Bermuda's cyclists got tips from British ace David Millar at the weekend — in cycling technique and also on avoiding the darker side of the sport.

Millar was in Bermuda to speak at the Bermuda Bicycle Association AGM, a presentation which touched on his drug use and two-year doping ban.

The Scot took a group of around 30 cyclists out to St. George's at the weekend and also coached a group of kids around the national stadium track.

"That's an amazing facility for kids to have them riding around in a safe environment. I did some little drills and I think they enjoyed it," Millar said.

"Bermuda reminds me of a smaller, prettier Hong Kong. I grew up there and it was like the same sort of vibe but times a thousand."

Millar, who is British national road race and British national time trial champion, worked on teamwork, showing riders how to protect each other from the wind by taking turns up front.

"The key thing is to keep it fun and not get too tied up in it, being too serious," he said. "Because if you do want to end up doing it professionally at an elite level you are going to end up the majority of your life doing it at an horrifically serious level so when you are kid you need to try and enjoy it because when you get 18 and onwards it becomes a full-time serious job.

"It is better to do as many sports as you can when you are younger.

"I am very lucky to have a job I love and am passionate about it, but it's a two-edge sword because it starts to take over your life."

And Millar knows all about that from a sport which forced him to feign illness and abandon races to get rest.

Drug use followed shortly afterwards when he began using the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) after he crashed but was forced to carry on despite his injuries.

Of those years he said: "It was a descending spiral to when I hit the bottom and it's been just a question of going in the opposite direction. It keeps getting better at the moment.

"It was sh*t basically. I ended up living a life of lies. It kind of twists you around. I didn't handle that so well. When I got caught it was a kind of escape hatch to get out that lifestyle."

It was two to three years of hell, said Millar who spoke to The Royal Gazette before he flew out last night.

"It didn't do too much physically — I was doing more damage to myself just racing my bike but psychologically it was affecting me. I was hurting myself with a more extreme lifestyle.

"That had a butterfly effect. When you do something wrong and you don't like it, it escalates into other bad stuff. You lie to your friends and family."

He changed as a person. "The problem was years ago there were more people pushing you towards dope than the other way around. It was a twisted world."

In 2004 he was suspended for two years by British Cycling, stripped of his world time trial title and was fired by Codifidis along with others caught up in the scandal.

He and nine others were taken to court by French authorities but his charges were dropped after lack of evidence the offences had taken place on French soil.

Asked about what he did in his two-year ban he said: "I got drunk for a year then I went training for a year. I didn't know if I was going to come back at first. I disappeared and bounced around friends' floors and got drunk.

"I decided to come back, sobered up and trained very hard and fell in love with the sport. I needed that year just to get away from it, eradicate everything and start again.

"But thanks to all the dramas in the last few years, the world has woken up to the problem and management and sponsors have started to take on a responsibility for their athletes and try to protect them.

"I would like to think in the future young guys aren't going to even have to make the decisions I made because there will be good enough anti-doping policies within the sport and management is doing their best to prevent their young guys from encountering doping. In the past you encountered it often.

"The bottom line is kids are just going to do what they do and it's up to the people who run the sport to protect them from encountering it."

He believes his new outfit Team Slipstream, set up by Johnny Vaughters, is the future of professional cycling with its firm anti-doping policy rather than a win-at-all-costs attitude.

"Our interests are getting the best out of ourselves and having some class and style about what we do. Hopefully wins will come by default."

The team must earn a wild-card place to the Tour De France by getting good early results in 2008.

"Normally I would aim to peak at the Tour De France but next year I will be going at it 100 percent in February and March and try to carry it on to July and the Tour De France."

Now 30, he hopes for another five years when he will retire and possibly take up a coaching role with the new team.

"You get to know yourself very well. You push yourselves to levels that very few people do — in doing that you get a lot of satisfaction.

"Then there are events like the Tour De France which are just magic. They are magic to go and watch but to take part in it is just an honour."