MIllar Unhappy with News Leaks

David Millar

Cyclist David Millar said "heads should roll" within the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste International [UCI], after a list it drew up to estimate the "doping risk" of each rider at last year's Tour de France was leaked.

"This list should never have been released, never. The UCI, some of their people should be fired for this," the Briton said before the start of stage seven of the Giro d'Italia. "It's shocking ... A major investigation should go on into what exactly they are doing with this model."

The French sports daily L'Equipe unveiled the doping-suspicion index, in which riders are given a rating of suspicion scaling from 0 – not suspicious – to 10 – highly suspicious. 

The UCI said the list is a working document helping to steer testing, not a list of riders who have done any wrong. While the average index of the 198 riders from the 2010 Tour de France is 2.434, the Garmin-Cervelo rider Millar said he had a rating of 4, with Mark Cavendish a 2 and Bradley Wiggins a 5. 

"To see us in the middle of the list, it's like – are you joking? It's scandalous.""I understand I'm number four because of my misdemeanours in the past," he said referring to the two-year ban he received in 2004 for taking a banned performance-enhancing substance.

"They should never release it because there's always going to be anomalies, and people who are going to be badly judged even if it's a perfect model. What is it based on? It doesn't add up."I'm as clean as a whistle, my team [are] the cleanest guys and I have 100 percent faith in what we do. It's a bit mad."To see us in the middle of the list, it's like - are you joking? It's scandalous."

Other team officials were also angered. "It's an abuse of trust and it seems that anybody can filter what they like and the price gets paid by the riders, not by the guy who does the leak," Garmin's sports director, Bingen Fernandez, said reporters.

"If it's confidential, it has to stay confidential. If somebody in a bank revealed the equivalent sort of details about bank accounts, they'd be sacked."