I like my hands. Which is lucky as I have to spend all day looking at them on the handlebars.
I took EPO and cortisone. They work incredibly well. It’s like having the best day you’ve ever had as an athlete – every day. But if you win you only feel relief. If you lose, you think: “I’ve just cheated for nothing.”
My worst day was sitting with my sister on the steps outside the police station in Biarritz after I was arrested in 2004. I was world champion – and a doper. I sat there with everything – and I had nothing.
Our sport will always be dangerous. There is no way you can control 3,500km of racing. But we are professionals. We try not to take risks.
The first time I rode a bike I was four or five. I crashed into the back of a car.
At 18 I dreamed of being a cyclist. Saying you wanted to be a pro-cyclist then was embarrassing. It was such a novelty sport. It would be like a Frenchman saying he wanted to be a cricketer.
I rarely get angry. My wife would say she’d never seen me lose my temper.
I cry when people are nice to me. When I was in prison in Biarritz one of the policeman opened the door and gave me crisps and water and sat with me. That was the first time I really cried.
My worst habit is I always have to be the last man standing on a night out. I hate missing a party. But I am a lovely drunk. I’m gregarious. I’m a party boy.
My sister is the one person who has had the biggest influence on me. She’s always looked after her older brother. She’ll always pick up the pieces.
I shave my legs twice a week. It’s hard the first time you do it. But I’m very lazy. For a team photo in December I just did the fronts.
After I was arrested I spent a day with a psychologist. He dissected my life and told me I was completely normal. That was a real eye-opener.
Most professional athletes marry young. Life is accelerated. You marry young, have kids young, divorce young. I married in my 30s. It was impossible for me to maintain a relationship in my 20s. I was difficult. But in a harmless way.
I spend six months a year on the road. My wife met me in the middle of my two-year drug ban. I told her what it would be like. She’s a trooper, but she never comes to my races. I like to do my thing. It’s work time.
Love at first sight isn’t a myth. I’ve loved my wife since the day I first saw her.
The drug thing is just shitty. As a sport we are so far ahead of what the public thinks of us. We are in the vanguard of anti-doping. We’ve never been cleaner.
I’m happiest when I am at home in Gerona with my wife and my two dogs – a Hungarian Vizsla and a Parson’s Terrier, a sort of long-legged Jack Russell.
Cycling is such a stupid sport. Next time you are in a car travelling at 40mph think about jumping out – naked. That’s what it’s like when we crash.
David Millar’s autobiography Racing Through The Dark is published by Orion at £18.99
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