Tienus said:
The video quality is really poor but in the first seconds of this video he is also making movements with fingers from his left hand.
Tough one for me to see from this video quality. Therefor I suspend judgement.
But in general I think we should be very careful to not jump to conclusions from such rather vague pieces of evidence. It's valuable evidence for sure but it should be used together with other information to try to paint the bigger picture. If one strongly focuses on specific details while actively trying to find confirming evidence for a hypothesis or suspicion then the door is wide open for all kinds of human perception biases. Been there, done that.
Unless of course one such specific detail is so blatantly obvious that it really only allows for one possible explanation. But I don't think that these finger movements fall in this category. There are other possibilities like slightly adjusting the grip on the handle bar, quickly relaxing and stretching fingers that are somewhat cramping or inadvertent small spasm-like motions in the fingers that some get when bracing in agony for an extra effort (I do).
If Lance had some sort of switch there from 2000 to 2005 (which is silently implied by your other argument that there is no other good reason to use a downtube shifter) then we should be able to identify some sort of consistent pattern of suspicious finger movements prior to attacks or accelerations. Otherwise it remains weak evidence only. This should not be too hard as his attacks are very well documented on film. I'll probably watch some clips later and focus on his fingers - something I don't normally do.. :lol:
sniper said:
Then he just paces away without any extra effort that I can see.
But it's not exactly an alien jump either, is it? I think in this attack it's key that Heras deliberately lets the gap open quickly and kind of obstructs Beloki for the following couple of seconds. Beloki doesn't have it in him to jump after LA immediately and he's gone. I guess we all know from personal experience that losing the rear-wheel of the rider in front of you does damage that goes way beyond effects of drafting. Beloki then has to pace himself up the climb and the gap grows very slowly but steadily. It really looks completely "natural" to me. If I had to suspect a motor here then, consequentially, I'd had to do so literally in each and every case where one rider drops another one. Or just accelerates a bit.
Tienus said:
It looks like Lance used a downtube shifter from 2000 to 2005 (not in 1999) and then Astana in 2006.
I cant think of a good reason to do so.
That's interesting! How does it compare to context? Was Lance the only rider to use it? Or the whole USPS? What about other riders, teams and bike manufacturers? I'm also a bit surprised that they'd still use downtube shifters but I'm really not that familiar with typical bike setups around 2000. Has this been discussed before or is it your find? I mean if there was really absolutely no good reason to use a downtube shifter as you assume then it should have lead to a few raised eyebrows and questions already since it's so obvious, no? Not necessarily because of motor suspicion but just because it would be odd. But sometimes hiding in plain sight is a good strategy..
sniper said:
there was speculation on twitter that Floyd was at it, too.
I think the speculation emerged from the simple need to explain why Floyd never spilled beans about Lance's use of motors.
I guess the simpler explanation would be that neither of the two used a motor..
If solid evidence of Lance's motor use will be presented I'd be truly amazed indeed! Not because I think they wouldn't have been capable or willing to do it. But because it hasn't really surfaced already. Lance seems to not have been secretive about doping at all and relied heavily on omertà and his abuse of power and connections (i.e. corruption) to keep it under the rug. And being very confident doing so. But many knew. So if there was a motor, some must have known, too. Omertà worked until he went down. People confessed "everything" under oath in a federal investigation. A lot of people that were mightily p*ssed of by the bullying Lance took a run at him to throw him under the bus. But nobody even hinted at the motor? Floyd, Tyler and the others going a long way to take revenge (and to some extend genuinely trying to come clean as it appeared to me) but somehow they all conspire again to take the motor-thing to their graves?
I know you're disappointed, sniper, if this documentary would "only" confirm Lance's motor. But I think this would be quite remarkable on its own. Because it would either be a second conspiracy wave that was strong enough to survive this huge mess of federal investigations and all those personal conflicts. Or it would be an extreme inside job that almost nobody knew about. If we can believe Varjas then Ferrari only familiarized himself with motors like 3 years ago. So somebody else would have been the motoman. Both options would be somewhat interesting. And they would lead to follow up stories about more recent riders anyway, because (as it is with traditional doping doctors) the influential people in these shady businesses don't tend to change frequently. So if a supplier or middle-man from the Armstrong era is uncovered, some journalist or investigator will pick it up from there and sooner or later find trails and links to other riders (if this technological fraud is indeed happening in the peloton).
So I for my part would happily welcome any revelation. As long as it's tangible evidence and not just another one of those very vague stories that mainly state what "could be" or what "would be possible". We all know that by now. It's meaningless. Almost 50 years ago people flew to the moon. Anybody who needed to see a working prototype by Varjas first to acknowledge that someone with the means and the commitment would be able to put a few extra-watts into a bicylce clearly lacks imagination (to put it politely). And we also don't need to discuss Femke's example again and again to prove that there are people in sports who would use such a system to gain an advantage. We knew beforehand. It's really black and white with these motors - somebody uses it or not. The rest is irrelevant. All those documentaries so far were utter nonsense. The idea with the thermal camera was nice but what they made out of that was an insult of the spectator's intellect (at least mine).
Does anyone know whether this whole "motor-doping" thing has already been discussed in a broader public in the United States? Or has this been an European thing so far predominantly? In the latter case I could very well imagine that this upcoming documentary is just the US-version of the standard Varjas-BS-story. here a potential outline: introduction; a bit of Femke; a visit at Varjas in Budapest; demo of the products he sells (!); amazement and jaw-dropping everywhere; a bunch of anectotal evidence for its use in the peloton; switch to Armstrong; some crackpot showing his physiological calculations to prove missing watts although the error bars that he should have stuck to his numbers are already worth 4 motors; Betsy not ruling out motors; dramatic ending by leaving the question open "did armstrong really say the whole truth?"
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