Former cyclist Millar was stripped of his 2003 world time trial title the following year after police found empty phials of Eprex, a brand of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO), and two used syringes at his apartment in Biarritz.  

He later admitted doping and served a two-year ban from the sport before returning as a reformed character, winning World Championships silver and Commonwealth Games gold in 2010 before retiring in 2014.

The Scot also became the first drug cheat to serve on the Athletes' Committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency and has become an outspoken figure on doping problems within the sport.

He claims that, in 2009 at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, he was approached by an unknown official at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), who revealed how they were struggling to deal with problems.

"I was taken aside by someone at IAAF, and asked to explain how we had changed it [the doping culture] in cycling", he told BBC Radio Four's Today Programme.

When Millar asked why, he was told that they are "riddled with it at the moment in athletics" but that "no-one is doing anything about it".

The IAAF has faced a spate of problems in recent months, with a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Independent Commission report publishing allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia.

Three IAAF officials were handed life bans from the sport for accepting bribes to cover-up Russian doping scandals, while former IAAF President Lamine Diack is also under investigation by French police for alleged involvement in the plot.

Others, including WADA Independent Commission chair Richard Pound, have criticised the IAAF for not dealing with problems earlier. 

Millar compared the current state of athletics with the state of cycling in 1998, which began when a large haul of doping products were found in a car of the Festina cycling team just before the start of that year's Tour de France, 

All nine Festina riders eventually confessed to using EPO.

Cycling had many more dark days to come, including an admission of doping in 2012 from Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his victories at seven editions of the Tour de France after Festina.

But steps have since been made to clean up the sport and Millar believes cycling has become the "vanguard of anti-doping work".

Many other bodies are still in their infancy when it comes to "tackling" problems, he claims. 

"When we look back 50 years from now at the state of governing bodies in the last 1990s and early 2000s, we are going to regard these practices as medieval," he added.