Re:
Tienus said:
It sounds like we agree in general.
Yes I feel the same.
Tienus said:
Its got nothing to do with the motor discussion but I dont see him making a tactical mistake. Its the last lap iirc and overtaking just before a turn can give you a huge advantage. If he would not be riding close to the limit he would not be that good.
You're right, I retract this statement as it was clearly nonsensical.
What I wanted to say is that his decision was a bit risky, but if you're not willing to take such risks you better don't buy a cyclocross bike to begin with - let alone trying to win world cup races on it..
Tienus said:
The question is why people think it looks odd and post it.
If van Aert or other riders trick our brains often we have to wonder why did this not happen before and it could ofcourse just be the aftermath of the Femke incident.
I echo King Boonens
statements on confirmation bias.
We all have the tendency to see what we want to see or what we expect to see. And right now we're trying hard to find motors - so we're going to find indications for them whereever we look.
I bet you that 10 years ago nobody would have looked at the first two clips of van Aert (his back wheel completely losing tracking in the mud and his pedal hitting the ground while he carries the bike) and have raised any suspicion about a motor being in play. Because nobody even thought about that. But now it's a hot topic and people connect these two clips with motors, even though there is nothing crazy (at least in my mind) to see there.
(There are so many perception biases to fall for, just quickly browse through this
list. Although I'm very aware of them and trying hard to avoid them as good as I can, it's kinda sobering for me to realize from time to time that I'm not very good at it - and others probably neither.)
I guess it's a similar thing with bike changes right now. Since we know that they might be used to switch the dodgy material in and out, all alarm bells go off everytime there is a change. But there are so many bike and wheel changes that they can't possibly be all related to motors. Some of them probably are, most aren't.
And note that I'm not saying that we shouldn't investigate these things (that's the fun part after all), but that it's good to keep in mind that the circumstances make us very prone to seeing ghosts. So we need to be careful otherwise we're guaranteed to fool ourselves.
Speaking of bike changes. Do you remember that there already was a time with rumours about them? (Although they were less frequent than nowadays.) But then it was about people using them to cheat the newly introduced weight limit on climbs. And about some new secret super-light bikes.
This kind of rumour is almost completely gone now. Why? Technology would be there, will and possibility to cheat would be there and it would provide an advantage on climbs for sure. People are not seeing it because they're not looking for it. We only see what we expect to see.
(By the way: I'm not claiming that this is actually a thing now, it's only an example for illustration.)