Motor doping thread

[Craigee]

umm Sam and Deviant. You're not convincing anyone. Only highlighting the motor doping more. To me the biggest give away with Sky is the way they all recover and go again and again not just during grand tours but going from one tour to the next like it's just light training. There is all the stuff about Quintana and plenty of others clearly not coping with smashing stage after stage of a tour but they also can't cope with doing two GT's in a season. But Froome and his team mates feel no bad effects. Geraint Thomas had crashes and struggled of course but the marginal gains are just too incredible to be true. Well Wiggins said they're not true didn't he?

 

[Tienus]

Re:

But still they've come forward...let's not forget the 90s when Bassons was racing and willing to speak out...or the Ferrari court case where Simeone was also willing to break Omerta...but currently with motor doping not even a whimper from a disgruntled pro...why?...two reasons, either they're ALL on motorized bikes so the pros see no problem with it...or there are no motorized bikes to speak out about...at the moment I'm in the latter camp but I'm willing to be proved wrong, it would be a hilarious scandal and incredible to watch unfold.

Is it a coincidence you mention Bassons on the day he was willing to speak out on motors?

https://cyclingtips.com/news/mcquaid-cookson-told-get-involved-presidency-didnt/
BASSONS: NOTHING LEADS ME TO BELIEVE THERE HAVEN’T BEEN MOTORS IN PRO RACING

 

[Oude Geuze]

Easy question really. PEDs take one athlete and one doc. Motors necessitates all of the mechanics, mavic and even bike producers would also need to know. So which would you choose? Also, risk of accidents, technical problems, forgetting to turn off at finish etc would surely happen eventually. And I haven't even considered sound and risk of detection by the UCI. People who would risk this are probably in lower level racing with less control, amateurs who upkeep their own bikes etc as we have already witnessed.

Finally, it it does happen, team sky would be amongst the last to suspect. They already have the greatest talent, team and budget and one incident of motor fraud would ruin them, if we are to see this, I would bet on a team like CCC or some other continental team rider.

 

[franic]

Re:

Easy question really. PEDs take one athlete and one doc. Motors necessitates all of the mechanics, mavic and even bike producers would also need to know. So which would you choose? Also, risk of accidents, technical problems, forgetting to turn off at finish etc would surely happen eventually. And I haven't even considered sound and risk of detection by the UCI. People who would risk this are probably in lower level racing with less control, amateurs who upkeep their own bikes etc as we have already witnessed.

Finally, it it does happen, team sky would be amongst the last to suspect. They already have the greatest talent, team and budget and one incident of motor fraud would ruin them, if we are to see this, I would bet on a team like CCC or some other continental team rider.

I guess it's enough one mechanic and the rider.

 

[miguelindurain111]

So Vivax type motors are used by amateurs but pros are using tiny 20-40 W hub motors. But then, based on Froome's accelerations on Ventoux, we could conclude that he's an amateur as well :lol:

 

[TeflonDub]

Re: Re:

Easy question really. PEDs take one athlete and one doc. Motors necessitates all of the mechanics, mavic and even bike producers would also need to know. So which would you choose? Also, risk of accidents, technical problems, forgetting to turn off at finish etc would surely happen eventually. And I haven't even considered sound and risk of detection by the UCI. People who would risk this are probably in lower level racing with less control, amateurs who upkeep their own bikes etc as we have already witnessed.

Finally, it it does happen, team sky would be amongst the last to suspect. They already have the greatest talent, team and budget and one incident of motor fraud would ruin them, if we are to see this, I would bet on a team like CCC or some other continental team rider.

I guess it's enough one mechanic and the rider.

Gary Blem. Mindaugas Goncaras. Putting the moto in 'Motoman'.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

Finally, it it does happen, team sky would be amongst the last to suspect. They already have the greatest talent, team and budget and one incident of motor fraud would ruin them, if we are to see this, I would bet on a team like CCC or some other continental team rider.

LMFAO.

 

[Craigee]

the ones who have been caught motor doping so far didn't crash and have their motors exposed with a broken bike. They were dismantled to see if they were there. This is the only way to confirm motor doping. Not any apps with Ipads or sensors but by dismantling the bike.

Have they dismantled Chris Froome's bikes publicly after his best performances? No? Well until this happens I will continue to believe motor doping goes on. It's up to the UCI to clear this up. Not us.

 

[silvergrenade]

Re:

the ones who have been caught motor doping so far didn't crash and have their motors exposed with a broken bike. They were dismantled to see if they were there. This is the only way to confirm motor doping. Not any apps with Ipads or sensors but by dismantling the bike.

Have they dismantled Chris Froome's bikes publicly after his best performances? No? Well until this happens I will continue to believe motor doping goes on. It's up to the UCI to clear this up. Not us.

They dont do that in F1 either. Checks aren't done publicly in most sports.
PS: UCI doesnt care whether you believe it or not.

 

[Oude Geuze]

Re: Re:

Easy question really. PEDs take one athlete and one doc. Motors necessitates all of the mechanics, mavic and even bike producers would also need to know. So which would you choose? Also, risk of accidents, technical problems, forgetting to turn off at finish etc would surely happen eventually. And I haven't even considered sound and risk of detection by the UCI. People who would risk this are probably in lower level racing with less control, amateurs who upkeep their own bikes etc as we have already witnessed.

Finally, it it does happen, team sky would be amongst the last to suspect. They already have the greatest talent, team and budget and one incident of motor fraud would ruin them, if we are to see this, I would bet on a team like CCC or some other continental team rider.

I guess it's enough one mechanic and the rider.

Are you serious? Have you seen a modern team mechanical outfit with the tens of bikes, hundreds of wheels and group sets etc? You would either need everyone on board or constantly separate out your bikes from the rest, never let anyone else work on it, never swap for mavic bike or even one provided by the team car/DS. You couldn't even keep it in the team bike trailer.

And also, they weigh the bikes routinely. How do you cut 1-2kg of motor and batteries with the same kit and equipment as the rest of your team? Or do you just claim that you like the feel of a heavier bike than your teammates?

Bottom line, motor is extremely risky and requires a grand conspiracy. EPO subcutaneously requires no one, except maybe a good doping doc and gives you 20% boost for the entirety of a race, not 20minutes.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

Are you serious? Have you seen a modern team mechanical outfit with the tens of bikes, hundreds of wheels and group sets etc? You would either need everyone on board or constantly separate out your bikes from the rest, never let anyone else work on it, never swap for mavic bike or even one provided by the team car/DS. You couldn't even keep it in the team bike trailer.

And also, they weigh the bikes routinely. How do you cut 1-2kg of motor and batteries with the same kit and equipment as the rest of your team? Or do you just claim that you like the feel of a heavier bike than your teammates?

Bottom line, motor is extremely risky and requires a grand conspiracy. EPO subcutaneously requires no one, except maybe a good doping doc and gives you 20% boost for the entirety of a race, not 20minutes.

https://roadcyclinguk.com/gear/interview-alberto-contadors-personal-mechanic-faustino-munoz.html
Most of the top racers have a personal mechanic and they will usually be part of the contract if they switch teams.

When was the last time you saw a top rider on a neutral service bike? For the last decade or two, everyone seems to wait for their car or a teammate. Presumably that's driven by compatibility issues. Pedals and rear wheels are the big problems.

Drugs like EPO require a logistics chain from manufacture to distribution, which is highly regulated and controlled. Lots of legal issues around drug trafficking. They also need proper storage, such as refrigeration. There's also paraphernalia such as needles and packaging that need storing and disposing. The effects last longer, but so does the detection window. Risky!

Motors... All you need is your mechanic, a post office box, and a wire transfer. The mechanic would have a lot of authority within the team to keep unwanted people away from sensitive bikes/parts. Maybe not so risky.

John Swanson

 

[Tienus]

They dont do that in F1 either. Checks aren't done publicly in most sports.

I cant think of any sport but cycling where the equipment inspection is done in a zipped up tent. Can you give just one example?

F1 is a bad example as teams are using technology they want to keep secret. Even with that in mind the inspections are less hidden than in cycling. Nascar is doing the inspection on live tv which make the playing field more level and Ross Brawn would like to see the same in F1
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/129427/brawn-eyes-nascarstyle-inspections-for-f1

 

[Benotti69]

Re: Re:

the ones who have been caught motor doping so far didn't crash and have their motors exposed with a broken bike. They were dismantled to see if they were there. This is the only way to confirm motor doping. Not any apps with Ipads or sensors but by dismantling the bike.

Have they dismantled Chris Froome's bikes publicly after his best performances? No? Well until this happens I will continue to believe motor doping goes on. It's up to the UCI to clear this up. Not us.

They dont do that in F1 either. Checks aren't done publicly in most sports.
PS: UCI doesnt care whether you believe it or not.

PS: That is obvious, which is why it would be so easy to use motors.

 

[Craigee]

Re: Re:

the ones who have been caught motor doping so far didn't crash and have their motors exposed with a broken bike. They were dismantled to see if they were there. This is the only way to confirm motor doping. Not any apps with Ipads or sensors but by dismantling the bike.

Have they dismantled Chris Froome's bikes publicly after his best performances? No? Well until this happens I will continue to believe motor doping goes on. It's up to the UCI to clear this up. Not us.

They dont do that in F1 either. Checks aren't done publicly in most sports.
PS: UCI doesnt care whether you believe it or not.

Fair enough. Just holding back the sport of cycling themselves then aren't they? The UCI hurts cycling far more than any rider could including Lance.

 

[Craigee]

Regards to Mechanics and other staff with pro teams. I haven't seen any pro team contracts myself but I would bet the first condition would be

Official Contract With Sky Pro Cycling Team

1) In signing this contract You are sworn to 100% full confidentiality. Especially regards to our highly sophisticated Doping programme but also with regards to our sophisticated motor doping programme. Any breach of this contract here in signed by yourself and you place yourself open to full prosecution by the best lawyers in Great Britain who also serve British Cycling, British Rowing and British Athletics.

 

[samhocking]

The thing is, while Armstrong was getting away with doping, everyone else trying to catch him got uncovered pretty easily.

Everyone? Walsh, Ballestre, Kimmage, O'Reilly, Andreus, Mike Anderson, Lemond and some others = Everyone?

Pretty easily? 15 years it took. Then he confessed to Oprah no less! Easily. Pull the other one!!

Below that you had the chancers like your Piepolis & Landis's? Where are these chancers in the peloton trying to catch up with Froome's and others motors? Crash with EPO in your arm and nobody can possibly know. Crash with a motor in your frame or wheel and it would be far more obvious you cheated and comes with huge risk, mostly unknown risk that could happen anytime anywhere too.

We know that motors are in use, 3 people have been caught. Where is the evidence of bikes snapping half and stuff falling out? I guess that this consideration has been given to hidden motors in frames and teams have made alterations to prevent. But the latest motors are allegedly in hubs and rims.

End of the day, you shouldn't have only a handful of dubious youtube videos open to debate asking if the wheel is spinning on its own or not, you would have motorised components in the road after a crash, frames breaking in non-typical ways hollow non-repaired carbon fibre never fails like.

Why? These things are not floating in frames. They are fixed.

TV cameras cutting away from crashed immediatly. You don't just have your doctor knowing you cheated, you have electrical, mechancial and composites engineers doing all this work behind the scenes. Team mechanics charging your lithium batteries in hotel car parks with CCTV all around them all across the world having to test stuff actually works by riding the bikes. Motors failing, jamming, catching fire. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even some crazy dude like Ricco who doesn't give a toss what it takes to beat Froome, he's gonna go all out, motors and all, crash on a descent and his wheels keep spinning dragging him down the road for another 100 meters simply hasn't ever happened like it did for EPO. This never happens, but it should if motors are in use. Components, especially electrically driven, highly-bespoke engineering is not exact sceince. It mostly works, but sometimes it doesn't and we should be seeing life's randomness throwing those using motors some curve balls, but not a single one in 20 years? It simply doesn't add up looking at how these things typically always blow up in cycling.

Dont recall too many frames snapping and bits flying all over the road. Dan Martin's bike smashed into the side of a mountain and not too much damage.

Again obfuscation and an attempt to dismiss what we know is in use as 3 people have been caught, Madiot has made calls about their use, Cassani same and UCI put a PR smokescreen to test for them.

Sorry Sam, big time fail. That 3 riders have been caught is definitive evidence they are in use. Why you think motors would be all over the road in crashes is baloney!!! We dont see power meters or other bits flying off, only bidons.

I'm talking about the riders catching 'up' with Armstrong. i.e. Ullrich, Basso, Patani etc etc etc. Not those catching Armstrong doping. It took far less than a decade for those guys to be found out once they were nearly equal to Armstrong's powers. Why would the same not be different for BC/Sky/Froome. We're coming up to 5 years. How long did Landis last once he started riding faster than everyone else? 24 hours lol!

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re: Re:

PS: UCI doesnt care whether you believe it or not.

Given the very, very high profile the UCI has given the issue of technological fraud - the expense, the rule change, the iPads, the PR, the prominence in Lappartient's manifesto - I think it's pretty clear that the UCI does care what people think, and is working to make people think everything that can be done is being done.

 

[Random Direction]

Typical communications approach . They care what people think rather than doing the right thing - which would be caring about the integrity of the races.

It would be naive to assume that there actually iscintegrity

 

[samhocking]

So what would be 'doing the right thing from UCI or any body in charge of technical fraud?

Clearly it's not possible to show every riders bike, spare bike and spare rear wheel being inspected live with thermal imaging or x-ray, just as it would be impossible to thermal image each rider in a peloton live because te vast majority of riders won't be in shot anyway. At best you would have selected snapshots of inspection from random points using various technologies before, during or after the race and the final podium bikes perhaps inspected in more scrutiny, but this would still be selected and pre-recorded video footage too because no broadcast company would transmit it live and no race organiser would want to show it either. If UCI are only able to show pre-recorded snippets of inspections, all other companies would only be able to do so also and clearly the obvious doubters claim would be, the videos are pre-selected as not showing anything anyway. As soon as that is realised, everyone will simply say, 99% of the time we don't know where the rider was in the peloton, where his spare rear wheel was i nthe race convoy and could easily have got a bike change either from or too a motor. It would be impossiblle to track every moment in the race that could show a motor being used even with thermal imaging or by weighing wheels in a practical sense. By my calculations, just to scan every wheel, bike, spare bike and spare wheel in the race convoy would take around 133 hours recorded footage per day and that's before you've even scanned perhaps the top 10 of a stage and weighed wheels.

 

[Random Direction]

So what would be 'doing the right thing from UCI or any body in charge of technical fraud?

Clearly it's not possible to show every riders bike, spare bike and spare rear wheel being inspected live with thermal imaging or x-ray, just as it would be impossible to thermal image each rider in a peloton live because te vast majority of riders won't be in shot anyway. At best you would have selected snapshots of inspection from random points using various technologies before, during or after the race and the final podium bikes perhaps inspected in more scrutiny, but this would still be selected and pre-recorded video footage too because no broadcast company would transmit it live and no race organiser would want to show it either. If UCI are only able to show pre-recorded snippets of inspections, all other companies would only be able to do so also and clearly the obvious doubters claim would be, the videos are pre-selected as not showing anything anyway. As soon as that is realised, everyone will simply say, 99% of the time we don't know where the rider was in the peloton, where his spare rear wheel was i nthe race convoy and could easily have got a bike change either from or too a motor. It would be impossiblle to track every moment in the race that could show a motor being used even with thermal imaging or by weighing wheels in a practical sense. By my calculations, just to scan every wheel, bike, spare bike and spare wheel in the race convoy would take around 133 hours recorded footage per day and that's before you've even scanned perhaps the top 10 of a stage and weighed wheels.

Cool. The 'it's too complex, therefore nothing should be done' line of argumentation. I've written technical standards for issues much more complex than this in the past - typically stakeholders would raise all sorts of flags (time, cost, technical feasibility, fairness) about perceived issues with an approach, which under detailed review ended up being either resolvable or tangental. The intention of the stakeholders was to maintain the status quo - the 'do nothing' outcome.

Integrity depends on the process followed. Start with transparency of what is being done (e.g. not a black box ipad app with no open technical specifications), add a sampling protocol - both based on placement, key helpers for those placing and from suspicious in race events, use several different testing mechanisms, and automatically publish reports detailing the outcomes. Have some verification independent of teams and the UCI (too easy for the influences to influence).

 

[yaco]

Fans are often bored watching races, so doubt, they'll be interested in watching inspectors dismantle bikes.

 

[samhocking]

So what would be 'doing the right thing from UCI or any body in charge of technical fraud?

Clearly it's not possible to show every riders bike, spare bike and spare rear wheel being inspected live with thermal imaging or x-ray, just as it would be impossible to thermal image each rider in a peloton live because te vast majority of riders won't be in shot anyway. At best you would have selected snapshots of inspection from random points using various technologies before, during or after the race and the final podium bikes perhaps inspected in more scrutiny, but this would still be selected and pre-recorded video footage too because no broadcast company would transmit it live and no race organiser would want to show it either. If UCI are only able to show pre-recorded snippets of inspections, all other companies would only be able to do so also and clearly the obvious doubters claim would be, the videos are pre-selected as not showing anything anyway. As soon as that is realised, everyone will simply say, 99% of the time we don't know where the rider was in the peloton, where his spare rear wheel was i nthe race convoy and could easily have got a bike change either from or too a motor. It would be impossiblle to track every moment in the race that could show a motor being used even with thermal imaging or by weighing wheels in a practical sense. By my calculations, just to scan every wheel, bike, spare bike and spare wheel in the race convoy would take around 133 hours recorded footage per day and that's before you've even scanned perhaps the top 10 of a stage and weighed wheels.

Cool. The 'it's too complex, therefore nothing should be done' line of argumentation. I've written technical standards for issues much more complex than this in the past - typically stakeholders would raise all sorts of flags (time, cost, technical feasibility, fairness) about perceived issues with an approach, which under detailed review ended up being either resolvable or tangental. The intention of the stakeholders was to maintain the status quo - the 'do nothing' outcome.

Integrity depends on the process followed. Start with transparency of what is being done (e.g. not a black box ipad app with no open technical specifications), add a sampling protocol - both based on placement, key helpers for those placing and from suspicious in race events, use several different testing mechanisms, and automatically publish reports detailing the outcomes. Have some verification independent of teams and the UCI (too easy for the influences to influence).

Clearly things can be more transparent, but no technical standard or its equivalent can stop a team getting a motorised bike or wheel to a rider in a race from outside of it and still race with it. I can think of several ways a motor never needs to even be at the start line, finish line or within the race convoy or team, so no disrespect to your technical standards skills, but there's nothing technical about it, you have 22 teams with 180 wheels each travelling all over the country spread across multiple vehicles, some within the convoy, some moving onto finish lines, hotels, next races, riders flying back home, new wheels being flown in to service course, the next hotel, the next race and the race takes place spread around an entire country, not within the relative controlled environment of a business or operational protocol. No doubt the process could be more technically persuasive the technology works, but after that it's like anti-doping and snapshots of detection opportunity is the best you can hope for and to target riders winning races.

 

[red_flanders]

And here we have the "No perfect solution so why bother" argument.

What's being asked for is that the body in charge of enforcement act like it wants to actually catch or at least dissuade cheaters. The answer isn't "That's not feasible", the answer is that we know that's not actually in their interest.

 

[prawny]

Has anyone else noticed that Mathieu VdP is the only one using a bottle in the CX so far this season?

 

[veganrob]

Re:

Has anyone else noticed that Mathieu VdP is the only one using a bottle in the CX so far this season?

Has he ever tried to drink from it?