not finished the stage and he was not reinstated, having already left for his home in Biarritz. He regretted his temper—he had been ninth—and later apologised to his team. Doping Millar was dining in a restaurant with Dave Brailsford in Bidart, near Biarritz, on 23 June 2004 when he was approached by three plainclothes policemen of the Paris drug squad at 8.25pm. They detained Millar and took his watch, shoelaces, jewellery, keys and phone. After searching his home for two and a half hours they found empty phials of Eprex, a brand of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO), and two used syringes. Millar claimed he had been given them as a gift at the Tour of Spain, and that he had taken them to Manchester and used them there. After that he had kept them as a souvenir. The detectives took Millar into custody. The raid followed the arrest at the start of 2004 of Bogdan Madejak, a Cofidis soigneur. Police, looking to find out more about the drugs found on Madejak, turned their attention to another rider on the team, Philippe Gaumont, as he arrived at Orly airport on 20 January 2004. On 22 January 2004 the magazine, Le Point, published transcripts of police phone taps. Gaumont said he had given Millar the drugs and syringes the day before the Tour finished on the Champs-Élysées in 2003, when Millar won the time-trial. Gaumont said he didn't know what was in the syringe but that "ça m'avait bloqué (that blocked me; i.e. kept me from going well)." Millar denied the claim to the investigating judge, and said that team doctor Menuet was the best person he had ever met and that he was "like a father to me at races." He denied Gaumont's claims that Millar had taken drugs by mixing Stilnox, a sleeping powder, with ephedrine, a stimulant. He called Gaumont a lunatic and said he was talking "absolute crap." But Millar's phone calls had been tapped for four months and Millar eventually confessed to police on 24 June 2004. Millar admitted using EPO in 2001 and 2003. He blamed it on stress, in particular losing the prologue in the 2003 Tour and being beaten by Jan Ullrich in the 2001 world time trial championship. Under cycling rules a confession equates to a positive test. British Cycling suspended him for two years in August 2004. He was disqualified as