Millar and Lelli acquitted

David Millar and Massimiliano Lelli were acquitted Friday on doping charges stemming from the 2004 Cofidis affair. According to the court, "it could not be determined whether the accused behavior took place in the national [French] territory."

Physiotherapist Boguslaw Madejak was sentenced to one year imprisonment, with nine months suspended. Seven other individuals received suspended sentences of three to six months.

Millar admitted to having used EPO and was stripped of his world time trial championship title. He served a two-year suspension and returned to the peloton just in time for the 2006 Tour de France.

According to Reuters, Millar's Cofidis team tried to seek damages for what it viewed as harm to its image, but judge Ghislaine Polge threw out the request, saying "Through its involvement in professional cycling, its established knowledge of doping and the absence of significant measures to eliminate it, Cofidis could not have been unaware of the well-known doping phenomenon or of its magnitude.