Cycling: Millar's big break ends the seven-year hitch

A blistering last-minute charge for the line saw David Millar take the United Kingdom's first road stage of the Tour de France in seven years.

In an immaculately timed move, the Cofidis rider roared round Frenchman Laurent Brochard in the final metres, taking the stage by over a bike length from Euskaltel sprinter David Etxebarría.

After suffering badly in the two preceding Pyrenean stages, finishing over 40 minutes down on Sunday at Plateau de Beille's summit finish, Millar had restated his pre-race aim to fight for stage wins. And yesterday offered an excellent opportunity for the Scot, who broke away after eight kilometres on the first climb of the day with King of the Mountains leader Laurent Jalabert, Italian Eddy Mazzoleni and Dutch veteran Michael Boogerd.

The quartet were then joined by another seven riders, all of them unthreatening to race leader Lance Armstrong's overall advantage, and the 11 built up nearly a quarter-of-an-hour lead in the scorching heat.

A clumsy attempt to break away by Jalabert 18 kilometres from the line allowed a group of five riders ­ Brochard, Millar, Etxebarría, Boogerd and Spaniard David Latasa ­ to peel off the front.

Then, despite much skirmishing by the five in the final kilometres, the 25-year-old Millar gambled on a last powerful lunge for the line. His first victory of the season came after he had signed a piece of paper yesterday morning with the message "Today I win".

"I don't do that more than about once a year," he joked, "but it worked out this time. I realised with about five kilometres left that I was the fastest in the group, so I played it all out on the sprint. I realised I had come through the mountains with good legs and then going on the attack with Laurent Jalabert, my idol, was a real dream for me."

With four mountain stages left, kicking off with an ascent off the Mont Ventoux, the attitude in the péloton to Armstrong's domination is one of almost total resignation, with only unthreatening breaks like Millar's permitted.

After taking back-to-back summit-finish wins in the Pyrenees, the American's advantage of 2min 28sec over the second-placed Joseba Beloki has silenced any doubts raised by his first-week near-crash in Avranches and first-time defeat in a long time-trial six days ago by the Colombian Santiago Botero.

Beloki has suffered two consecutive defeats by the American (four if you count the Basque's two third places overall behind Armstrong in Paris in 2000 and 2001). The 28-year-old no longer claims ­ as he did halfway through the Pyrenees ­ that he can still win the Tour, but he was nonetheless in defiant mood yesterday morning.

"Comparing the situation now with how things looked after the first two mountain stages last year, I have lost less time to Armstrong," Beloki reasons. "And overall I think that less has been decided. Armstrong is more accessible, he could be isolated on one of the big climbs in the Alps. It's difficult, but not impossible."

If Beloki feels the Texan should be worried, he does not look it. Already with three stage wins in the bag, he is surrounded by what he calls "probably one of the best teams in cycling history".

As his overall lead remorselessly increases with each mountain stage, he has not displayed any hint of weakness. Another tell-tale sign of his rising confidence is that, despite being regularly labelled surly and cold by unsympathetic sectors of the press, the "joke count" in the news conferences after each victory is steadily rising.

Certainly US Postal's two Spanish climbers, Jose Luis Rubiera and Roberto Heras, have put in sterling work for the American.

Heras guided Armstrong to within 500 metres of the line on Thursday's stage to La Mongie ski station, and Rubiera led him for nearly nine kilometres on the interminable climb of Plateau de Beille before watching ­ like the rest of the opposition ­ as his team leader blasted off to a second consecutive victory.

But Beloki disagrees. "The only way to defeat him is a mass attack, yet he can be defeated," the Once-Eroski leader says. This is heretical to the majority of the péloton in the face of all the evidence and, fittingly, the Tour travelled deep through Cathar country yesterday where Béziers is one of the cult's former strongholds.

However, Béziers was also the scene, in 1209, of one of the worst massacres by Catholic Crusaders of the religious dissenters.

And as cycling faces up to another year of monotonous domination of its premier event by the American, the chances are that what remains of this year's Tour will see Armstrong lead his blue-clad troops to another sporting wipeout of the voices in the wilderness like Beloki.

Or, as Millar himself put it at the finish: "I'm not going to fight for the Tour de France overall for a couple of years ­ maybe when Lance retires."