Cycling's Drug Test

Millar took the yellow jersey in the opening stage of the 2000 Tour de France, beating American cycling great Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour a record seven times in a row and was dogged by doping allegations for much of his career. People were telling Millar that he, too, could win the Tour de France one day, "and I was thinking, there's no way I can win the Tour de France unless I'm doping."

Millar eventually became the leader of a team himself, "and I had a lot of people counting on me for results. The team was supposed to look after me, but they didn't care, and the sport was not trying very hard to stop doping, and people were getting caught and getting just six-month suspensions, and it got to the point where it didn't seem to mean anything. My value system got all mixed up. I came into the sport bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and that got stripped away."

He confessed because of the alternative: "I knew that whatever happened, for the rest of my life I would be living a lie." When he came clean, "It was like a huge weight was lifted off of me.

"I blamed the culture, but I also accepted what I did. It's a fine balance -- putting your finger up and accepting your own guilt."

This year, Millar is racing on Vaughters's new Slipstream team, of which he is part owner. The American team, which keeps a base in Girona, Spain, about 50 miles northeast of Barcelona, has had difficulty finding a big-name sponsor willing to accept the risks of being associated with cycling, Vaughters said, and that is willing to contribute the roughly $8 million a year it would cost to sponsor the team.

Under Slipstream's $500,000-a-year testing program, Vaughters said, every rider is tested about every two weeks for doping violations; unlike the secrecy that surrounds other doping tests in cycling, Slipstream offers to make all its test results public.

Prudhomme, the Tour de France director, said the organizers offered a surprise invitation for Slipstream to race in this year's Tour "because we like their philosophy, particularly in terms of their ethics and anti-doping measures." The team also will compete on Sunday at the CSC Invitational, a 62-mile race held at the Clarendon Metro stop in Arlington.

"I'm very representative of my sport. I cheated, and that's it," Millar said. "For the last decade, it's been affair after affair, story after story, admission after admission, and the fans are finally giving up. But the doping culture is turning into an anti-doping culture, and in five years, we are going to be at the vanguard of anti-doping and ethical sponsorship. It will no longer be -- just take our $5 million, put our name here, and we don't care what happens. We could be an example for all sports."

Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.