Electric bike being called "motorized doping" or whatever

[Echoes]

I'm a linguist. So the use of the right word matters a lot to me, though it may sound boring.

In newspaper or on the net (including this forum), I often come across phrases like "motorized doping" or "electric doping" or whatever. As if doping were a synonym of cheating.

In a way this whole debate gladdens me because it underlines the fact that doping is NOT the only form of cheating this sport has had to face and equipment technology cheating is as old if not older than biological cheating (doping).

Remember:

1933: Francis Faure broke the Hour record on a recumbent bike
1984: Francesco Moser broke Merckx's Hour record twice on a revolutionary bike (lenticular wheels, aerodynamic frame, etc) and then the ITT in Verona (Giro) on the same bike
1989: Greg LeMond introduced the tri bars into the peloton. Fignon came with it to the GP Merckx and wasn't allowed to ride.

All of these cases were cheating (including LeMond now over-hyped as a presumed clean rider). Then came these supersonic bikes: O'Bree's, Boardman's, Collinelli's and Bellutti's (in Atlanta), and so on.

 

[ingsve]

Well, I don't think it's completely wrong to use the word doping. The word "doping" or "to dope" is not only used for performance enhancing drugs but is also used in a lot of other situations. You can dope a surface with a lubricant or you can dope a semiconductor with an additional substance etc. In all cases to dope means to add something in order to improve some characteristic or improve performance. So in that respect it can be justified to use the word dope for adding additional parts to a bike in order to improve performance.

As for the technological examples you name the difference is that in alot of those cases the specific technology wasn't illegal but the UCI quickly changed the rules in order to prevent these changes from dominating.

 

[dgodave]

There's nothing "cheating" about using plainly visible bike tech innovations that fall within the rules.
.

 

[Echoes]

What ???

Aerodynamic frame was illegal in 1984.
Tri bar was illegal in 1989. It's not for nothing that Fignon was kept from the GP Merckx.