By Tom Degun

bradley wiggins_and_david_millar_05-01-12January 5 - Bradley Wiggins (pictured left), Britain's triple Olympic cycling champion, says that teammate David Millar (right) should not be allowed to race at London 2012 or any subsequent Olympic Games following his doping ban back in 2004.


Millar received huge praise after working as part of the British team that led Mark Cavendish to victory in the road race at the 2011 World Championships in Copenhagen but he has a lifetime ban from the Olympics due to the British Olympic Association (BOA) ruling on drug cheats.

The BOA bylaw could well be overturned in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) after it was declared non-compliant by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code at the end of last year and Cavendish has already said that the 35-year-old's lifetime Olympics ban is both unfair and to the detriment of Team GB's hopes of success.

Millar being allowed to compete in the Olympic road race would certainly give Cavendish's gold medal hopes a huge boost but Wiggins feels that it would be morally wrong to have Millar compete at London 2012.

"From a purely selfish point of view, it would be great to have Dave on the start line," Wiggins told BBC Sport.

"But morally he should never be able to do the Olympics again.

"Sometimes we speak very selfishly really and it's easy to bury your head in the sand and forget about everything else.

"To have Dave in the team purely from a performance point of view, it would be fantastic for Mark in terms of trying to win the Olympic road race.

"It would take the pressure off me having to do a massive job to get Mark to the line in first place because I could think about the time trial.

"But from a moral point of view, from what cycling is trying to achieve, from what cycling's been through the last few years, for what the Olympics stand for, he should never be able to do the Olympics again.

"Cycling has been so messed up in the past with on-going cases like [Alberto] Contador and the fact that we're still talking about this almost nine years after Dave first got banned for it shows how behind the times perhaps we are.

"If there's an inkling that someone can get back in the Olympics, there's already a fault in the system."

bradley wiggins_and_david_millar_05-01-1211
Wiggins (pictured centre) though, admitted that if the ban is overturned, Millar (right) would almost certainly be in the team.

"Purely in terms of winning the road race, he should be in that team with us," Wiggins said.

"If he is eligible, we will use him and if he is not eligible then we won't."

Many legal experts are predicting that the BOA bylaw will be overturned which will allow Millar to compete at the Olympics.

Millar is now an outspoken advocate for clean sport and sits on WADA's Athletes' Panel.

He is also the only British rider to have worn all three of the Tour de France's main jerseys (yellow, green and polka dot) and the only Briton to have led all three of cycling's grand tours in France, Italy and Spain.

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