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Motor doping thread

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"Disassembling bikes during after-stage controls is not common."

Sorry about the spam. This isn't surprising, but it's still shocking, to be honest. And a very important point. I think the reason is that the teams get very angry, as in the incident described above. I don't imagine they're likely to do it if they have a bike mechanic screaming at them. Especially not after every stage, stage after stage.

I've now officially lost my mind. To the point of a profile picture and signature...

Why didn't the Slovenians want to hand over the bike to the UCI? Because of the bike computer? Because they wanted to remove a motor first? Is such a thing even possible? With a motor in the rear hub it'd be pretty easy to change the wheel - if given the opportunity of course. I legitimately had the idea that the soigneaur might have a "spare" wheel in his massive bag...

Well, this mental state will probably pass soon. Then I'll have to remove my profile picture and signature; like a poorly thought through tattoo.
Still, as long as there's a fair risk that the bike of top performers on MTFs gets disassembled, it'd be crazy to risk it. No team could tolerate even a 1 % chance of getting caught, if the process isn't corrupted. And if it is corrupted, I don't see how they could allow disassembling a bike after the main MTF of the race.

If Roglič didn't use a motor for Loze which was one of his best performances at the time, then I find it very unlikely that any of his best performances in that time period was motor-assisted.
 
If Roglič didn't use a motor for Loze which was one of his best performances at the time, then I find it very unlikely that any of his best performances in that time period was motor-assisted.
I wouldn't have thought that anyway, to be fair. Pogacar on the final TT would be the suspect there. Doesn't seem out of the question that, that would be the beginning of an ongoing motor doping rennaissance.
 
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Is it credible that a rider wouldn't know they had a motor fitted? It seems implausible that you wouldn't notice the performance boost.

I see some of the traffic in the Pogacar thread suggests you could have such a set up. It gets into the realms of the Virenque "willingly but not knowingly" defence. It does mean you could reduce the number of people in a team that know what is going on.
I can't see how a rider wouldn't know. There isn't limitless power available and the rider typically initiates the boost. If you are a pro you know if your saddle is several millimeters too low, your bars slightly twisted and if the tire pressure is getting low. You'd know if you suddenly had 40 watts more of power; particularly if not peddaling.
 
Is it credible that a rider wouldn't know they had a motor fitted? It seems implausible that you wouldn't notice the performance boost.
Warning: I'm going to push things a bit too far, this is just cycling-fiction.

Watching the Passy-Combloux TT episode in the Netflix series, something disturbed me. Clearly Vingegaard doesn't understand what his power meter indicates at the end of the race and he can't believe what he has achieved. He seems overwhelmed. Keep in mind the to-change-or-not-to-change-bike dilemma. They chose not to change bike, and so had him climb with a TT bike (a portion in which he still gained time over Pogacar).

Vingo seems to have a particular psychological profile, prone to fear, probably quite fragile. His team told they worked hard with him on his psychology. It seems to me that he could be quite receptive to mental manipulation. And thus that he might not have noticed, having been convinced that he could fly, that his bike was subtly providing extra watts (a simple ‘very good legs’ feeling). Here is a quote from his post-race conversation with his masseur: ‘I was holding back in between the climbs on the flat parts, pushed 360 watts, I was like I just push easy, then I looked down: 380.’ With the result we know: he has undoubtedly done the TT of his life and didn't need those extra watts, which made his performance highly questionable.

The case of Pogi is different. By now, he is probably having good time in his home in Monaco (a 2 km2 state with no personal income tax full of rich people), a beautiful, too big and awfully expensive home he paid with the UAE dollars. The guy may be charming and lively, he may offer bottles to children, he has no principles. So he might know what he is doing.

In any case, if doped bikes are involved, I guess the less people in the know, the better. Ideally, hide it to the rider himself. Which leads to a legal question: what if a rider were to have an accident (I don't hope so) while riding a modified bike without knowing it? Not good.

End of the cy-fi. After all, it could also just be that he had too much porridge in the morning.
 
Warning: I'm going to push things a bit too far, this is just cycling-fiction.

Watching the Passy-Combloux TT episode in the Netflix series, something disturbed me. Clearly Vingegaard doesn't understand what his power meter indicates at the end of the race and he can't believe what he has achieved. He seems overwhelmed. Keep in mind the to-change-or-not-to-change-bike dilemma. They chose not to change bike, and so had him climb with a TT bike (a portion in which he still gained time over Pogacar).

Vingo seems to have a particular psychological profile, prone to fear, probably quite fragile. His team told they worked hard with him on his psychology. It seems to me that he could be quite receptive to mental manipulation. And thus that he might not have noticed, having been convinced that he could fly, that his bike was subtly providing extra watts (a simple ‘very good legs’ feeling). Here is a quote from his post-race conversation with his masseur: ‘I was holding back in between the climbs on the flat parts, pushed 360 watts, I was like I just push easy, then I looked down: 380.’ With the result we know: he has undoubtedly done the TT of his life and didn't need those extra watts, which made his performance highly questionable.

The case of Pogi is different. By now, he is probably having good time in his home in Monaco (a 2 km2 state with no personal income tax full of rich people), a beautiful, too big and awfully expensive home he paid with the UAE dollars. The guy may be charming and lively, he may offer bottles to children, he has no principles. So he might know what he is doing.

In any case, if doped bikes are involved, I guess the less people in the know, the better. Ideally, hide it to the rider himself. Which leads to a legal question: what if a rider were to have an accident (I don't hope so) while riding a modified bike without knowing it? Not good.

End of the cy-fi. After all, it could also just be that he had too much porridge in the morning.
I think the main support for Vingegaard having a motor for that TT is the way his knees kept flying out and that it looked like he was pedaling too fast for the gearing. Only way we will ever see a motor come to light at the top is if someone’s bike breaks apart like Contador’s in 2014.
 
Warning: I'm going to push things a bit too far, this is just cycling-fiction.

Watching the Passy-Combloux TT episode in the Netflix series, something disturbed me. Clearly Vingegaard doesn't understand what his power meter indicates at the end of the race and he can't believe what he has achieved. He seems overwhelmed. Keep in mind the to-change-or-not-to-change-bike dilemma. They chose not to change bike, and so had him climb with a TT bike (a portion in which he still gained time over Pogacar).

Vingo seems to have a particular psychological profile, prone to fear, probably quite fragile. His team told they worked hard with him on his psychology. It seems to me that he could be quite receptive to mental manipulation. And thus that he might not have noticed, having been convinced that he could fly, that his bike was subtly providing extra watts (a simple ‘very good legs’ feeling). Here is a quote from his post-race conversation with his masseur: ‘I was holding back in between the climbs on the flat parts, pushed 360 watts, I was like I just push easy, then I looked down: 380.’ With the result we know: he has undoubtedly done the TT of his life and didn't need those extra watts, which made his performance highly questionable.

The case of Pogi is different. By now, he is probably having good time in his home in Monaco (a 2 km2 state with no personal income tax full of rich people), a beautiful, too big and awfully expensive home he paid with the UAE dollars. The guy may be charming and lively, he may offer bottles to children, he has no principles. So he might know what he is doing.

In any case, if doped bikes are involved, I guess the less people in the know, the better. Ideally, hide it to the rider himself. Which leads to a legal question: what if a rider were to have an accident (I don't hope so) while riding a modified bike without knowing it? Not good.

End of the cy-fi. After all, it could also just be that he had too much porridge in the morning.
With how the riders seem psychologically I agree Jonas seem to be the most easily duped. But I am not convinced that it's because he's fragile.

I am not fully conviced that he is fragile. I am not convinced on anything a team PR likes to show off.

But Jonas "Which one is the blue jersey?" Vingegaard for sure does seem easy to confuse. Remco seems smarter, as does Roglic. I've no idea about Pog but I am starting to get the feeling that he's the guy who doesn't stop at anything.

I don't get the latter vibe from Jonas. But what do I know :D
 
Warning: I'm going to push things a bit too far, this is just cycling-fiction.

Watching the Passy-Combloux TT episode in the Netflix series, something disturbed me. Clearly Vingegaard doesn't understand what his power meter indicates at the end of the race and he can't believe what he has achieved. He seems overwhelmed. Keep in mind the to-change-or-not-to-change-bike dilemma. They chose not to change bike, and so had him climb with a TT bike (a portion in which he still gained time over Pogacar).

Vingo seems to have a particular psychological profile, prone to fear, probably quite fragile. His team told they worked hard with him on his psychology. It seems to me that he could be quite receptive to mental manipulation. And thus that he might not have noticed, having been convinced that he could fly, that his bike was subtly providing extra watts (a simple ‘very good legs’ feeling). Here is a quote from his post-race conversation with his masseur: ‘I was holding back in between the climbs on the flat parts, pushed 360 watts, I was like I just push easy, then I looked down: 380.’ With the result we know: he has undoubtedly done the TT of his life and didn't need those extra watts, which made his performance highly questionable.

The case of Pogi is different. By now, he is probably having good time in his home in Monaco (a 2 km2 state with no personal income tax full of rich people), a beautiful, too big and awfully expensive home he paid with the UAE dollars. The guy may be charming and lively, he may offer bottles to children, he has no principles. So he might know what he is doing.

In any case, if doped bikes are involved, I guess the less people in the know, the better. Ideally, hide it to the rider himself. Which leads to a legal question: what if a rider were to have an accident (I don't hope so) while riding a modified bike without knowing it? Not good.

End of the cy-fi. After all, it could also just be that he had too much porridge in the morning.
I'd like to try that porridge once.
 
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Well, I wouldn't say that I know that "it all" (whatever it is we are seeing now) started with that TT... Just that it would make a lot of sense. Or at least that it was an early major example of things having changed.
In the current progress-averse world operating on a larger scale version of a used car salesman’s ethics, our best shot at knowing something lies not in any official announcements and “confessions” (like Lance’s), but, rather, on using our own brains and the totality of our experience.

In the present case, that 2020 TDF final TT you mentioned really does look like the beginning of the renaissance of systematic motor doping which led, after four years, to the ridiculous “annus mirabilis” we all have just witnessed, with one person winning 5 out 9 year’s big races (and, let us face it, he could’ve easily won Flanders as well had they chosen to field him in it, but, I guess, something had to be left for the future, as “he is still improving”) while not trying hard at all. And it is the same person who did that miraculous TT besting specialists on the flat in the “coal miner” position. And that truly miraculous TT (unless you are willing to make excuses and really stretch yourself doing so) was the beginning of equally miraculous – if you are willing to call a spade a spade, apologists’ singing notwithstanding – rise that saw him, along the way win Flanders, despite being a smallish skinny climber, and challenge for MSR previously considers a sprinters’ monument. And that rise, of course, culminated (but maybe not yet) in the ridiculously obscene – again, if you are willing to verbalize what you see, – 2024. Now, if one takes all things highlighted in this paragraph in their totality, there is literally no other rational explanation, except for motor-doping.

Now take the whole story of Lance, who has to be called the first systematic motor doper -- and not so much a regular (chemical )doper/terrible person (yeah, right, that is his main fault) he was portrayed to be during his exposition theatric saga of a decade ago. So let us look at the total picture of Lance as a bike racer. He obviously was a puncheur In the Phil Gil mold, a relatively bulky guy with good explosive/anaerobic capacity but not good at all at long steady efforts (like 50k+ TTs of the era), leave alone high mountain climbing. So, naturally, he was never considered remotely capable of challenging for GT GC, just like Phil Jil, Sagan, or Matthew of the Pole. That was just not in his natural skill set, based on this natural talent. Recall that in his best pre-cancer year, he was even able to win Fleche Wallone (a single 3min climb race), just like Phil Gil in 2011. For both of them, that was right on the boundary of their natural talent: the Muur is just short enough for a larger puncheur in top form to make it to the end. But then came his “cancer” followed by a miraculous transformation from Saul to Paul which made him a top TDF contender, a not just a contender, but, for a period of time, a guaranteed winner. Almost overnight – and coming back from a ”near-terminal cancer”, no less – he transformed from a dud time-trialist like that (at around 3:15)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGPGm38wt5g
into someone regularly beating doped to the gills Ulrich who was essentially a second coming of Indurain. On top of that, he performed these TT feats sitting in a “coal miner” hunchback position remarkably similar to that displayed by ‘Pogi’ in 2020 TDF TT. Putting it in power terms, the Hunchback of Texas had to develop at least 50W more than doped Ulrich (a natural time trialist of Indurain caliber) in steady 1 hour power output. Are we willing to believe he did it essentially on the same doping that everyone else, including Ulrich himself, was using at the time? Formulated this way, the question takes on a mightily rhetorical flavor, doesn’t it? Indeed, just TTs alone, without even bringing high mountain climbing into the picture, should tell us enough for a fully rational (i.e. the one taking into account everything we know about the result and the possible means of its achievement: it comes pretty handy that brushless/lipo technology and bike frames with large internal volume and low weight came into wide use just at that time) conclusion on the matter. Lance beating Ulrich in a long TT on only regular doping sounds as likely as, say, Phil Gil putting time into, for example, Tony Martin, in a flat 50k time trial.

Why was then the Lance expose show staged, with him even showing up on yellow TV shows, like “Oprah” shedding repentant tears in truly Hollywood-like fashion, with us all being fed that silly tale about a “bully” and a “terrible person”? That looked just like a cover-up, the main purpose of which was to prevent the true nature of Lancy’s TDF wins from being exposed. Apparently, the system was not tight enough (read: sufficiently monopolized) yet, and some kind of internal conflict made such unwanted exposure possible.

And, on top of everything just mentioned, we have a recent Guardian (where the writers hear all kinds in internal rumors, no doubt) article where the circus show nature of this pro cycling season is so thinly veiled that it shows right through. How much more knowledge do we need or can realistically hope to obtain?

P.S. If one tries to look at the brighter side of all these developments, one could speculate a bit if the cycling show could still keep its entertainment value for more traditional and less simply minded fans, compared to the latest crop thereof. Imagine, several years later, the “superman” chapter gets old, motor usage becomes an open secret and takes on a truly wide-spread character. Then UCI could implicitly regulate it by, say, mandating an upper limit on bike weights (10kg, for example) and limiting the number of bike changes in a race. Then we would be all in the “no holds barred” competition fueled by the “arms race” of teams to produce best and baddest “supercharged” bikes. Pedal pushing ability would still be very important at this maximum bike weight, make no mistake about that. So, the sport would not turn into some kind of a slow motorcycling. Then imagine 50+ km/h average GT speeds, 60km/h charges up the Poggio and 90km/h sprints. Think about the excitement thereof for the spectators. And imagine the trickle-down effect, with “UAE edition supercharged” cutting edge bikes being available for order via your LBS. How about prices exceeding that of an average car? Can’t you feel the rush already?:)
 
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How is it not possible to calculate the amount of power put down by looking at the cadence and the gearing (we must have some knowledge of the riders' setups, and at least which chainring they're on should be discernible on video from the races)? Then compare that to the W/kg required for the speed. What if there's a significant gap?
 
How is it not possible to calculate the amount of power put down by looking at the cadence and the gearing (we must have some knowledge of the riders' setups, and at least which chainring they're on should be discernible on video from the races)? Then compare that to the W/kg required for the speed. What if there's a significant gap?
The problem is that you won't learn anything from it. There are kinemaric relationships between the speed and the rotational parts but what remains hidden is the torque. Power is force*speed or torque*rotational-speed. The question is: what delivers the torque? Is it only the person or is a motor adding some torque as well?
 
The problem is that you won't learn anything from it. There are kinemaric relationships between the speed and the rotational parts but what remains hidden is the torque. Power is force*speed or torque*rotational-speed. The question is: what delivers the torque? Is it only the person or is a motor adding some torque as well?
Ah, of course, the pedals rotate by themselves, when using the motor...
 
The problem is that you won't learn anything from it. There are kinemaric relationships between the speed and the rotational parts but what remains hidden is the torque. Power is force*speed or torque*rotational-speed. The question is: what delivers the torque? Is it only the person or is a motor adding some torque as well?
That's right: gear and cadence would allow us to calculate their forward speed, but, to compute the power, one would need to know the total force of resistance that results from air resistance (the largest contribution at racing speeds), rolling resistance (relatively small) and total friction in the system (small as well). That is all true for riding on the flat. Uphill, additional power is required to produce mechanical work against gravity. That power is equal to the product of the vertical ascent speed (the product of the speed on the road by the sine of the corresponding incline angle) by mg, where m is the mass of the rider + bike and g is the good old 9.8 m/s^2. The steeper the incline, the larger portion of the power produced by the rider (plus a good bit extra for, at least, Lance and Pog) goes there leaving relatively little to overcome the total resistance which, being proportional to the power of speed that is between 2 and 3, becomes correspondingly smaller since the speed uphill (even for Pog, yet) drops significantly.

That is why VAM is such an important characteristic of mountain climbing and is closely related to those W/kg almost independently of the “aero” and “rolling resistance” stuff. As we all know, that is why being aero becomes progressively unimportant as the road gets steeper. Aero still matters but comparatively little. This is what allows Pog to ride uphill in his “coal miner” upright position and not cause immediate questions even from the simplest kind of fans. Imagine what would have ensued had he ridden a flat TT with 45 degrees angle of his torso to horizontal. (But, I guess, his new fans would still not suspect a thing.)

In flat TTs, we can estimate the power production thereof – at least, in relative terms – just looking at the kinematic speed and rider’s body position on the bike. If the latter is of “coal miner” type with a lot of cross-section exposed to the wind, we just know that the power production has to be significantly higher (especially since that the power required to sustain the given speed becomes closer to rising as the third power of the speed itself – most of the total resistance is that of air) compared to someone riding with a flat back. That is why we know that the Hunchback of Texas had to produce significantly more power than Ullrich who was a natural TT prodigy, chemically doped to the gills on top of that. Is it possible for a natural TT dud to be capable of such feats on the same chemical doping? Unless we believe that being a “terrible person” gave him extra powers (from devil himself, perhaps), the above question becomes quite rhetorical again.

Summarizing, we can say that, while the total resistance to forward propulsion – and thus the required power – is not directly observable from the outside, it is mostly directly estimable since the bulk of it stems from gravity and from air resistance, the latter being accounted for chiefly by that of rider’s own body, and the rest being relatively insignificant.

That small “remainder” allows the apologists to speculate on it. We have seen it all here: "modern aero bikes", "modern tires" etc. In fact, they tried this very excuse to argue that, even though 'Pogi' was a lot faster than Pantani in this TDF, the power production could have been very similar precisely because of this "modern" (read: "magical", otherwise it would not have been nearly enough) stuff. What can we say to them? Pog’s vertical speed was a lot (close to 10%) higher, there is no debating that. And, up steep hill, this is the main contributor to required power. Air resistance at over 20km/h would still be the second largest factor, and there, Pog’s “coal miner” position would require significantly more power than Pantani’s climbing in the drops style, even at the same speed, leave along that close to 10% higher. What’s left is minor: rolling resistance, friction in bearings and chain, and some much smaller factors like the air resistance of the bike itself, socks etc. As we have estimated earlier the rolling resistance at that speed could save at most 5-6W, and bike’s air resistance possible savings would be dwarfed by the “coal miner” position alone.
 

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