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London mayor Ken Livingstone, Chris Boardman, and Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme (L-R)(Image credit: AFP Photo)

When it comes to time trials, Britain's Chris Boardman didn't just master the rule book: he wrote it. What started with a 10-mile national Road Time Trial Council title as a schoolboy in 1984, was refined in to a World Time Trial Champion jersey a decade later, with a wad of titles and records in between. While some criticized the rider's lack of climbing ability, the dual Olympic medallist still has a that would make most envious.

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Boardman rates Millar at an even remoter chance of taking the event-opening victory from the yellow jersey hungry peloton. Despite his wider odds, Boardman believes Millar could benefit tomorrow if he's finally reached his peak form of the season. "I think Dave has not had that form yet, which means he could be getting there," he cautioned. "He also has the experience of having done it before. I would say he has a one in seven chance of winning."

It's hard to have a conversation about this year's start in England without the name Mark Cavendish popping up. The 22 year-old Manxman has experienced a stellar season to date, having notched up a ProTour stage victory in the Volta a Catalunya, and Boardman believes there's a certain stage to Canterbury which has the T-Mobile rider's name on it. "Stage 1, Mark Cavendish! I really believe he can do it," signalled Boardman. "He's very confident, even arrogant at times - which is all part of the required make up.

With youngsters such as Cavendish showing their strengths, despite still being a neo-professional in the latter's case, Boardman sees his countrymen developing Tour victories into something even more special in coming years: general classification victory in the world's greatest race. "I think it's only a matter of time," he admitted. "As the system grows and we get more riders coming through I think it will happen. Geraint Thomas is a very interesting prospect: it will be interesting to see how he develops."

"I don't think Vinourikov can do it, unless he has totally changed," revealed Boardman. "He shows his cards too early, it just doesn't make sense. Cadel Evans and Carlos Sastre don't seem to have the right emotional make up - they showed last year that they are happy to race for second place. Michael Rogers, now he could do it, he has the right sense of calm, but he will have Klöden to contend with.

As a passionate supporter of the sport, Boardman is hopeful the Tour doesn't unfold in a similar fashion to that of last year's race, when a surprise break, including eventual runnerup Oscar Pereiro, claimed 20 minutes over the peloton on Stage 13. "Last year was crazy, they raced like amateurs," criticized Boardman. "I could not believe they would allow a guy who had finished top ten to take 30 minutes. Then at the end they start spitting 'it's not my job to chase'. Ridiculous."

Boardman, who struggled to keep up with the peloton in the late '90s, threw his support behind the UCI's new doping charter, in a bid to clean up the sport. "I have been saying for years that the UCI have the power to, and should do something like this," he said. "It's quite simple; make the penalties so high that the risk is not worth taking, give the simple option of DNA testing if you want to race, or stay home. They have the power - and from what I've seen this is harsh, but seems to be what they are doing."

While the sport has endured a promotional disaster period since Operación Puerto broke 12 months ago, Boardman is hopeful that something meaningful will come as a result of the lost talents - including Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and others. "Ullrich, it's a shame a real shame - such a talent," he started. "It's been interesting to observe; it's hard to know what to think. Obviously it's not good for the image of the sport, but hopefully long term it will allow things to clean up."

Over the years Boardman won many time trials and prologues; but the Tour prologue was always his main objective. In fact, Boardman was the first rider to focus specifically on winning Tour prologues. "Until I came along nobody had really specialised in the prologue. I remember catching Luc Leblanc in the prologue - he was sat bolt upright on an alloy bike. I could not believe that riders were still setting up and changing kit on race day. That has all changed now, after all it's the chance of a stage and the yellow jersey, the most famous in the world."

Boardman has a multitude of memorable moments during his extensive career, in both track and road racing. One that ranks amongst the highest in many people's eyes was that famous crash in the '95 Tour's Prologue. "I truly believed at that time that I knew where the edge of the envelope lay, foolish!" confessed Boardman of his mistake. "Just weeks before that I had been attacking Indurain downhill in sleet; figuring that he was bigger than me and I could get away with it.

While some touted the ITT master as a genuine GC contender in the French Grand Tour, despite Boardman's own objections at the time, it was never to be. Boardman simply lacked the recovery ability to win such an intensive race, he said in hindsight. "I honestly didn't know what I was capable of, so yes I really thought I could achieve more," he explained. "But the big thing was that I found that I could not recover every day and race like that for three weeks. I found what I was good at - basically riding a pursuit on tarmac. In '97, at the end of the season we sat down to plan for the following year, it was then that I realised we were planning to stand still, which was pretty well when I decided that was it."

During his time at the top, Boardman's rivals included some of the best cycling has ever seen - Miguel Indurain, Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong. Boardman, who knocked off Eddy Merckx hour record and held the title for five years, believes Indurain was the finest of his contemporaries. "Not only as a bike rider but as a person," declared Boardman of the man who beat him to ITT gold in Atlanta. "He was a normal down to earth and really nice guy, and no matter what he never lost sight of that. As a professional or course Armstrong stands out, a thorough professional."

Of all his vast array of achievements Boardman lists the Barcelona Olympics as not only the starting point, as he turned professional the following year, but in some ways the pinnacle of his career. Of course, the Tour also ranks highly on the lists. "The yellow jersey is the ultimate cycling accolade, and the hour record is something personal," he noted. "In '96 I had my best ever form, I'd struggled through the Tour, getting dropped after five kilometres of a 270 km stage, and had great form from it.

"The bronze I won at Atlanta in the TT was a real high, and the hour record I did that year was set when I was in my best ever shape," he added. "Put Armstrong, Indurain, anybody in their best shape there on that track and they would have a real fight to beat that - so that holds a very special place for me. The athletes record, sure I was the best I could be at the time, but way off my best, it was something of a swansong. In retrospect I should have used round tubes back in '96."

Since that success in 1992, Britain has, thanks largely to lottery funding, gone on to become the world's leading track racing nation, and is finally starting to make inroads into the higher echelons of professional road racing. "We have to concentrate on the track, as that's where we are winning Olympic gold medals, and it's those medal that give us the funding for development," explained Boardman of the program which has produced riders like Cavendish and Thomas.

Rather like the original Australian Institute of Sport system, which was also heavily track-biased before managing to spread its wings thanks to slowly developing road results, Britain now has a base in Italy. "It's the ideal way to expose riders to international racing and living," admitted Boardman. "Initially it's aimed at the track endurance riders, but it is allowing us to develop those riders into road riders, and to gradually feed them in to the right pro teams."

That nurturing is something seen as very important to the 'overlords' at British Cycling; "We want to develop the riders and lead them in the right direction," noted Boardman of British Cycling's ambition. "With all of the doping issues we want to be as sure as we can to help them avoid those problems. The only 100 percent sure-fire way of doing that would be to set up a national Pro Tour team, and there has been talk, so maybe one day it could happen."

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