"Winning the first stage of my first Tour de France was just huge. It changed my life" - David Millar reflects on the major ups of his cycling career

David Millar can look back on a palmarès that includes four stage wins at the Tour de France, five at the Vuelta a España and a stage from the 2011 Giro d'Italia. The 47-year-old Scotsman looked back at some of the most important races of his career with GCN.

"I’d come back to the UK from Hong Kong in 1995 but I’d not trained properly, having slacked off for a year knowing that I’d a guaranteed place at the World Championships in San Marino. I remember getting dropped and getting off my bike at the finish, and just sitting by the side of the road and shedding a tear. I sat there and thought to myself, 'what the hell am I doing here,' because I was so much better than the result I ended up with."

A race that made Millar a hot prospect would be the 1996 Tour de la Corrèze, he thinks. "My team fell to pieces at that point and I ended up having to control the race on my own. That overall win confirmed all the results that I’d had up until that point because it showed that I could climb, I could sprint, and that I could road race with the best. That’s the result that opened up all the doors to the pro teams, and the French ones in particular. It drew the attention of Marc Madiot at FDJ, and Cyrille Guimard from Cofidis, and they all came knocking after that race."

Guimard drew the most attention of young Millar when he drew a long-term plan for the then 19-year-old rider. "Winning the first stage of my first Tour de France was just huge. It changed my life. I was fully settled on Cofidis at this point but looking back the win and the maillot jaune was what the team had expected from me, and it was exactly what Guimard had sketched out in his grand plan when we’d first met in 1996."