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Motor doping thread

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Mar 13, 2009
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Tienus said:
Her dad and brother seem busy steeling Parakeets at the moment:
http://www.hln.be/regio/nieuws-uit-jabbeke/-die-familie-deinst-voor-niets-terug-a2603590/

I'll take my alu hat of now

parakeets, doping, cycling, and motors, and a gestalt of all four elements. Whats not to luv. Truly genius scriptwriter

Now, where is biologist Professor Richard Dawkins at Oxford. This is definitely proof of a creator. No one possibly can script this from a Darwinian worldview

is my parakeet hue quite correct?
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Tienus said:
good piece.
it says the UCI was tipped off about the bike, but not by whom or when.

also says her dad was doing carbonreparations at home.

what a load of tosh about the alleged UCI tablet!
Een tablet met röntgensoftware die de framedikte opmeet, signaleert iets massiefs rondom haar trapas. De fiets wordt verzegeld en de UCI geeft een perscommuniqué uit: voor het eerst in de historie van de wielersport wordt er een wielerframe gevonden met daarin verstopt mechanische doping.
right, so the whole peloton had noticed Femke's suspiciously thick tube in previous races (it had been rumored about for months), yet the UCI need a tablet with roentgen software to figure it out.
 
The main points in the article seem to follow our expectations.
- Kleur op Maat is more a loose association than a large team, they provide a single frame, some materials and kit to the riders but little more. The frame provided would probably then be the non-motorized bike 3, but that's speculation on my part.
- The signing was a family affair, with Din also being signed, although he's given up racing since. At this point Femke was 17, so that's not really surprising that the family would have a large say in it, of course.
- By being present at Zolder (and at an unspecified previous number of races) Niels was breaking the terms of his ban
- Prior to being banned Niels had, along with father Peter and her other brother Din, functioned as Femke's mechanics. Peter was bankrupt and the family used a trailer with personal advertising rather than a motorhome as Femke's race base.
- The article strongly suggests all dealings with Femke are family affairs. BKCP had some talks "with the family" but these came to nothing.
- Maud Kaptheijns says she knew Peter does carbon repairs, which raised suspicion when Femke was using a non-standard Wilier frame. As she points out that Wilier only do the one frame in such a style, it would therefore appear to be bike #1 that is referenced here, the one that is clearly different even with the naked eye?
- In your typical e-bike or modified crosser like we've seen links to posted in the thread, the battery is typically under the saddle or in a bottle, whereas Femke's was concealed in the frame. Modifications via additional bits of carbon are required to make this arrangement work, and the quote in the article suggests you'd need somebody who's a capable carbon repairman to be able to do this.

What I take from this:

Nico van Muylder is a pigeon fancier and cafeteria owner. As a friend of the family, it would seem odd that if he WAS going to modify a bike in such a fashion that a) he would want to conceal it, due to the risk of a mixup. b) he wouldn't have asked Peter to do it, since he's a friend and apparently a carbon repairman. All contracts and discussions with Femke appear to be family decisions, but due to her age, until relatively recently you wouldn't see anything necessarily wrong with that. With Din having given up the sport and Niels being banned, and with Peter having been bankrupt and using the trailer for Femke's race gear as the main means by which to advertise his business, it seems that the family almost NEEDS Femke being successful. After all, they seemingly don't have a lot of money what with the existing bankruptcy, those race bikes aren't cheap, and driving around the various race events won't be either. That's a lot of investment being made in her given the circumstances, which obviously piles more pressure on her as well, motor or no motor.

The information filled in by the article here only continues to feed the opinion that the deception is a small group thing and strengthens the argument that Peter is the ringleader. It also would seem to support the Kleur op Maat team position, and it seems fair to say that they would have had little connection if any to what was going on.
 
Re: Re:

sniper said:
And I wasn't claiming knowledge, I was claiming a lack of knowledge.
Back on topic: what is your link meant to show?
It says:
that pretty much supports my point, doesnt it?
Does it? From teams' perspective and their decision making whether to use motorised bikes in a particular race, announcing the check 20 km before the finish (as reported by CN regarding the same event) meets the definition of "unannounced". You can't possibly imagine that after receiving this information over the race radio, Trek stops Cancellara under the Poggio for a bike change, can you?
Moreover, you may read in the same article that they checked also spare bikes.

Therefore, based on this information, you can turn your "lack of knowledge" into "knowledge" (or "reasonable assumption" if you like) that there arguably are unannounced checks of bikes and not only bikes of those who finish the race.
 
From the worldcup in Lignieres-en-Berry (17th Jan) the peloton had noticed the thick tube. A week later she was riding on the same bike in Hoogerheide and it was suspiscious that she did not change bike with the mud conditions. A weak later she rides the same bike in the world championships.

The UCI claims to have confiscated her spare bike.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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PeterB said:
sniper said:
And I wasn't claiming knowledge, I was claiming a lack of knowledge.
Back on topic: what is your link meant to show?
It says:
that pretty much supports my point, doesnt it?
Does it? From teams' perspective and their decision making whether to use motorised bikes in a particular race, announcing the check 20 km before the finish (as reported by CN regarding the same event) meets the definition of "unannounced". You can't possibly imagine that after receiving this information over the race radio, Trek stops Cancellara under the Poggio for a bike change, can you?
Moreover, you may read in the same article that they checked also spare bikes.

Therefore, based on this information, you can turn your "lack of knowledge" into "knowledge" (or "reasonable assumption" if you like) that there arguably are unannounced checks of bikes and not only bikes of those who finish the race.
so it was announced, yet unannounced. :rolleyes:
That's a stretch.
Why announce it at all?
You say "can't possibly imagine...". Why not? I can perfectly imagine that. Though not necessariyl cancellara. We're maybe looking at one or two riders max who were using a motor in that race. If you seriously want to catch those, you're not gonna announce anything through the radio.
Nobrainer.

The spare bike check you have a point there. hadn't seen that. But still, it's all rather vague, "some spare bikes". Mkay.

Bottomline remains: as long as UCI/Cookson continue to suffer multiple grave conflicts of interest, why should you take the testing seriously or put much trust in any of the performances at the pro level?
 
So I seem to have been right to question. Niels is more involved in cycling than the terms of a 2-year doping ban permit. He is ripe for a lifetime ban. If he's not taken care of for good, it reeks of muffling by UCI. But Flemmish ADA can decide to escalate his case for themselves, right?
 
Re:

Tienus said:
From the worldcup in Lignieres-en-Berry (17th Jan) the peloton had noticed the thick tube. A week later she was riding on the same bike in Hoogerheide and it was suspiscious that she did not change bike with the mud conditions. A weak later she rides the same bike in the world championships.

The UCI claims to have confiscated her spare bike.
Not impossible, of course. Bike #2 was raced in Koppenbergcross, and that's the one where the apparent button-press is most obvious. So we have two potential options for the UCI to be telling the truth here.

1) there was some flaw in the motorization system of bike #2 which was resolved in bike #1, but this had a more readily apparent visual impact, hence the suspicion being raised more easily than by bike #2. Alternatively it's different motorization to deal with different conditions. This would require the assumption that both bikes were motorized, and the UCI didn't check bike #1. This also opens up the possibility that they hadn't picked up on the suspicion and had intended to do the whole race on one bike again, but took the motorized bike #2 to the pits instead of the clean bike #3 as we see in the pits in Koppenbergcross.
2) the van den Driessche group had noticed that there was some suspicion of the bike with the fat downtube and her not changing bikes so switched the motor back to bike #2 (assuming it had been there before, because of Koppenbergcross). It would seem just as suspicious for bike #1 to just vanish into the ether, so they planned to start on it and then switch to the motorized bike, only for the spare bike to be taken away before they could do so. I can't imagine they would have "cleaned out" bike #1 and then had bike #3 intended as the spare, ceding the motor advantage, so I disregard this possibility.

Both are plausible but also have flaws, or rather concerns, especially regarding what they mean for the UCI. Maybe they felt that in finding the motorized bike they'd done enough already, they had the smoking gun, not worth testing the race bike. Unless they were stupid enough to think that the bike she got from outside the course (bike 3) is the race one, when it's clearly different with the naked eye. Then again, that was the same ruse Riis pulled with Cancellara's 2010 bikes I guess. Femke didn't have her bike when she climbed over the barrier, so bike 1 can only have gone to the pits, otherwise we'd have seen it when she abandoned.

Either:
- The UCI didn't test bike 1, which would be stupid
- The UCI tested bike 1 and found it clean, which suggests there was only one motor and it would be switched from bike to bike either depending on conditions or to try to limit suspicion
- The UCI tested bike 1, found it motorized, and lied about it

And unfortunately, at this point in the history of the sport, all 3 don't seem too unreasonable to think.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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Benotti69 said:
Whatever the truth, we wont hear it from the UCI!
The lying from UCI in this case is obvious.
UCI are all about PR, so if they'd done any serious anti-motor checks at the cyclocross worlds, they would've screamed it off the rooftops. Yet they didn't say anything about that, so we can be pretty sure they didn't test anybody else than Femke.
Still, we get to chew on this story about a tablet with roentgen software.
If they have that new technology, why didn't they use it to test, say, the winners bikes?
In the article it is suggested UCI used the roentgen technology for measuring the tube width of Femke's bike, which is pure nonsense because for months the whole peloton had been able to see there was something wrong with Femke's tube and there was cable wiring showing from underneath her saddle.
No need for roentgen whatsoever. Just a pair of eyes.
And from the article it now appears UCI were tipped off.
They wouldn't have gone after her otherwise.
Again, that's not what Cookson made us believe at the press conference.
UCI lying to the press and public whilst allowing/enabling cheating and doping has been the standard under Verdruggem and Phat. Cookson is proving to be a reactionary clown.
 
Is there footage of here walking up to the fence without a bike? If I encounter a fence, I lift/toss the bike over first, then climb over and ride off, just as the footage I saw. I didn't get to see anything before.
Why would anyone ever bring a bike to a fence for a rider on foot? Seems way too clever a way to get a dirty bike out, certainly for this bunch.
 
Re:

Cloxxki said:
Is there footage of here walking up to the fence without a bike? If I encounter a fence, I lift/toss the bike over first, then climb over and ride off, just as the footage I saw. I didn't get to see anything before.
Why would anyone ever bring a bike to a fence for a rider on foot? Seems way too clever a way to get a dirty bike out, certainly for this bunch.
The bike she rode away on after retiring is not the same one she crossed the finish line with that had the broken chain. It's either bike 2 or 3 (the two that are very similar and based around standard Wilier frames) whereas she crossed the line on bike 1 (the one with the fatter downtube). The pits are on the opposite side of the course, but close to the right hand side of the first corner. The paddock (it's a motor racing course of course) is to the left of the finishing straight.

I can definitely believe that, if Femke's intention is to DNF, she would hand her bike over to her mechanics to take back to the pits since they're close by as the crow flies, but a long way away on the course. But if there's no spare bike in the pits because it's been confiscated, she'll want to get back to the trailer to get a shower, clean up, compose herself, and prepare herself for the worst (she must surely now be becoming aware of the storm impending). So somebody from the group has been sent to the trailer to get the spare for her which is why she then hops on bike 3 to ride back. If the UCI then test bike 3 thinking it's her race bike, that's just a bonus of it.
 
May 14, 2010
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Re: Re:

sniper said:
Benotti69 said:
sniper said:
Benotti69 said:
https://mobile.twitter.com/danslamusette/status/656092805891276800
what are we seeing here?


"when you push the start engine button without being seated"
ok, i'm only seeing a frozen picture, no video.
anybody have another link to that?
edit: found it.

you gotta be kidding me.

Wow, that's quite a maneuver. :eek:
 

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