New anti-doping cycling team

David Millar changes gear to sign for anti-doping team Slipstream

David Millar yesterday confirmed recent rumours that he will race next year for Slipstream, the team from the United States which is close to being guaranteed a ride in the 2008 Tour de France because it was founded on ethical principles with the aim of preventing their riders doping. Millar has been with the Spanish team Saunier Duval since his June comeback last year from a two-year doping ban.

Since Millar made contact in January with Jonathan Vaughters, the former US professional who runs Slipstream, the team's accession to the bigger races and their expansion to ride the Tour while remaining "clean" has become a joint project for both men. "I gave JV my ideas, my opinions," Millar said. "We picked each others' brains and it became clear that we wanted to do the same thing, which is to create the first of the next generation of cycling teams."Such projects have taken on a new urgency, given the way that this year's Tour turned into a shambles, with positive drugs tests, including one for the pre-race favourite Alexandr Vinokourov, and a week of doubt before the ejection of the apparent shoo-in for overall victory, Michael Rasmussen.

"It's taken on more validity in the last few weeks," agrees Millar. "Before it was our little mission, now it is being recognised that we are not just mad preachers. There is a lot of vision there, but it is pragmatic at the same time."

Slipstream is almost unique in that it is funded largely by the cycling equivalent of one of professional rugby union's "sugar-daddies", an American Doug Ellis who made his money in computer software.

"We have been working on this since January," said Millar. In March he and Vaughters made a joint visit to the Tour organisers, Amaury Sport Organisation. "We wanted to get their opinion, find out if it was a valid project for them, whether we stood a chance of getting in their races. They seemed charmed by the whole thing."

Slipstream, says Millar, "differs from other teams in that the baseline is purely ethical. Doug Ellis wants a cycling team but he wants one that doesn't win at all costs. He feels he can only be proud of it if he has no doubts about it. He needs guarantees, even for a rider like me. He needs hard copy to prove I am clean."

This year 30% of the team budget, between £150,000 to £200,000, was devoted to setting up a medical profiling system for the team's cyclists. "The team works with an independent ethics group and JV was the first cycling team manager to go to the World Anti-Doping Agency to ask their opinion," said Millar.

The profiling system will include a blood volume test, which is the only reliable way of detecting whether a cyclist has used a blood transfusion. An independent body will monitor whether or not the riders are fit to race.

"There will be background tests on riders' personalities, if there are rumours about their background they will get medical tests," said Millar.

In a new departure for professional cycling, the bulk of the team will be based in Gerona, Spain, where the ambition is to build a support network that will prevent riders becoming "just hired guns who turn up at races," as Millar puts it. "We've taken that idea from what Dave Brailsford and British Cycling do and put it into a top-level professional team," he said.

"There are no 100% guarantees but we are trying to create a group of guys who trust each other and don't want to win at all costs. If we don't win a race in year one, that's not the thing. We want to have fun, enjoy racing, give it 100% and race well."

Returning to this year's Tour, Millar yesterday explained his tearful response on hearing that Vinokourov had tested positive for blood doping. "For a year and a half every interview I do has been about anti-doping. I was blindsided by it," he said.

"I'm trying to do something constructive, doing everything I can to help, and I found out just like that about one of my favourite riders, to whom I've given the benefit of the doubt, who I wanted to believe was doing it clean. I'd been defending him to my peers and suddenly I had to turn around and produce a response for the world's press."