeled around, but it was not enough – the Scottish veteran beat him to the line.
Banned from cycling for two years i n 2004 after admitting he used banned blood booster EPO – once the drug of choice for cycling cheats – earlier in his career, Millar said, “I’m an exdoper and I’m clean now, and I want to show everyone that it’s possible to win clean on the Tour.”
In the sprint in the main pack, Australia’s Matt Goss was penalized for veering slightly to the left, cutting off Slovak sensation Peter Sagan, relegating Goss to last place in the peloton and losing key points in their duel for the green jersey of the Tour’s best sprinter.
“I’m really angry that we wage war like this, but you can’t do like he did,” said Sagan, who has won three Tour stages this year.
Wiggins was content to let the breakaway go and his powerful Team Sky did not lay chase – the top-placed rider among the five in the bunch was more than 25 minutes behind Wiggins as the stage began.
Overall, he leads teammate Christopher Froome, in second, by 2:05, and Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali trails third, 2:23 back. Defending champion Cadel Evans is fourth, 3:19 behind. Jurgen Van Den Broeck of Belgium is fifth – trailing 4:48.
The riders’ ranks continued to thin out on Friday.
Rabobank said its Dutch team leader Robert Gesink, in 67th place more than an hour behind Wiggins, quit the race to focus on the Spanish Vuelta. Rabobank has four of its original nine riders.
Dutch rider Tom Veelers of the Argos-Shimano team, after tweeting that Thursday’s ride in the Alps was one of the hardest of his career, also pulled out of the race, according to race organizers.
And Cofidis star David Moncoutie crashed around the 38-kilometre mark and dropped out of the race.
The three-week race heads toward the Mediterranean on Saturday for France’s July 14 national holiday – Bastille Day – with a 217-kilometre jaunt from SaintPaul-Trois-Chateaux to Le Cap d’Agde, a coastal resort known for its nudist colony.