Re: Re:
Franklin said:
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That these stories are absent until relatively recently is no proof (absence of evidence is no proof), but it's certainly noteworthy.
I agree it's noteworthy (and have said so several times in the past) and I tried to address/explain some of it in this post:
viewtopic.php?p=2139233#p2139233
2. Speeds did not miraculously improve and there's no generation suddenly dropping off (which did happen when Epo entered the peloton). The only one who dramatically faded was Miguel Indurain and there are more mundane explanations (he did not dare Riis 60% and mentally he was kaput).
This is a good point but it's debatable.
The myth of EPO causing a generation to drop off is largely based on one rider dropping off, Greg Lemond, for whom, ironically, there are several reasons to believe he used EPO himself. Sure, there were some other oldies who couldn't follow anymore. And if motors started in the mid-90s, we have Indurain dropping off and arguably a handful of others. Quite similar to the EPO drop off, if you think about it. Having said that, I would never argue that motors spread as fast as EPO did. So I wouldn't really expect an entire generation to have dropped off due to motors in the first place.
3. There's a technological issue. There's a noise issue with mid drive motors as they are not brushless. Of course Varjas could have made a near silent brushless mid motor, but it would be a mechanical tour de force, especially with that era's technology. What makes this even more suspect is that his Maglev Wheel is technological pretty much bunk. Lastly, we also need to take stock of battery technology. Small yet meaningful is something that only relatively recently hit the market.
The noise issue has been done and dealt with before in this thread (and i'll briefly address it again further below). Also, as mentioned several times before, nobody thinks or argues that Varjas represents the state of the art in motorized bike technology. Quite on the contrary.
Did Varjas have access to exotic stuff (even space-technology as he claimed)? I sincerely doubt it. He would be so far before the curb, yet it would have been in a relatively peanut-gallery called pro-cycling. The amount of money to be had from this technology, yet he made stuff for pro's for a few K? It's implausible.
I don't know. This is not the most important part of his statements, I think.
More interesting is that he was able to fit an old model motor in an 1999 model Trek. The batteries were quite large back then, whereas the tubes were generally quite thin. Nonetheless, he managed to neatly fit the old motor in the tube in front of a crew of journalists, which suggests it was by design.
We can go on about several other things Varjas has said, and I don't doubt he has exaggerated certain points. But the thrust of what he's said is simply plausible and is backed up by various other (insider) accounts.
Also, watch him talk. There's really nothing there that suggests he's lying through his teeth. If you read different interviews with him, you'll see it's all pretty much consistent. (Unlike the typical lying procyclist, say, Froome, whose bodylanguage is all over the place and whose stories are never consistent.)
Varjas has also been quite open about his motivation for speaking up: he had a professional conflict with his former employer, Typhoon bikes.
Now if we turn the clock 10 years forward to 2005? Battery technology made a decent jump (Li-ion made it's way to laptops), though capacities were still quite low density. But it becomes certainly more in the realm of possibilities. 2010? It's still next gen (brushless mid-motors still have not hit the market in 2017), but brushless hub engines did exist (albeit prohibitively large).
So 2005? I could see that. 2010? A technician with skill and means surely could cook up something that give 50 watts silently for a few minutes.
it's in my mind no coincidence that the rumors are pretty much in line with what was technologically possible, even if it has not hit the market.
We're very much on the same page here. (btw, look for Scienceiscool's posts in this thread to find some very interesting discussion of battery technology and of what is/was feasible and what not.)
*The Vivrax engine is most certainly not silent!*.
Again, this has been discussed previously in the thread. But to summarize: Vivax made a silent consumer version in 2013. Now, if they made it silent for consumers in 2013, for pro's, with the help of F1 engineering, it could have been silent much much earlier. But it's largely a moot point, because
(a) who's gonna hear your motor when you turn it on on the slopes of the Ventoux or Alpe Dhuez or on the cobbles of PR?
(b) even if someone did hear a motor, that's where the omerta comes into play isn't it.
Fact is we don't know exactly when which kind of tech was being used let alone by whom. Motors are pretty much like doping in this specific regard. We know roughly what's going on, but we never get the full picture.
I could be utterly wrong and perhaps Ris and LA used electronic support. But i find it a lot less plausible than the good old jet-fueled support. So far nothing even remotely verifiable came up whereas with Epo all stories tended to collaborate (and were based on known drugs).
Let me just put this here, from 1979 (iinm):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YXDL7P7_zY&feature=youtu.be
Now go back and have a look at what some of the TT bikes in the 90s looked like...Plenty of space to work with I'd say.
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