Question Poll - is tadej pocagar using a hidden motor?

[Cookster15]

Are you aware of any other studies that discuss techniques & strategies in blood doping that can circumvent the current ABP?

No. My concern is the ABP is not being utilized to anywhere near its potential.

 

[Nomad]

No. My concern is the ABP is not being utilized to anywhere near its potential.

Can you further elaborate? Are you talking about the UCI looking the other way at flagged passports & not pursuing any action?

 

[Cookster15]

Can you further elaborate? Are you talking about the UCI looking the other way at flagged passports & not pursuing any action?

Maybe that. But also that it cost more money to secure a ban. Lawyers have pushed the margin of what would constitute guilt too far IMO. I am a numbers man but if an expert tells me a certain pattern in the rider’s blood scores are 99% certain of illegal blood manipulation that’s good enough for me. Lawyers might argue otherwise.

But the other issue was the accuracy of the passport software. Someone posted an Ashenden paper from Feb 2020 here last week. How could the passport software miss that? If you can have false negatives you can also have false positives. A lawyer will jump all over that to cast doubt.

 

[Lurkerman]

I don't think Pogacar uses a motor. However, due to technological and philosophical developments over time, etc., I think that a concept can become outdated, and so perhaps one day it no longer makes sense to talk about a bike, i.e., it's become an outdated, nonsensical concept. As such, whilst probably unrealistic and unaffordable, one thing that I'd love to see one day was if at least the richest race TdF tried and host their event where all riders had to ride a neutral-service bike provided by the TdF itself - teams just inform them of the measurements of their squad, and then the TdF hands out an equally terrible bike to everyone in the neutral zone every day. I think Pog still wins, but it'd be interesting to watch, and an attempt to keep an atavistic, "meritocratic" event like the TdF alive

 

[BubbaChuck]

lets move tdf to december,withou camps or special preparation.wait for snow,only resins and water and give them old bikes.pogacar by 15 minutes,not even sweating.

 

[aphronesis]

So why don't the trained UCI mechanics find motors in Pogacar's bike after it has been inspected many times? The UCI introduced motor checks after that woman MTBer was caught - being proactive as if motors got used it could destroy the entire sport. UCI introducing motor doping checks doesn't mean motor use is happening in the peloton.

FYI, none of this is evidence:


The hidden motor conspiratorists would do much better to look into how the UCI passport is ineffective at detecting blood manipulation or is not being used to its full effect. I would think people here claiming to have PhD's (not you) would go down that path rather than Lee Harvey Oswald type conspiracy theories. With a PhD we should have enough thinking skills to work out how the passport could be circumvented. Might require reading some science papers though.

Poster/member @MerckxIndex would be one of the more equipped to answer some of this from a ready base of knowledge and access to recent research. But he’s been gone awhile (hopefully well). Other posters also, but time is compressed more these days, and if that’s not a puzzle one’s after, why bother?

Similarly, with regard to your related suggestions on this matter, I’ve stated elsewhere that it doesn’t seem if contemporary journalists and their formation , training (or priorities) are much geared toward exposing cycling fraud. No matter the undercurrent, a journalist was not one of the main actors to break Armstrong.

As a cyclist, I can go with the argument that motors are untenable and inconceivable in the sport; as someone witnessing the emptying out of any number of institutional forms and behaviors on a daily basis I might be less absolute.

 

[Cookster15]

No matter the undercurrent, a journalist was not one of the main actors to break Armstrong.

Thanks for the reply. But wasn't it journalist David Walsh who helped expose Armstrong? A Google search on 'who exposed lance armstrong' suggests the below:

SCA president Bob Hamman had read L.A. Confidentiel, a book by cycling journalists Pierre Ballester and David Walsh, which detailed circumstantial evidence of massive doping by Armstrong and members of his U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.

Yes I recall MerckxIndex - a very good contributor here.

But regardless of the Armstrong case, there is nothing stopping journalists anywhere from doing their own investigations. They are not on team, sponsor or sport organizer payrolls. They will also have more experience, time, resources and investigative skills than anyone does contributing here in the CN forum (that we know of). And their careers are not dependent upon maintaining any kind of omertá.

Likewise, if investigations into cycling are done behind closed doors they are protected against any legal suits. Who knows, maybe that is happening but the evidence is not yet sufficient to lift the lid publicly? The UCI might well be complicit as they were with Lance?

In the meantime I watch cycling today as I did in the 90s - yes I know what is likely going on.

 

[aphronesis]

Reply

Well, there’s this

A complete history of the Lance Armstrong doping case

From 1999 cortisone test to lifetime ban, how Lance Armstrong became the most disgraced athlete of all time

www.cyclingnews.com

Within that the catalyst was Floyd and the options for Tygart and, effectively, Novitzsky, and a career agenda, take things up and run with them. Prior to that moment, and a temporary reset of the US climate post 2008, all the rest, such as foreign journalists, were white noise relative to the corporate sponsorships, prestige and publicity moving around for the sport and in the US. Tyler, Vaughters, Frankie saying “they had no idea” wasn’t” going to have traction (and is dubious anyway).

The same holds now for journalists, an influencer has a hot inside ticket, sure, but just as with neopros, who is going to burn their resources and energy to claim that cyclists still dope? Similarly though, I imagine that the better funded teams are more siloed than ever so that risk falls on the rider when things go badly.