FRESH from his heroic efforts on the streets of Glasgow, David Millar will take the start line at the Tour de France on Saturday.

The rider has become a familiar sight in full flight across the French countryside each July, fulfilling the role of the slightly eccentric lone Scotsman among the peloton, just as his namesake, Robert, did before him.

For Millar, it marks not only a landmark 12th start in the race, but a selection that will, bearing in mind the long slog ahead, come as something of a relief. By his own admission, the first half of his racing season has been far from easy. Millar's form hasn't come as readily as he might have hoped. "It has been by the skin of my teeth in the last few days," he said. "It's not been an enjoyable past few months."

But with the partisan applause from his impressive bronze medal ride in the British National Road Race Championships still ringing in his ears, Millar must surely feel buoyed on that count.

In the coming weeks he will play a crucial role for his Garmin-Sharp team, named alongside Andrew Talansky, Christian Vande Velde, Dan Martin, Jack Bauer, Ramunas Navardauskas, Rohan Dennis, Ryder Hesjedal and Tom Danielson in the nine-strong squad yesterday.

The roster provides a potential three-pronged attack on the general classification front with an in-form Talansky making his Tour debut and Martin, nephew of Irish cycling legend Stephen Roche, already enjoying a stellar year with wins in Catalunya and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. It's a belt-and-braces approach that clearly reflects lessons learned from Hesjedal's failure to defend his Giro d'Italia title last month.

Millar insisted he won't be targeting specific stage wins, instead playing his part as super domestique. "I won't have that right," he said. "We have a very strong team. Unless it all falls apart. If I'm still good, I'll get my chance like what happened last year, but we are definitely going in there with grander plans."

He is under no illusions as to who the frontrunners in this year's Tour will be: Sky's Chris Froome and Spanish rider Alberto Contador, of Saxo-Tinkoff. "Froome and Contador are the two favourites, for sure," said Millar. "They are head and shoulders above everyone else. It will be interesting to see how things unfold.

"In theory, Froome looks like he should have it wrapped up but I don't think it's going to be an easy battle. Contador will go down fighting and won't give up. He won't be happy with second place."

When the Tour rolls out of Porto-Vecchio in Corsica on Saturday, British sprinter Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) has already made clear his desire to claim the first stage win – and hallowed maillot jaune – of this year's race.

Ultimately, Cavendish who, with trademark bluntness joked in recent days that he "couldn't give a toss about the people going for the yellow jersey", has set his sights on wearing the green of the points classification leader come Paris, a little more than three weeks from now.

To that end, Millar predicts a fierce battle between Cavendish and last year's green jersey winner Slovakian Peter Sagan (Cannondale). "If it was all flat finishes, I think Cav would have it wrapped up, but it's not and Sagan can climb so well and gain points that none of the other sprinters can. It's going to be a really interesting battle," he said.

In recent years, Millar has actively straddled the gulf between cycling's old guard and new. Suspended from professional cycling between 2004 and 2006 after admitting to taking the banned blood-boosting hormone erythropoietin (EPO), he now sits on the athletes' commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

While a poetic soul who embraces the unwritten gentleman's etiquette of the peloton – without doubt it was Millar who suggested the leading group wait when Ian Stannard punctured on the penultimate lap of Sunday's race in Glasgow – by the same token he is a staunch realist.

As the Tour gets under way, it once again brings the sport under intense global scrutiny. In last month's Giro d'Italia, two riders, Mauro Santambrogio and Danilo Di Luca, both of Vini Fantini-Selle Italia, tested positive for EPO.

Yet, it is Millar's belief that such instances no longer represent the norm within cycling. "The fact that Sky are dominating and my team does so well; we are proud of being clean," he said. "It's a very small minority that dope now and there will be very few of them at the Tour de France, which is a great thing.

"With Santambrogio and Di Luca, they were on a team that already probably shouldn't have even been invited to the Giro. I think we all have to assume responsibility in cycling now and can't just presume everything is perfect. At the same time, most of the World Tour teams seem to have a good grip on what is going on but we have some of those teams, on the fringe, who still take risks and that's what we have got to be careful of."

Millar is equally sanguine when asked if he felt sorry for the shamed Italian team in the subsequent public fallout. "There was no sympathy," he said. "There were red flags and it was obvious to those in the know."

Racing in Glasgow last weekend, where Millar described the home support as "phenomenal", gave him a flavour of what to expect come the 2014 Commonwealth Games. He has previously talked about it providing the perfect swansong to his career, not least an opportunity to "go out in style".

But as next summer begins to loom large, Millar appears reticent on the question of retirement. "Those are massive decisions and my head is literally just focused on the next few days at the moment," he said. "I can't think much beyond that. All I can focus on is being at my physical and mental best for the Tour; that's all-encompassing.

"My programme after the Tour is literally step by step," he added. "At the moment, it really is a blank page. Glasgow is there in my mind 100%, no doubt, but it's been an incredible amount of work to get to the Tour this year. Let me deal with that first and then move on to the next thing. Once I get to the winter this year, I will start planning my next season around the Commonwealth Games."