Re: Mechanical doping: first rider caught
sniper said:
jyl said:
Bavarianrider said:
Anyone with half a brain and eyes in his head knows that it has been used in the pros. While the popular videos of Cancellara or Froome leave a 1% possibility that they didn't use a motor, the one of Hesjedal certainly didn't.
The Hesjedal video is 99% certainly NOT showing a bike being powered by an electric motor. In the video, the bike is sliding on the ground during the crash, laid on its side, and
the cranks are not turning. That means it cannot possibly be powered by the Vivax Assist motor or any similar one, since they work by driving the cranks.
I'm not aware of any other motor system that would be concealed well enough for motor doping.
No, there cannot have been a rear wheel motor in that bike. A wheel motor system requires an oversized hub (to contain the motor), a reaction arm between hub and frame, and wires between hub and battery (unless the battery is contained in the hub, in which case the hub is grossly oversized, like a dinner plate). Those would all be obvious.
with all respect, I'm 99% sure the boldfaced means very little.
Some really need to read the following two threads before repeating old arguments.
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22884&hilit=motor
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7745
Yeah, I read those threads.
Some people theorized the switch of a Vivax Assist system got knocked momentarily to "on" by the impact. If there was a motor causing the bike to slide during the crash, it was not the Vivax or any other crank drive system, since the cranks are not rotating when the bike is sliding. We know the cranks are not rotating because we can see the drive side pedal and it isn't rotating relative to the frame, and also because the frame is not moving up and down as it would if the non drive side crank/pedal were rotating against the ground.
[Edit: the way the Vivax system works is, you press the button for several seconds while pedaling your desired cadence, to set the motor rpm (must be between 50 and 90 rpm), then the next time you push the button, if you are pedaling at least 15 rpm, the motor turns on and drives the crank at the preset cadence.
http://www.vivax-assist.com/en/produkte/technik/bedienung.html Hesjesdal, if using a Vivax, would have preset the cadence to 80 rpm or whatever he normally rides at in the situation where he planned to use the motor. If the impact somehow pushed the button, and somehow defeated the 15 rpm limit, so that the motor started running, the cranks would have started rotating at 80 rpm with 250 (or 110, depending on setting) watts power. That would, I think, have been extremely obvious. Now, watching the video, the slow-mo version, when he starts sliding on the ground, his right foot is clipped in, when his foot unclips, that pedal (drive side, right pedal) is at about 12 oclock (if viewed from the right side of the bike), it stays at about 12 oclock for the rest of the video, until the camera bike runs over the bike and we lose sight of the pedal.
I think motor doping must be being used, at least on some occasions, in top level racing, LeMond says so, the UCI thinks so - enough to have started this bike checking program and bringing Xray machines and now their portable scanner to races, and now this Belgian rider proves it. I just don't think the Hesjesdal video shows an instance of motor doping.]
A hub drive system would not require the cranks to rotate, but most people on those threads recognized that it couldn't have been a hub drive system, for the reasons mentioned already.
Crank drive and hub drive - these are the only types of motor drive for a bike that I know of. Can you think of any others?. Warp drive?
He falls, he and the bike slide, they both come to a stop, the bike starts moving again. What happens right when the bike starts moving is that he is moving his legs, from whatever position they were in during the fall, to under him so he can get up. It is possible that as one of his feet kicked the bike, perhaps on the saddle, and caused it to rotate. Lay your bike on the pavement, resting on the front wheel and non drive side pedal, and kick the saddle - the bike will rotate. We can't confirm this is what happened, because we can't see his legs or the saddle. But it is more plausible, I think, than a motor system of a currently unknown type.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram