A weary David Millar was recovering at his hotel in Barcelona after yet another near-miss for his Garmin team on the sixth stage of the 2009 Tour de France, from his adopted home of Girona to the rain-swept Catalan capital.

Millar’s breakaway attack almost bore fruit, but the Scot was caught within sight of victory as the peloton climbed towards the finish line in Montjuic park. One of the handful of British riders in the Tour peloton, Millar came close to scoring the third British stage win — following Mark Cavendish’s pair of sprint victories — in six days.

“It hadn’t even crossed my mind before the stage to attack,” he said. “It was one of those things that just started snowballing. I felt very strong in the last 25 kilometres, and I think if it had been flat I would have won. But the last climb scuppered me.”

Millar agreed that the 2009 Tour’s first week had been intriguing. “It’s hard to tell when you’re in it, but it’s been a bit different this year,” he said. “It always feels a bit like wacky races because it’s so stressy, so high-pressure, and there are so many guys in peak form. This year, it’s been very unpredictable, because the format is so mixed.”

Despite intense speculation, Millar — like his Garmin team-mate, Bradley Wiggins — has opted not to join the burgeoning Sky road racing team, being developed by Team GB Performance Director David Brailsford, for the 2010 season.

“I am staying at Garmin,” Millar confirmed. “Sky wasn’t really a temptation, although Dave Brailsford is a good friend of mine. Obviously I have spoken to them about it, but my heart is at this team and I have put so much blood sweat and tears into it.”

Millar is likely to put more of the same into the Tour’s seventh stage to Andorra-Arcalis ski station, in which he will revert to a support role for his Garmin team-mates.

“I will be at Christian and Wiggo’s [Wiggins] disposal and just look after them as much as I can,” he said. “Bradley’s spent the last four years working on the Olympic cycle but now that’s behind him and he’s putting everything into the road. He’s now giving full gas to road racing.”

Millar, who knows Lance Armstrong better than most in the Tour de France peloton, has, like many others, been impressed by the American’s return to the race he dominated for seven years.

“He’s just unbelievable,” Millar said. “Tell him he can’t do it and he’ll do it. That’s what he does. I don’t think you can tell for sure until the first mountain stage, but I think he’s going to be good.”

The Scot, who turned professional at the Cofidis team just as then team-mate Armstrong took his first unsteady steps towards a racing comeback after recovering from testicular cancer, believes that the Texan is more easy-going than in the past.

“He’s more relaxed and I think he’s benefitting from having [Alberto] Contador as apparent Astana leader, although I think in Lance’s eyes he’s not," Millar said. "I have been talking to Lance, having a bit of a laugh. I think he’s just really loving being back at the Tour. He seems to be having fun.

“It was always cold and calculating before and he was pretty robotic, which was what he had to be to win seven Tours, but now he has this ‘nothing to lose’ persona.”

Despite the disappointment of having come close, with his team-mates, to victory in the team time-trial and then to solo success in Barcelona, Millar stated that he will try to win a stage later on in the Tour. “From now I will have to pick and choose my days, so there will be some days when I take it easy,” he said. “But I will definitely try again.”