Motor doping thread

[Marxten]

OK, then they're not made anymore and people forgot about it, and discussion was centering back to the same lines. Except this time no one was giving these arguments against you. As you said back then, it's still a long shot (although you quickly made up your mind).

Back then, it was mostly discussed as a team-wide operation (also because of Tom Leezer's TA time trial). LottoNL not having a huge budget (and those being reasonably public as well), it would be weird for them to be doing that team-wide. Added to their failing riders (Gesink not being anywhere near his former levels even with a good winter, former EU U23 TT champion Steven Lammertink not being so great the past 2 seasons, former TTers like Clement and Keizer not really doing the great TTs they once did, Lars Boom being generally *** this year) and the fact that most people agree now that motordoping is mostly a small group, that non-sponsor rear wheel could really put a damper on it.

(Btw, Varjas claims 50k for a hub engine, both front and rear wheel possible, and up to 250 watt. Those specs at that price are probably a lot harder than what ScienceIsCool gave as a quote.)
(Oh, another tidbit I found while searching: Pat Lefevere calling for a full-scale investigation into Cancellara back in 2010. I think it went nowhere, but it is a bit weird to be calling for an investigation when you are running one of the most succesfull teams yourself.)

 

[sniper]

@Tienus,

That's a potentially explosive, disturbing document (the word "post" doesn't quite do justice to it).

What a name coincidence. I had to check to make sure he's no family of Luigi.

A friend of mine used to have Goldtec hubs on a pair of good wheels in the mid-90s. Had to use some special oil after every ride that was applied directly onto the bearings. Despite all the marketing, he says they weren't any faster than any decent campagnolo or shimano hubs.

I vaguely remembered Gold Race being the smoke screen Cancellara and his PR team used in 2011-ish to justify his ridiculous performances in that period. I just did a quick search, and saw that indeed it is mentioned in a load of Cance-PR articles post-2010.

While a-grade bearings may give you less friction and, over a long ride, may pay off, they are certainly not going to give you ridiculous acceleration powers such as displayed by Cance.

Funny to read that much like Dimitris Katsanis for GB, Cecchini is involved in designing wheels not only for the regular bikes but also for the national wheel chair athletes. Motor doping at the paralympics. Say it aint so.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

@Tienus,

That's a potentially explosive, disturbing document (the word "post" doesn't quite do justice to it).

What a name coincidence. I had to check to make sure he's no family of Luigi.

A friend of mine used to have Goldtec hubs on a pair of good wheels in the mid-90s. Had to use some special oil after every ride that was applied directly onto the bearings. Despite all the marketing, he says they weren't any faster than any decent campagnolo or shimano hubs.

I vaguely remembered Gold Race being the smoke screen Cancellara and his PR team used in 2011-ish to justify his ridiculous performances in that period. I just did a quick search, and saw that indeed it is mentioned in a load of Cance-PR articles post-2010.

While a-grade bearings may give you less friction and, over a long ride, may pay off, they are certainly not going to give you ridiculous acceleration powers such as displayed by Cance.

Funny to read that much like Dimitris Katsanis for GB, Cecchini is involved in designing wheels not only for the regular bikes but also for the national wheel chair athletes. Motor doping at the paralympics. Say it aint so.

http://www.skf.com/ca/en/knowledge-centre/engineering-tools/skfbearingcalculator.html

SKF bearings. One of the biggest bearing manufacturers around and in business for more than a century. I think they understand bearings. They even provide engineering tools to help calculate losses based on a number of parameters which should help you pick the right bearing/configuration. Go ahead and use the web tool. It's lots of fun. Years ago I used it to show that ceramic bearings are bunk. Going from meh bearings to ones that cost hundreds of dollars saves you milliwatts, not tens of Watts.

John Swanson

 

[jmdirt]

sniper, I'm still wondering if you have considered the possibility that the story was just tabloid to sell copy. You seem to be really stuck on the color of a hub image that could have been manipulated. I'm not dismissing moto fraud, but 1) the Stade stuff is questionable at best, 2) they haven't continued their reporting, 3) no other source has followed up on the Stade story. This is big news, why is the story dead?

 

[sniper]

Re:

sniper, I'm still wondering if you have considered the possibility that the story was just tabloid to sell copy. You seem to be really stuck on the color of a hub image that could have been manipulated. I'm not dismissing moto fraud, but 1) the Stade stuff is questionable at best, 2) they haven't continued their reporting, 3) no other source has followed up on the Stade story. This is big news, why is the story dead?

Not sure if this is a duscussion worth having.
Sure, everything can be manipulated in this day and age.
But I see exactly zero reason or historical precedent to suspect manipulation in case of the Stade 2 report.

Sell copy? All journos want to sell copy. Some do it by cheerleading, others by investigating.
Story dead? If you say so. I think the story has only just begun.

On a side, I have a photo of a rear hub motor, the type we've been discussing, but when I try to post it I get some kind of error message saying I've reached my "maximum quota".
Can this be circumvented? Without having to register on a photo-upload-website I mean.

 

[Irondan]

Re: Re:

sniper, I'm still wondering if you have considered the possibility that the story was just tabloid to sell copy. You seem to be really stuck on the color of a hub image that could have been manipulated. I'm not dismissing moto fraud, but 1) the Stade stuff is questionable at best, 2) they haven't continued their reporting, 3) no other source has followed up on the Stade story. This is big news, why is the story dead?

Not sure if this is a duscussion worth having.
Sure, everything can be manipulated in this day and age.
But I see exactly zero reason or historical precedent to suspect manipulation in case of the Stade 2 report.

Sell copy? All journos want to sell copy. Some do it by cheerleading, others by investigating.
Story dead? If you say so. I think the story has only just begun.

On a side, I have a photo of a rear hub motor, the type we've been discussing, but when I try to post it I get some kind of error message saying "maximum quota". Can this be circumvented?

You have to post the photo to a cloud service such as google photo's or something like that, and then use the tags on either end of the address of the photo.

For example:

If you try to quote this post, you'll see the example of the photo address in the img tags.

 

[sniper]

thanks Irondan.
Yeah I tried that, and all those cloud services require registration of some kind.

 

[jmdirt]

Re: Re:

sniper, I'm still wondering if you have considered the possibility that the story was just tabloid to sell copy. You seem to be really stuck on the color of a hub image that could have been manipulated. I'm not dismissing moto fraud, but 1) the Stade stuff is questionable at best, 2) they haven't continued their reporting, 3) no other source has followed up on the Stade story. This is big news, why is the story dead?

Not sure if this is a duscussion worth having.
Sure, everything can be manipulated in this day and age.
But I see exactly zero reason or historical precedent to suspect manipulation in case of the Stade 2 report.

Sell copy? All journos want to sell copy. Some do it by cheerleading, others by investigating.
Story dead? If you say so. I think the story has only just begun.

On a side, I have a photo of a rear hub motor, the type we've been discussing, but when I try to post it I get some kind of error message saying I've reached my "maximum quota".
Can this be circumvented? Without having to register on a photo-upload-website I mean.

Why hasn't Stade or another source followed up? If they would have continued investigating I would give them more credit, but they just hit out with a story and then went quiet (well other than repeating their original story). I know omerta is a powerful thing, but why haven't we heard anything from the platoon? With EPO, for example, we started hearing from the platoon (even though they were mostly dismissed initially). Dopers could be sneaky about their injections, transfusions, etc, but adding a motor requires more people being in the know (more people to talk).

 

[TourOfSardinia]

Re:

thanks Irondan.
Yeah I tried that, and all those cloud services require registration of some kind.

This one doesn't
https://vgy.me/
works for me - just click on the big up-arrow and select an image from you disk

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

thanks Irondan.
Yeah I tried that, and all those cloud services require registration of some kind.

This one doesn't
https://vgy.me/
works for me - just click on the big up-arrow and select an image from you disk

Thanks ToS, gonna give it try.

 

[red_flanders]

imgur.com is pretty much the standard for this kind of thing.

 

[sniper]

Thanks guys.
ToS' link worked a charm.

This motor allegedly gives you 20 watts for an hour with a Di2 battery.
For the moment I can't say (and tbh don't really know) a whole lot more about the context/source of the photo.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

That looks like a wee DC brushless motor that you could get very high rpm out of. Torque is the problem, so it's married to a fair sized gear box. However, I doubt very much that you'd get 20 Watts of output torque at the needed 50-200 rpm. That looks more like something that would go into a dental drill or some such.

John Swanson

edit: spelling

 

[sniper]

Re:

That looks like a wee DC brushless motor that you could get very high rpm out of. Torque is the problem, so it's married to a fair sized gear box. However, I doubt very much that you'd get 20 Watts of output torque at the needed 50-200 rpm. That looks more like something that would go into a dental drill or some such.

John Swanson

edit: spelling

Cheers.
I don't know a whole lot more about the source/origin/context of the photo, but I'll try and see if I can get a bit more feedback.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...
Why hasn't Stade or another source followed up?

how do you know they haven't/aren't?

If they would have continued investigating I would give them more credit, but they just hit out with a story and then went quiet (well other than repeating their original story).

What were/are they supposed to do?
And again your formulation "if they would have continued" suggests you know they haven't continued. Which you have no idea about.

Remember, they also ran the Barfield story. They (Thierry Vildary + Marco Bonarrigo) are to my knowledge up till now the only ones who've done anything investigative on motors.
Shane Stokes, Thomas Mustroph and Ger Gilroy also deserve a mention for at least taking the issue seriously, reporting on it, and interviewing people like Lemond and Varjas. But what Thierry and Marco did is in my humble view the very best that has been done on the topic thus far.
Yes, there's a need to scrutinize the results and allegations.
But I don't see much reason to criticize the two of them, and absolutely zero reason to assume it was some kind of conspiracy against Roglic/LottoJumbo.

I know omerta is a powerful thing,

Bingo. That's rule nr1.

but why haven't we heard anything from the platoon?

See rule nr1.

Dopers could be sneaky about their injections, transfusions, etc, but adding a motor requires more people being in the know (more people to talk).

Scienceiscool had a darn good post touching on this subject which should answer most of your doubts/questions in this regard, I'll see if I can dig it up.

To be sure, your question "why have other sources not followed up on the Stade 2 report" is a wholly legitimate question. In my view, it says a lot about the lack of appetite among the current crop of sports journos to investigate and do the heavy lifting wrt cheating/corruption in pro-cycling.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

Thanks guys.
ToS' link worked a charm.

This motor allegedly gives you 20 watts for an hour.
For the moment I can't say (and tbh don't really know) a whole lot more about the context/source of the photo.

How does the skewer go through?

 

[jmdirt]

Re: Re:

...
Why hasn't Stade or another source followed up?

how do you know they haven't/aren't? Wouldn't we have read it?

If they would have continued investigating I would give them more credit, but they just hit out with a story and then went quiet (well other than repeating their original story).

What were/are they supposed to do?
And again your formulation "if they would have continued" suggests you know they haven't continued. Which you have no idea about. Wouldn't they have published something more by now?

Remember, they also ran the Barfield story. They (Thierry Vildary + Marco Bonarrigo) are to my knowledge up till now the only ones who've done anything investigative on motors.
Shane Stokes, Thomas Mustroph and Ger Gilroy also deserve a mention for at least taking the issue seriously, reporting on it, and interviewing people like Lemond and Varjas. But what Thierry and Marco did is in my humble view the very best that has been done on the topic thus far.
Yes, there's a need to scrutinize the results and allegations.
But I don't see much reason to criticize the two of them, and absolutely zero reason to assume it was some kind of conspiracy against Roglic/LottoJumbo.

I know omerta is a powerful thing,

Bingo. That's rule nr1.

but why haven't we heard anything from the platoon?

See rule nr1.

Dopers could be sneaky about their injections, transfusions, etc, but adding a motor requires more people being in the know (more people to talk).

Scienceiscool had a darn good post touching on this subject which should answer most of your doubts/questions in this regard, I'll see if I can dig it up.

To be sure, your question "why have other sources not followed up on the Stade 2 report" is a wholly legitimate question. In my view, it says a lot about the lack of appetite among the current crop of sports journos to investigate and do the heavy lifting wrt cheating/corruption in pro-cycling.

 

[sniper]

Re:

So here we have 20 watts for an hour with a Di2 battery:

Here we have Roglic:

Stade 2's hypothetical design for comparison:

 

[papisimo98]

This is what is great about the clinic and why it is so valuable. This discussion is rich with material and while it asks many questions, there are still many more. But you all are on to something.
I look at my ipad, or my iphone, just those two devices alone let me know that motors in bikes do exist and most likely in forms(such as Sniper's photo) not yet realized.
Why does the UCI make it so obvious that they don't care about fighting motors in bikes? We have all seen enough.
Is it unfeasible to have some sort of "pit area" where all the race bikes are held and scanned upon entry/exit during all periods of downtime during a race?
What rules can one come up with to help get a tighter grip/closer eye on the bikes during a races' downtime?

 

[miguelindurain111]

So, now we know that if Roglič could spin fast as a dental drill he would be ~1 min faster in a 40 km TT than without a hypothetical dental drill hub motor :lol:

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

So, now we know that if Roglič could spin fast as a dental drill he would be ~1 min faster in a 40 km TT than without a hypothetical dental drill hub motor :lol:

I could be entirely wrong, too. I just commented on what it looks like. Note that a DC brushless motor only needs two wires. This one has a lot of lines going to it. Maybe it's not what it looks like and is a miniature stepper with an encoder? Maybe this photo is of a bench testable prototype which is why it has a normal shaft instead of integrated hardware for building into a hub.

Sigh. I miss puttering around in a lab. Anyone got an interesting project I can work on?

John Swanson

 

[advanced one]

Re: Re:

So here we have 20 watts for an hour with a Di2 battery:

Here we have Roglic:

Stade 2's hypothetical design for comparison:

Isn't the rim in the FLIR image the same temperature or hotter than the supposed hub motor?

 

[Craigee]

It is perfectly plausible to think that there is definitely motor doping in the pro ranks. The biggest problem is the UCI. They simply don't want a bar of it. If there was no WADA and local anti doping agencies do you think the UCI would do anything about doping? Yes they get on their pedestal about doping including Cookson using it as his main election policy last election to gain his presidency but only because they have to and are forced into it. With no official outside body pressuring the UCI regarding motors don't expect any real effort from them to keep on top of it.

 

[jmdirt]

If you haven't already seem this:

http://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/reviews/this-is-what-its-like-to-ride-a-bike-with-a-hidden-motor

Probably too heavy for Pro use. I'm pretty sure that this is what a local guy set up last year, but I haven't talked to him or his crew since last summer.

 

[Teddy Boom]

Re: Re:

I miss puttering around in a lab. Anyone got an interesting project I can work on?

Alas, it is all software nowadays..