David Millar says cycling became a "burden," wants "to enjoy sport again"

 David Millar, who this month retired after a professional career spanning 18 years, says that cycling had become a “job” to him as well as a “burden” and that he is ready to “enjoy sport again.” 

 The 37-year-old, the first British rider to have worn the leader’s jersey in all three of cycling’s Grand Tours as well as one of a select group to have won stages in each of them, makes his remarks in a BBC radio programme to be aired tomorrow.

 In an interview which airs on BBC Radio 5 Live Sport from noon on Sunday 19 October, the Scot says, "I'd like to get back into sport being something I go out and have fun doing rather than worrying about numbers and science."

 He added that while he hopes to stay in cycling, perhaps on the business side, "I need a break from the whole racing scene. It's been my whole adult life, even my kid life since being a teenager."

 Millar, banned from the sport for two years in 2004 and stripped of the world time trial title he had won the previous year after admitting using EPO also spoke of his lack of awareness of the sport’s dopingculture when he first entered it.

 "I don't think any of us did until we were in it, but since then it's night and day: then it was night, and now it's day."

 He believes young professionals nowadays don’t face the same pressures to dope that he and his contemporaries did, saying: “Kids coming in now can have a great, clean career, which wasn't necessarily the case when I turned pro."

 Millar’s final race was the Bec CC hill climb earlier this month, which is where the BBC caught up with him. The interview will be available on BBC iPlayer shortly after tomorrow’s programme.