INTERVIEW: David Millar feels reborn, personally and professionally, after his drugs ban and believes cycling has finally cleaned up its act, too, finds Richard Wilson

He has just finished dinner, it is late in the evening in Montpellier, and he is tired. He is here because this is where the Tour de France team time trial will take place and he wants to familiarise himself with the course. But that is for the following day. Now, he has just finished dinner, it is late in the evening, he is tired and he has one last obligation.

He is going to recall how he went from being the Boy Dave, his nickname as he emerged so brightly, so promisingly, into the world of professional cycling, to David Millar, ex-doper. He is going to talk about who he is now.

It is late, he is tired, and he stifles a yawn. But he listens to my questions and he answers them as best he can, because he was once the Boy Dave, young, edgy, principled, defined by a sense of freedom, and he is still coming to terms with what he has become.

This is his eighth Tour, and the fourth since he returned from a two-year ban, imposed after he admitted taking erythropoietin (EPO) to boost his red blood cell count. He is tired, but he listens and he talks because the story, his story, has a meaning beyond his own life.

We first met him nine years ago when, on his Tour debut, he won the opening time trial ahead of Lance Armstrong to claim the leader's coveted yellow jersey. He slept in it, that first night, and managed to hold on to it for three days before being overtaken.

We followed him, then, this captivating figure, born in Malta to Scottish parents who separated when he was a teenager, brought up in England and Hong Kong before making his home in Biarritz, where the discipline of his life as a professional cyclist somehow mingled with the partying and socialising that came with being a free spirit, of being somewhere out near the edge. He was a painter, he could have enrolled in art school, but he chose to be a cyclist and everything seemed possible.

We watched as he won another Tour stage in 2002, then a third in 2003, the same year that he won the world championships time trial.

Then we became fascinated when he was arrested by French drugs police in 2004 after they found two syringes in his flat and he admitted to doping.

He spent two years out of the sport before returning in 2006, clean, committed, chastened, and we watch now, we listen now, because the story, his story, is compelling.

In a sense, he was reborn. He talks now not of rehabilitation, or contrition, but of being a different person, of being granted a second chance. And it means something beyond his life, because of all the cyclists who have been caught doping, none have seemed so synchronised, so in step, with their sport.

Miller's story in a way mirrors that of cycling. He was idealistic once, avowedly anti-doping, but then the demands of progressing, of keeping up with those at the front of the peloton, of living and working in a doping culture, bent his will and reshaped him. Now he is chastened. And so his his sport.

"As somebody who doesn't see all the data, it's hard to say how clean the Tour is, but racing with people and hearing the word on the street, it does appear to be the cleanest Tour we've had in decades," he says. "We're in a very healthy place at the moment, we're finally in the upward direction, having touched the bottom."

The words resonate, because he might just as easily be talking about himself. He is not being naïve, only hopeful, choosing to believe in a certainty that helps to explain his own story.

There might yet be doping revelations in this Tour, and it is only two years since Millar broke down in tears during a Tour press conference after being told that Alexandre Vinokourov, a cyclist he greatly admired, had failed a drugs test. He chooses, though, to believe that something has changed, that everything has changed.

The Slipstream team that Millar rides for is vehemently anti-doping, riding clean is its guiding ethos, and all team members are tested regularly and thoroughly. Millar is not only a rider but a stakeholder, having returned from his ban deeply aware that he had to prove himself to be clean and committed.

Other teams, too - CSC-Saxo Bank and Columbia - exist on the basis of being anti-doping first and foremost, of beginning by being clean before then seeking results.

"There had to be a cultural shift," Millar says. "There was very much a doping culture installed in our sport and it's taken over a decade to create what is currently, I can safely say, an anti-doping culture.

"That really is the feeling. When you're in the sport, you're very aware of the anti-doping measures that are taking place all around you."

He insists, too, that he will remain with Slipstream, despite being linked with Team Sky, the British team that intends to take part in next year's Tour. Millar is close to many of those involved, but says he is committed to the team that he has come to define. "I'll be staying, no doubts," he says. "Sky is a team that I have close ties to, but I put a lot of myself into this team. Yeah it's kind of where I belong."

Millar carried his guilt for long enough - he insists his 2002 Tour stage win was clean, but the world championships time trial title was taken from him - that he has no wish to hide from it now. He understands who he was and he is learning about who he has become. He is the athletes' representative for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and when he talks about doping, it matters, because he is not preaching but talking from experience.

He can look now and see his exposure, and the ban that followed, as something of a relief. For 12 months he drank, to forget, to escape, to cope. He left France, which he had come to consider his home, and moved to Edinburgh, where his parents are from, and spent much of his time drinking in the Grassmarket, acting carefree but lost, instead, in a place where he could hide.

He came back because the people who stayed close refused to give up on him. His sister, and manager, Fran, was a source of optimism; David Brailsford, the head of British cycling, offered training facilities in Manchester; and Nicole, the girl he met in a restaurant one day, became the love of his life.

"Anybody who goes through such an upheaval and has such dramatic changes in their life is going to change," he says. "It changed me hugely and it wasn't overnight, it's taken years, but from the decline, through the absolute fall, to picking myself up, it's matured me hugely and made me into what I would like to think is a much better person, and a happier person, which is very important.

"I had a year completely off the bike and during my ban I hated cycling. But that's changed, I love going out, whether it's training or not. It's back to being the way it was when I was young, when I got into it."

He rides, now, for a sense of purpose. There was a time when he was considered a potential Tour winner and he was the lead rider of his previous teams, but now he is content in his own place, finding for himself what his limits are. He broke his collarbone earlier this season, but returned so quickly to fitness and form that he realised he had been working, pushing too hard.

"I became a training monster," he admits, "and being a team stakeholder, I maybe overworked myself, on and off the bike.

This year, I've found a healthy balance. I've cemented my reputation of being very proactive on anti-doping, being very sincere in what I say and conscientious of the responsibility I carry being an ex-doper. I can still raise awareness but also concentrate on what I do, which is racing a bike."

This year, in the Tour that began yesterday and welcomes back his friend and former teammate, Lance Armstrong - "you'd never write him off, because he's won seven Tours" - Millar's aim is to be relevant, to help his team win the time trial and perhaps assist Christian Vande Velde challenge for overall victory.

These are modest aims but, at 32, Millar knows who he is now.

"I don't come into it with pressure or expectations," he says. "And it is possible to derive a similar pleasure to winning by helping your teammate to win. That's something people perhaps don't realise."