• London 2012 Olympics

Wiggins in favour of Millar's Olympic ban

Bradley Wiggins believes David Millar's Olympic ban should stand © Getty Images

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Bradley Wiggins believes David Millar should not be able to compete at London 2012, even though he admits it would be at the detriment of Team GB's success.

Millar was banned for two years in 2004 after admitting taking performance enhancing drugs. His Olympic fate rests in the hands of the Court of Arbitration for Sport after the British Olympic Association vowed to defend its bylaw, which prevents convicted drugs cheats from competing for Team GB.

Although Millar has ruled out challenging his ban, he could be handed a lifeline should CAS find the BOA's selection criteria non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code.

Millar captained the British team that helped Mark Cavendish win the men's world road race title in September, and Wiggins admits Millar's inclusion in the British squad would be a boost. Cavendish has lent his backing to Millar for an Olympic place, but Wiggins believes it would undermine cycling's work to eradicate doping from the sport.

"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 trying to win the Olympic Road Race.

"It would take the pressure off me having to do a massive job, because I can 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.

"The fact that we're still talking about it 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, there's already a fault in the system."

However, Wiggins later responded to the story, claiming he had been misquoted. "Cheers BBC Sport, you got me, not quite what I said was it. I don't have an opinion on it," Wiggins wrote on his Twitter page.

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