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Motor doping thread

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Huapango - Sky's Stages and before that SRM, like nearly all teams, measure off the crank torque, so if a motor is helping to drive the cranks from the bottom bracket axle or drive the rear wheel, it wouldn't actually be measured at the cranks sensors. Your own power would be offset negatively by the additional power in fact reading too low, so some custom head unit programming and strain guages and Ant+/Bluetooth transmitters would be required to combine human and motor PWR numbers. If you install IpPeloton on an android phone, you can read any riders HR, PWR & CAD over Ant+/Bluetooth if you want, so if you see two different device IDs for PWR on one bike, that would be suspicious.

If you were to use motors, you don't need anything like 250w to make a big difference. 50w would be plenty used sparingly.
 
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Re:

samhocking said:
Huapango - Sky's Stages and before that SRM, like nearly all teams, measure off the crank torque, so if a motor is helping to drive the cranks from the bottom bracket axle or drive the rear wheel, it wouldn't actually be measured at the cranks sensors. Your own power would be offset negatively by the additional power in fact reading too low, so some custom head unit programming and strain guages and Ant+/Bluetooth transmitters would be required to combine human and motor PWR numbers. If you install IpPeloton on an android phone, you can read any riders HR, PWR & CAD over Ant+/Bluetooth if you want, so if you see two different device IDs for PWR on one bike, that would be suspicious.

If you were to use motors, you don't need anything like 250w to make a big difference. 50w would be plenty used sparingly.

Indeed, and the power being reported to the head unit would be 100% accurate in terms of measuring your own energy expenditure. This is the primary purpose of power meters in a race.

So in that regard it's even more effective. It's basically a free tailwind so to speak.
 
1. Some suggestions that the '60 Minutes' spot might be a teaser set up for a bigger follow-on piece? No way. They emptied the b-roll onto the overtime piece, there's nothing else there. If there was, they would have promo-teased the hell out of it while people who might be interested in it are watching.

2. A lot of talk about the unlikelihood of a full-kit TT bike being anywhere near 6.8kgs. I don't think that's relevant to what the '60 Minutes' piece said. They said Sky's bikes were 800g heavier than their competitors, not that they were 800g over the minimum. Still, I wouldn't read too much into that as the reporting might not have been that precise (Bill Whittaker's other piece on the same broadcast was a rerun of his piece on the vetting process of Syrian asylum seekers in UN camps, so he's not exactly a cycling reporter). That said, the discrepancy between Sky and the rest of the pack seemed clear enough to warrant a call for comment. The interesting part was Sky's weird explanation that their bikes might have been heavy because they had aero wheels. Like all the other teams' bikes that were lighter than them didn't have aero wheels? Sky just seems incapable of giving an answer that makes suspicion go away, they seem intent on running around fires spraying petrol.

3. I've heard all I want to hear from Varjas which is too much already. Seems like a chancer, the equivalent of Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch or any type of informant who knows that if his lips aren't moving, he's not getting paid. The UCI, on the other hand, need to become the focus of journalists and what they're actually doing rather than just claim to be doing about detecting the types of motors that are known. Show me some videos of their iPads detecting Varjas' motors or whatever Greg LeMond wants to bring to show and tell, that would be worth seeing. We've seen the set-piece with Typhoon bikes, but with the shenanigans around Barfield's email tip-off to them to stymie the Gendarmerie, some independent hands on that demo are needed.
 
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TeflonDub said:
1. Some suggestions that the '60 Minutes' spot might be a teaser set up for a bigger follow-on piece? No way. They emptied the b-roll onto the overtime piece, there's nothing else there. If there was, they would have promo-teased the hell out of it while people who might be interested in it are watching.

2. A lot of talk about the unlikelihood of a full-kit TT bike being anywhere near 6.8kgs. I don't think that's relevant to what the '60 Minutes' piece said. They said Sky's bikes were 800g heavier than their competitors, not that they were 800g over the minimum. Still, I wouldn't read too much into that as the reporting might not have been that precise (Bill Whittaker's other piece on the same broadcast was a rerun of his piece on the vetting process of Syrian asylum seekers in UN camps, so he's not exactly a cycling reporter). That said, the discrepancy between Sky and the rest of the pack seemed clear enough to warrant a call for comment. The interesting part was Sky's weird explanation that their bikes might have been heavy because they had aero wheels. Like all the other teams' bikes that were lighter than them didn't have aero wheels? Sky just seems incapable of giving an answer that makes suspicion go away, they seem intent on running around fires spraying petrol.

3. I've heard all I want to hear from Varjas which is too much already. Seems like a chancer, the equivalent of Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch or any type of informant who knows that if his lips aren't moving, he's not getting paid. The UCI, on the other hand, need to become the focus of journalists and what they're actually doing rather than just claim to be doing about detecting the types of motors that are known. Show me some videos of their iPads detecting Varjas' motors or whatever Greg LeMond wants to bring to show and tell, that would be worth seeing. We've seen the set-piece with Typhoon bikes, but with the shenanigans around Barfield's email tip-off to them to stymie the Gendarmerie, some independent hands on that demo are needed.
good post.

To the boldface, indeed it's a bit like with the jiffybag. Where you think they could've just denied, or play dumb, they actually come up with a half-baked explanation and thereby implicitly confirm that there is something to it. I like the petrol metaphor. Bang on. Their response merely triggers further eyebrowraisin and legitimizes further questioning.

As for Varjas, I do believe he has a good idea of what is going on in the peloton in terms of motorization. But I strongly doubt he is at the forefront of it. So for instance while I believe magnetic wheels exist, I doubt Varjas is capable of making one. Bottomline: yes he's a quack but it would be foolish to discard everything he says just because of that.
 
Re: Re:

jahn said:
samhocking said:
Huapango - Sky's Stages and before that SRM, like nearly all teams, measure off the crank torque, so if a motor is helping to drive the cranks from the bottom bracket axle or drive the rear wheel, it wouldn't actually be measured at the cranks sensors. Your own power would be offset negatively by the additional power in fact reading too low, so some custom head unit programming and strain guages and Ant+/Bluetooth transmitters would be required to combine human and motor PWR numbers. If you install IpPeloton on an android phone, you can read any riders HR, PWR & CAD over Ant+/Bluetooth if you want, so if you see two different device IDs for PWR on one bike, that would be suspicious.

If you were to use motors, you don't need anything like 250w to make a big difference. 50w would be plenty used sparingly.

Indeed, and the power being reported to the head unit would be 100% accurate in terms of measuring your own energy expenditure. This is the primary purpose of power meters in a race.

So in that regard it's even more effective. It's basically a free tailwind so to speak.

Yes, obviously, but what i'm saying, is just stand near Froomes bike with something like IpBike or Wasp and if there's two PWR transmissions coming from his bike, there would be no other explanation for it, other than a motor transmitting that signal so it can be combined with his Stages power at the head unit so he can regulate his actual w/kg to be within the realms of being human over a sustained effort and what Huapango is getting at.

It would be very easy to blast up Alpe Duez with a motor, smash the record by 5 minutes, yet your data files shows you output 100w less than the time and your known weight calculates. Using a motor and publishing believable data is impossible without recording a total PWR at the wheels. Theoretically, you could smudge the data after, to raise your w/kg to take into account the motor negating your recorded PWR, but you would need to know when the motor was used and when it wasn't. The only real way to do that is to record that PWR event at the head unit so you can see from 50:01.30 to 55:08.23 the motor was adding 100w here and then you could drill into the data file and fudge the data before publishing it to make it more believable. You would need to do the same for cadence and bmp too. It gets pretty complicated. i.e. SPEED is rising, RPM is probably rising, BPM & PWR not rising through. This would have to all be adjusted manually.

Riders publishing data would be a good thing based on the above. I think it needs to happen. I think the results of a race, should includes link to the riders file myself simply as part of the transparency of the performance.

Ultimately, if you're riding with a motor and also publishing your power data he needs to know 'while riding' what that w/kg figure is in terms of a sustained effort otherwise he's exposing his efforts to being totally unbelievable. i.e. theoretically he can produce perhaps 6w/kg up a climb, yet a calcualtion shows he was more like 7w/kg and

I think what Huapango is asking, is does Froome look at his PWR all the time to keep a check he's within PWR threshold. If you've ridden with power, you'll realise when attacking it's actually pretty difficult to control your watts, they wander crazily. I would also say, trying to gauge an effort that isn't 100% to factor in the PWR from a motor while racing is actually pretty difficult half way up a mountain when already fatigued and its kicking off all around you.
 
Re: Re:

sniper said:
TeflonDub said:
1. Some suggestions that the '60 Minutes' spot might be a teaser set up for a bigger follow-on piece? No way. They emptied the b-roll onto the overtime piece, there's nothing else there. If there was, they would have promo-teased the hell out of it while people who might be interested in it are watching.

2. A lot of talk about the unlikelihood of a full-kit TT bike being anywhere near 6.8kgs. I don't think that's relevant to what the '60 Minutes' piece said. They said Sky's bikes were 800g heavier than their competitors, not that they were 800g over the minimum. Still, I wouldn't read too much into that as the reporting might not have been that precise (Bill Whittaker's other piece on the same broadcast was a rerun of his piece on the vetting process of Syrian asylum seekers in UN camps, so he's not exactly a cycling reporter). That said, the discrepancy between Sky and the rest of the pack seemed clear enough to warrant a call for comment. The interesting part was Sky's weird explanation that their bikes might have been heavy because they had aero wheels. Like all the other teams' bikes that were lighter than them didn't have aero wheels? Sky just seems incapable of giving an answer that makes suspicion go away, they seem intent on running around fires spraying petrol.

3. I've heard all I want to hear from Varjas which is too much already. Seems like a chancer, the equivalent of Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch or any type of informant who knows that if his lips aren't moving, he's not getting paid. The UCI, on the other hand, need to become the focus of journalists and what they're actually doing rather than just claim to be doing about detecting the types of motors that are known. Show me some videos of their iPads detecting Varjas' motors or whatever Greg LeMond wants to bring to show and tell, that would be worth seeing. We've seen the set-piece with Typhoon bikes, but with the shenanigans around Barfield's email tip-off to them to stymie the Gendarmerie, some independent hands on that demo are needed.
good post.

To the boldface, indeed it's a bit like with the jiffybag. Where you think they could've just denied, or play dumb, they actually come up with a half-baked explanation and thereby implicitly confirm that there is something to it. I like the petrol metaphor. Bang on. Their response merely triggers further eyebrowraisin and legitimizes further questioning.

As for Varjas, I do believe he has a good idea of what is going on in the peloton in terms of motorization. But I strongly doubt he is at the forefront of it. So for instance while I believe magnetic wheels exist, I doubt Varjas is capable of making one. Bottomline: yes he's a quack but it would be foolish to discard everything he says just because of that.

Well lets see if it's true with actual facts. Lets just compare Sky's known equipment used in 2015 TTT to Tinkoff known equipment used in the 2015 TTT.

Froome/Sky:
Rear Disc - 1330g (Pro Disc 2014-15 model)
Front Tri Spoke - 868g (2014-15 model. They didn't use the Textreme version)

Sky wheel weight = 2198g

Contador/Tinkoff
Rear Disc - 780g (Lightweight Autobahn)
Front Wheel - 680g (Vision Metron 81)

Tinkoff wheel weight = 1460g

Sky's wheels are 738g heavier than Tinkoffs.
 
Oct 16, 2010
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What's making those wheels so much heavier?

Links would be appreciated by the way. Not that I doubt the numbers, but would be good to actually look at them.
 
http://cdn.triathlete.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TT9.jpg?_ga=1.236662663.746986433.1485875165

This looks like the rear wheel from Thomas
http://www.starbike.com/en/pro-carbon-discwheel-textreme-tubular/?gclid=CjwKEAiAq8bEBRDuuOuyspf5oyMSJAAcsEyWn18U5kJXn8mDH_NjKwRUfOiE0P_9HZm5uQkePDr5bRoCrSDw_wcB
975gr
The one on the bike in the background looks like the older model which is 1050grams

In this years tour Froome used a Dash Gretchen rear disk which is the same weight as the autobahn. Froome has also used a HED trispoke front wheel.
 
Both those bikes you link to have standard wheels which are much lighter. I would add 1kg for a disc and tri spoke immediately so around 8.4kg and 8.9kg fully kitted out for TT use.

Froome used a Dash Gretchen rear that is much lighter than the rear wheels on those links

I just built Froomes 2015 Vuelta Bolide from manufacturers claimed weights off their websites and I got 8.24kg for a small. I could get about 1kg off it by selecting lighter wheels and lighter components, but Froomes hitting 8.5kg seems spot on to me and what it would probably build up as off the shelf. Same for all of them. Some frame manufacturers might lay some more plys within the mould for addition stiffness, but AFAIK, most teams ride exactly the same as you or I could buy. They have to, otherwise the UCI sticker isn't valid I would think.

So you are saying you can build a 7.24kg bike of the shelf.
As for the UCI sticker its just a milkcow for the UCI.

Here you can see how BMC gets away with using custom stuff. British cycling has done the same, you offer it for sale for a price nobody will pay.
https://www.bikerumor.com/2015/07/04/tdf2015-tech-bmc-molds-insanely-expensive-one-off-one-piece-custom-tt-fork-and-cockpit/
 
PR 2007
Stuart O'Grady is in the first significan breakaway of the day. He punctures in the worst possible place (Arenberg) and takes a spare wheel. After this he rides in the peloton. In the final he is very strong and wins after a 25km solo.
His team mate Lars Michaelsen is also very strong. He bridges the gap between the peloton and the lead group. He is in a small chasing group behind O'Grady and things are looking good for a podium finish. That is until he changes bike with just over 15km to go. The swap replay was probably only shown because Lars fell on his butt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6D_uNXnajI
Swap from 2:21:00
Note that the team has a second spare bike which might be for Breschel. I think Cancellara allready changed as race radio reports a mechanical for Cancellara at 1:57:20.
There is also a FDJ team member with a spare bike.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/how-the-hell-was-won/
Many people asked me why Lars had changed bikes at that point, and if changing bikes was the cause of him crashing. The reason we had his second bike there was well considered. At that time in the race, a poorly working chain or derailleur can make the difference. By giving him a fresh, clean bike, Lars could go into the velodrome confident that his gears would be working fine, and that everything was running smoothly as it should. Unfortunately, as Lars put it himself, he was feeling too good and too strong. Going into that corner at 15km to go, he pushed a little bit too hard and it was fatal.

When Stuart had his flat tyre; it was definitely at the hardest moment of the race, on the Arenberg forest. Although it wasn't the ideal moment for him to puncture out off the front group with a five minute lead, after his wheel change he did get some beneficial 'recuperation' time during which he could eat and drink before he got taken back by the front of the peloton.
I wonder if he was eating duracell

O'Grady was riding at least since Arenberg with no number on his bike.
 
Re:

kingjr said:
Didn't Karl Vannieuwkerke say something about there being a rumour about Sastre's ride up to L'Alpe d'Huez involving a motor?
I guess it was in an interview with Boonen where Boonen confirmed that there's a rumour in the peloton that one TdF was won with a motor. And they together somewhat implied it was 2008.
(That's just what I remember from the top of my head. Somebody might have the right source to add.)
 
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samhocking said:
Huapango - Sky's Stages and before that SRM, like nearly all teams, measure off the crank torque, so if a motor is helping to drive the cranks from the bottom bracket axle or drive the rear wheel, it wouldn't actually be measured at the cranks sensors. Your own power would be offset negatively by the additional power in fact reading too low, so some custom head unit programming and strain guages and Ant+/Bluetooth transmitters would be required to combine human and motor PWR numbers. If you install IpPeloton on an android phone, you can read any riders HR, PWR & CAD over Ant+/Bluetooth if you want, so if you see two different device IDs for PWR on one bike, that would be suspicious.

If you were to use motors, you don't need anything like 250w to make a big difference. 50w would be plenty used sparingly.
Embarrassing. You don't know what you're talking about.

The SRM would measure and report the total power - potentially problematic if the data file was leaked.
Stages on the other hand would only measure and report the riders power - 'pseudo scientist' might figure out the total power.

Now when and why did SKY swap from the gold standard SRM to the mockery of a power meter Stages?
 
Re:

sniper said:
What an outstanding find.

CSC clearly at the forefront of this development.

Which begs questions about Sastre 2008, too.
Sastre 2008 is the most underwhelming TdF-winner in recent history, forget about Pereiro. Sastre has always had good recuperation and if you actually watched the race, which I doubt, you'd realise Sastre didn't do anything that whole Tour apart from Alpe d' Huez. That was the place to strike and so he did - couple that with Evans' tactical inability at first (where you see him chase down everything instead of setting a constant pace) and his injuries and it was a relatively easy win for Sastre. The level was NOT high in that Tour.

What about Hamilton then? Basso? Andy? Frank? Voigt? Nuyens? All motordoping cause you might have found a 5% chance of motodoping in Paris Roubaix 2007?
 
IIRC, that AdH time was pretty darn impressive.

What I cannot wrap my head around is how the decision would be made to use a motor in a bike, and how they execute the rest. Do they do it on all races, or just a the main goal of the season? Do they do it on all GC significant stages, or just on a few? Or just a TT? Would a rider even go all out when using a motor? Anything more than 20W is a huge boost, especially if you're already a top 15 rider. How many people would have to know about this?

Main thing for me is that the benefit of a motor would be a bigger than the differences between doping programmes. When a new, untracable drug hits the sport, it doesn't take long for a lot of riders to be on it. Look at cera. I have a hard time imagining some riders using motors and the rest of the peloton not being in it or using motors, especially when it's a long-time rumor.

Lastly, there's a chance for conventional dopers to not want to risk it. But that's a rather small thing and there's probably always people who'd want to risk it.
 
His Alpe effort was good, but certainly not ridiculous.

The point was, tho, that 1) Sastre has very good recuperation and stamina, he is basically a worse Quintana and 2) he did close to nothing apart from saving energy that whole race up until Alpe. Which sniper obviously would know if he watched races.
 

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