Sagan Clean?

[Tienus]

If you insist on your position that you do not accept that after a crash on narrow belgian roads, there will be groups of riders on the road and team cars stuck behind, then I can't be of any help to you.

That is not what I have posted. Cars can get stuck but there is no report or signs that this actually happened. There is also no report or signs of a crash from Sagan or Marangoni being behind after giving his bike to Sagan. The only source for this narrative is the mechanic

I even found a report which mentioned that second group trailed bunch by 20 seconds but you will probably again find some argument in favour of your theories. Still, have a look at this video (from a team car!) how it looked like after that crash: https://youtu.be/_6rFEhAjdXE?t=148 and give it one more thought please...

20 seconds sounds reasonable to me. With more than a 30 seconds gap the team car is allowed to overtake to stay with their best riders. The video you posted actually confirms my narrative that the team cars where right behind the peloton when the crash happened.

Again cyclingnews reports after the crash there was a cease-fire in which Sagan had bike changes.

[P-R '14]: Your post confirms that Sagan and Marangoni give mutually matching desription of events. So let's have a look at your claims and how false they are:

Change after the crash: You say video does not match Marangoni's blog. Seriously? This is what he wrote: Passing through a narrow stretch, there is the first mass fall of the day. Just behind me I hear the clash of carbon and aluminium crashing to the ground. I look back right away to see if Peter was involved. Fortunately, he’s still up and running, on the back wheel of King. I get myself untangled and wait for them, then I help them catch up. No sooner do I think that this time we got off easy than I hear Peter’s unmistakable voice on the radio: “Stefano (Zanatta, ed. note), I gotta change bikes.” His gear change is nearly destroyed and his chain comes off at each turn of the pedal. We wait for the team car to come, stop, and change bikes. The group is moving fast and it takes us a little while to catch back up.

I realise now that the autotranslate I posted is not clear. This is a better one:
http://www.ad.nl/wielrennen/sagan-nu-genieten-van-een-poosje-verlof~ad32cb40/
Net voor de befaamde doortocht aan het Bos van Wallers-Arenberg moest ik na een val een fietswissel doorvoeren, omdat mijn versnellingsapparaat afgebroken was.
Just before the famous passage to the Wallers-Arenberg forest I had to make a bike change after a crash, because my gear machine was broken.

Sagan claims he crashed and according to Marangoni he was still up and running.
Marangoni has to untangle himself and wait but 45 seconds later they are at the back of the peloton which was their position before the crash. At 21:49 during the crash you see the back of the peloton disappearing with Sagan likely in it.
If his gear change is nearly destroyed and his chain comes off at each turn of the pedal why does he not change his bike with Marangoni at 22:56 they are allmost standing still?
I think you are right that Sagan was allready in the back. Probably getting ready to swap. Because of the crash and subsequent split his team car was not there and he had to wait. His team mate is actually helping to close the gap.

When you watch the video at 50:00, which is approximately 20 kms before Sagan changed back to his bike, guess what you see: Europcar rider down on the cobbles, some Cannondales swerving around. So the story matches the video, we just do not see the moment Sagan changed bike with Marangoni some time after that crash.

A europcar crashing does not make the hole story matching. That crash actually happened the sector before Hornain. Looking at the video it is very unlikely Sagan swaps with Marangoni in that sector. The peloton enters Hornain at 59:30. Sagan is filmed at the back of the peloton at 1:00:45. If the swap took place on Hornaing it was very quick and probably in the beginning of the sector.

Is there evidence for the swap apart from the cannondale story?

3) Finallly, regarding alleged third bike change at 1:52:55 - this one probably happened only in your fantasy. Yes, Sagan goes back to the car, but if he wanted to change bike, don't you think Bodnar would wait for him to pace him back, rather than riding at the front? Plus at 1:53:13 you can see in the background Sagan riding alongside the car, and at 1:53:25 Sagan already riding back to the group, reaching to his back pocket:

At 1:52:55 the team car overtakes sky to be the first. At 1:53:08 the sky car is in front so i guess the cannondale car stopped. 1:53:13 is not Sagan but a motorcycle.
You can see him getting off his bike at 1:53:05 if you play it at slow speed.

 

[PeterB]

That is not what I have posted. Cars can get stuck but there is no report or signs that this actually happened. There is also no report or signs of a crash from Sagan or Marangoni being behind after giving his bike to Sagan. The only source for this narrative is the mechanic

20 seconds sounds reasonable to me. With more than a 30 seconds gap the team car is allowed to overtake to stay with their best riders. The video you posted actually confirms my narrative that the team cars where right behind the peloton when the crash happened.

Again cyclingnews reports after the crash there was a cease-fire in which Sagan had bike changes.

[E3 '14]: Well, what else I can say. There is a crash and your bike gets damaged. You don't stand and look around where you team car is if you have a teammate with fitting bike with you, you grab his bike, continue, and let your teammate wait for team car and sort out his bike. Maybe you check over the radio where the car is and it can be as far as 30th car in the row and the road is blocked. You can't expect reporting for every single rider - there were more affected victims of the crash so if Sagan seemingly continued what is there to report?

But if you don't believe he was on Marangoni's bike and had to change bikes due to that, or vice versa that he intentionally changed to Marangoni's bike although he did not have to just to have an excuse to change bikes later on, so be it.

At 1:52:55 the team car overtakes sky to be the first. At 1:53:08 the sky car is in front so i guess the cannondale car stopped. 1:53:13 is not Sagan but a motorcycle.
You can see him getting off his bike at 1:53:05 if you play it at slow speed.

[P-R '14]: I am sorry but that's not what I see. The moment you see him getting off the bike I see him riding along. The first car beind the race director you think is sky I see Cannondale's Citroen. And at 1:53:13 I think we can see both motorcycle and Sagan in the background (lime green blur right below the trafic sign):

But if this still does not convince you, consider this: On which side of the road rider stops for a bike change? On the right side (check all videos of other Sagan's stops). On which side of the road rider rides if he wants a gel and chat with the director? On the left side. Believe it or not, but Sagan riding here on the left side is quite convincing evidence that he just talked to his director and not changed bikes.

 

[red_flanders]

Not that I give Phil Liggett a lot of credence, but it is worth pointing out that even he noticed Sagan was having issues with his gearing after that bike change.

 

[PeterB]

You mean after his first change? Well that was just removing duct tape from gear levers (arguably to protect them from dust) and then probably shifting fiercely to make them work and get to right gear.

What however came to my mind after my latest post and I will mention it before Tienus gets to see that video is that Sagan actually did make planned bike change at least in P-R '16. It is well documented right from the start in CN article and photo gallery http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/sagans-paris-roubaix-bike-switch-gallery/. This made me think that they indeed might have had the same plan already in 2014, judging by seeing number on the bike he got from the car, and the crash might just affect that plan a bit.
Before speculating wildly just please keep in mind that at least in 2016, there is clear distinction between the bikes meant for different parts of the race and they let the guy take close photos of the spare bike so hopefully this info does not spark new wave of accusations.

 

[Tom the Engine]

I didn't see anything in Tom's post that explains why Roglic rear hub lid up like a christmas tree whereas the other rear hubs didn't.

Then I'm not sure whether you read my post..
I acknowledge that the post is way too long and therefor probably hard to digest, apologies for that. Anyway, I'm not going to repeat everything here but just refer to it again and invite you to read it and afterwards join me in a technically oriented discussion about the material if you disagree.
Note that all I did is try to carefully argue a couple of points that I think are very crucial to determine the quality of the evidence presented in the documentation. Especially I argue why I think it's bad evidence that doesn't deserve too much attention because, well, it's bad evidence that doesn't add much insight at best and can be very misleading at worst. Not more, not less.

I'm trying to visualize one of my arguments from my post for you. It's point 3) Dynamic color scale of thermal images:
Let's consider the scene where the rear hub "glows like a christmas tree". I suggest that you set video speed on youtube to 0.25 and you step through the footage from the thermal camera very slowly with stop-and-go.
We see a couple of riders that that don't look suspicious at all. Then a car passes the camera. Right behind the car the rider with the glowing hub appears in complete contrast to the riders in front of the car. On first sight it looks terribly suspicious, no doubt about it.
My argument is the following: We all look at the wrong spot in the video. We all focus on the glowing hub (as does Varjas in the documentary) but we forget to pay close attention to the detail that is very crucial in a thermal image: The color bar and its associated upper and lower temperature values that appears on the right-hand side of the video!
Now that you know where to look, do you see what is happening here?

I'll explain with two screenshots.
First the couple of riders in front of the car:

Then the car passes the camera.
Behind the car we have the christmas tree:

I highlighted the important part of the screenshots with a red marking and two arrows: It's the top-right corner. It's the upper temperature limit of the color scale (the lower limit is basically the same for both shots so we can leave it alone). The upper limit takes an immediate and massive drop from 24.7 (it's even above 25 a few moments earlier, I didn't take the screenshot at its maximal value) to 18.8. That happens because the car covers most of the measurement area at some point and the camera automatically re-adjusts its range.
In other words: In the first shot the camera covers a temperature range of 15.6 degrees (from 9.1 to 24.7). In the second shot the temperature range covers only 9.3 degrees (from 9.5 to 18.8). The first shot covers a range that is 67% larger. That's a huge difference.

I'm sure you can connect the dots yourself: The important consequence of this is that the temperature-to-color mapping is very different from the first shot to the second. The very same temperature that is orange in the second shot would be more purple-ish in the first shot. You can also see that the rear wheel and the legs of the christmas rider glow way brighter than those of the other riders. And you wouldn't conclude that his legs are so much warmer, would you?

So your question is: Why does the rear hub glow? And my answer to it is: Does it really glow?
The hub might still appear warmer than it should be after we've corrected for this. But at least a large part of this suspicious visual effect is a purely artificial and originates from the self-adjusting temperature and color range of the camera that is very misleading. And this is the reason that makes it very difficult to compare different shots with different ranges. And as you can see in the video this range jumps around all the time. When the temperature we're interested in happens to be in a region where the gradient in the color scale is large we "see" a larger difference then when it's flat (that's point 2 in my last post). That's just our biased visual perception.

If we really wanted to see what's going on we'd need to look at the raw data. Numbers. And then I'd still want know how precise this thermal camera is able to measure under these circumstances where the measured objects and temperatures fluctuate extremely fast. Could this introduce artifacts and which ones? (That's point 4 of my last post.)
If you watch the video material carefully you notice that not just the color of any region changes considerably over time (as it is expected due to the effect discussed above) but also the relative order is quite unstable. What I mean by this: One region appears first warmer and then all of a sudden colder than a nearby region for no apparent reason. And sometimes that changes back and forth. To me this indicates that the accuracy at this resolution is not very high at all.

 

[Tienus]

[P-R '14]: I am sorry but that's not what I see. The moment you see him getting off the bike I see him riding along. The first car beind the race director you think is sky I see Cannondale's Citroen. And at 1:53:13 I think we can see both motorcycle and Sagan in the background (lime green blur right below the trafic sign):

If you play the video at slow speed you can see Sagan with his left foot going to the ground at 1:53:05 in the top right corner. The team car is stopping right behind him.
This is being confirmed at 1:53:10 when you can see the complete left side of the first car, there is no green like the cannondale has.
The blur you see below the traffic sign is the motorcycle, there are two guys on it.

 

[yaco]

What I've taken from the last few pages, that if a rider takes a team-mates bike after a mechanical or crash, it must be mechanical doping. Should we question Froome taking Thomas' bike after he crashed on a descent in stage 19 of the TDF.

 

[Tienus]

Re:

What I've taken from the last few pages, that if a rider takes a team-mates bike after a mechanical or crash, it must be mechanical doping. Should we question Froome taking Thomas' bike after he crashed on a descent in stage 19 of the TDF.

What you should have taken from the last view pages is that Sagan is making up excuses to change his bike with a bike from the team car.
Can you come up with a plausible explanation why Sagan and his team are lying about the bike swaps?

 

[PeterB]

Re:

[P-R '14]: I am sorry but that's not what I see. The moment you see him getting off the bike I see him riding along. The first car beind the race director you think is sky I see Cannondale's Citroen. And at 1:53:13 I think we can see both motorcycle and Sagan in the background (lime green blur right below the trafic sign):

If you play the video at slow speed you can see Sagan with his left foot going to the ground at 1:53:05 in the top right corner. The team car is stopping right behind him.
This is being confirmed at 1:53:10 when you can see the complete left side of the first car, there is no green like the cannondale has.
The blur you see below the traffic sign is the motorcycle, there are two guys on it.

OK, final attempt: This video of P-R '14 (with slightly different timing) has better quality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRJ_s0DeLu0 and you can see there clearly that even after the moment you claim they stopped and changed bike, the front mask of the first car befind the race director's car is definitely of a Citroen C5 (BTW the car they overtook seconds before was not Sky but Trek's Skoda):

and you can even recognise Cannondale's logo on its side:

So I hope we can now all agree that at this point of the race, Sagan really did not change bikes.

 

[yaco]

Re: Re:

What I've taken from the last few pages, that if a rider takes a team-mates bike after a mechanical or crash, it must be mechanical doping. Should we question Froome taking Thomas' bike after he crashed on a descent in stage 19 of the TDF.

What you should have taken from the last view pages is that Sagan is making up excuses to change his bike with a bike from the team car.
Can you come up with a plausible explanation why Sagan and his team are lying about the bike swaps?

The excuses and the lies are in your fertile imagination - Nothing more or nothing less - Riders in every race change bikes for various reasons - Gee they even change bikes in TT's in mixed/variable conditions.

 

[sniper]

Re:

I didn't see anything in Tom's post that explains why Roglic rear hub lid up like a christmas tree whereas the other rear hubs didn't.

Then I'm not sure whether you read my post..
I acknowledge that the post is way too long and therefor probably hard to digest, apologies for that. Anyway, I'm not going to repeat everything here but just refer to it again and invite you to read it and afterwards join me in a technically oriented discussion about the material if you disagree.
Note that all I did is try to carefully argue a couple of points that I think are very crucial to determine the quality of the evidence presented in the documentation. Especially I argue why I think it's bad evidence that doesn't deserve too much attention because, well, it's bad evidence that doesn't add much insight at best and can be very misleading at worst. Not more, not less.

I'm trying to visualize one of my arguments from my post for you. It's point 3) Dynamic color scale of thermal images:
Let's consider the scene where the rear hub "glows like a christmas tree". I suggest that you set video speed on youtube to 0.25 and you step through the footage from the thermal camera very slowly with stop-and-go.
We see a couple of riders that that don't look suspicious at all. Then a car passes the camera. Right behind the car the rider with the glowing hub appears in complete contrast to the riders in front of the car. On first sight it looks terribly suspicious, no doubt about it.
My argument is the following: We all look at the wrong spot in the video. We all focus on the glowing hub (as does Varjas in the documentary) but we forget to pay close attention to the detail that is very crucial in a thermal image: The color bar and its associated upper and lower temperature values that appears on the right-hand side of the video!
Now that you know where to look, do you see what is happening here?

I'll explain with two screenshots.
First the couple of riders in front of the car:

Then the car passes the camera.
Behind the car we have the christmas tree:

I highlighted the important part of the screenshots with a red marking and two arrows: It's the top-right corner. It's the upper temperature limit of the color scale (the lower limit is basically the same for both shots so we can leave it alone). The upper limit takes an immediate and massive drop from 24.7 (it's even above 25 a few moments earlier, I didn't take the screenshot at its maximal value) to 18.8. That happens because the car covers most of the measurement area at some point and the camera automatically re-adjusts its range.
In other words: In the first shot the camera covers a temperature range of 15.6 degrees (from 9.1 to 24.7). In the second shot the temperature range covers only 9.3 degrees (from 9.5 to 18.8). The first shot covers a range that is 67% larger. That's a huge difference.

I'm sure you can connect the dots yourself: The important consequence of this is that the temperature-to-color mapping is very different from the first shot to the second. The very same temperature that is orange in the second shot would be more purple-ish in the first shot. You can also see that the rear wheel and the legs of the christmas rider glow way brighter than those of the other riders. And you wouldn't conclude that his legs are so much warmer, would you?

So your question is: Why does the rear hub glow? And my answer to it is: Does it really glow?
The hub might still appear warmer than it should be after we've corrected for this. But at least a large part of this suspicious visual effect is a purely artificial and originates from the self-adjusting temperature and color range of the camera that is very misleading. And this is the reason that makes it very difficult to compare different shots with different ranges. And as you can see in the video this range jumps around all the time. When the temperature we're interested in happens to be in a region where the gradient in the color scale is large we "see" a larger difference then when it's flat (that's point 2 in my last post). That's just our biased visual perception.

If we really wanted to see what's going on we'd need to look at the raw data. Numbers. And then I'd still want know how precise this thermal camera is able to measure under these circumstances where the measured objects and temperatures fluctuate extremely fast. Could this introduce artifacts and which ones? (That's point 4 of my last post.)
If you watch the video material carefully you notice that not just the color of any region changes considerably over time (as it is expected due to the effect discussed above) but also the relative order is quite unstable. What I mean by this: One region appears first warmer and then all of a sudden colder than a nearby region for no apparent reason. And sometimes that changes back and forth. To me this indicates that the accuracy at this resolution is not very high at all.

Thanks Tom for the extensive clarifications. Appreciate it.

I do see your point, thanks for exposong it so clearly, and I agree it's a legitimate and important caveat.
However, if we look at the screenshots, we can look at the heat signal of the hub *relative to* the heat signal from the tire, and imo then the picture is still quite compelling or at least suspicious: Roglic hub is *just as hot as* his tire. For the other riders, we see that the hub is clearly *less hot than* the tire.
What do you think?

 

[Tienus]

So I hope we can now all agree that at this point of the race, Sagan really did not change bikes.

Yes you are rght. The better video shows its not a change.

 

[Tienus]

The excuses and the lies are in your fertile imagination - Nothing more or nothing less - Riders in every race change bikes for various reasons - Gee they even change bikes in TT's in mixed/variable conditions.

I have posted evidence and proof of Sagan lying.
If you think its my imagination then why dont you try and prove that I'm wrong?

 

[Tom the Engine]

Roglic hub is *just as hot as* his tire.

Absoluteley. I never tried to dismiss that.

For the other riders, we see that the hub is clearly *less hot than* the tire.

That's certainly true for the two screenshots that I posted above. But not in general. There are quite a few riders in the film where rear hub and tire are very similar in color. Most of them don't stick out as suspicious because the color "looks" cold. But nonetheless the colors are almost the same implying very similar temperature of hub and tire.
(I can add screenshots for that if you want me to. But there's really not more to see there than what I described - just very similar colors.)

we can look at the heat signal of the hub *relative to* the heat signal from the tire

Yes we can do that. But this could also be a bit of red herring. the temperature of the tire is by no means a reliable reference point to conclude whether a hub is "too warm" or not. There is quite substantial fluctuation in tire temperatures themselves to start with. Due to possible factors like amount and style of braking, terrain, material, exposure to solar radiation, wheel changes and whatnot. There are many such things that don't affect the hub as much as they do the tires.
Even with multiple riders in the same thermal image (i.e. same external conditions and same and therefor comparable color ranges) we often have considerable differences in tire color between bikes. For example we have shots in the film with two riders in the same image where for the first rider the front wheel is visibly warmer than the rear wheel and for the second rider it's the opposite. So if we took a rear hub with a fixed temperature and did a relative comparison to the tire we'd get a considerably different answer for each rider. And that's clearly not good.

The better idea would probably be to compare the hub region to the adjacent frame. But even this has issues that I'm not going into here.

We should also look at the absolute value of the measured temperature at the hub and compare it across bikes and against some theoretical calculations. But unless we get something that is blatantly obvious it remains kinda inconclusive.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really not trying to deny that something looks a bit odd here. But I'm still not even comfortable to call it "suspicious" because nobody attempted to demonstrate that it is "not normal". Since we first have to establish some sort of baseline on what is "normal" behaviour of clean bikes without motors (that was point 1 of my list of critisism of the evidence). And I don't mean just a baseline of theoretically possible temperatures, but a baseline that also covers this particular measurement method they used. Because as specified before in detail their careless use of the camera to me seems prone to have issues with accuracy and resolution all over the place that complicate interpretation of its results.
In traditional doping it's difficult to get a good baseline of clean performances and physiologial values of top athletes. Because, well, past performances and values of top athletes are very likely dirty. And even if they are not officially dirty (since there is no proof) we still have to assume that they are. So we never get a reliable clean baseline to compare to. But with these motors this is so much easier!

Take a bunch of clean bikes, take the same heat camera and put it in the hands of the same guy who stands at the roadside, try to match the conditions from the race as close as possible and start filming. What would we see?
Maybe we'd indeed from time to time get such a curious case where a hub appears warmer than the tire. Or where a hub seems warmer than it should be. And (depending how often this is the case) we would conclude that the images from Strade Bianche would be "not suspicious" because we got identical results with clean bikes. (The nice thing would be that it didn't even matter whether the strange effect was real or just a measurement artifact because we used the same method for baseline and test so concerns about technical shortcomings more or less cancel out.)
Or whatever we try we never get such behaviour. We try different riding styles, materials and whatnot. We simulate wheel changes where the mechanic really messes up and stuff is not properly aligned afterwards which results in increased friction. We try to find out what it would take for a clean bike to produce odd thermal images like the ones we found. And maybe however strongly misaligned bearings or bent axles we used (as suggested by John Swanson as possible causes) we never got even close to what was observed at Strade Bianche. In this case it would clearly be "very suspicious" because we cannot replicate the effect (or the magnitude of the effect).
And if we could film a bike with a rear hub motor from Varjas inside we could get a feeling about how this looks like. Maybe it looks exactly the Roglic scene, maybe it gets much much warmer and looks so blatantly obvious like their motor in the seat tube.

Without such comparisons we just don't really know what we're seeing. And we don't know what we should see.

I noticed some other things in the footage of the thermal camera that are somewhat strange. Where things get warmer than the tire. Nothing meaningful. Just to show that we might also get some curious stuff from time to time anyway.
This is the first example:

That's the bike with the motor in the seat tube. (The white arrow is from the documentary, disregard it.) But what is this small orange point inside the rear wheel? It's not just present in this screenshot but in the whole sequene. Same temperature as the tire and quite a bit warmer than its surroundings.
Shame on me I'm not even entirely sure what it is. I guess it's this small gear-wheel below the cassette that guides the chain (apologies for my limited english cycling vocabulary).

Second example:

Two things here: The first one obviously is the increased temperature in the bottom bracket. Warmer than the tire. Varjas was very quick to attribute this to friction. So here friction is the most likely explanation but in the rear hub it cannot possibly be?
Secondly, this ring in the middle of the rear wheel that is again warmer than the tire. It seems to be on the right-hand side of the bike and therefor not a disc brake but a part of the cassette.

 

[sniper]

Good observations Tom, cheers.
So you've convinced me that there is some quirky stuff going on in those thermal imagery that require a separate explanation. YOu give some good examples.

But Roglic heat bloom still doesn't look like a fluke. Nor does it look like friction. It looks like a hub motor. To me at least.
But whatever it is, a very nice heat bloom it is.

There could be other explanations. But if you take some time to go through the Roglic thread, soon enough you'll become convinced that this was indeed a hub motor. The natire of his results. The bikeswitches. Lotto's incredibly dodgy cover story.

And if this wasnt a motor, i want to see Lotto reconsruct what it was. It should be easy.
And Id expect them to sue Stade 2. Hasn't happened.

Many questions. One straightforward answer.

That said. It would be great to have the whole Stare 2 evidence at our disposal. And it's disappointing hat no journalist has yet tried to get their hands on it to scrutinize it the way you have.

Hell, imagine the UCI requesting that footage for further investigation.
An absurd idea, I know...

 

[PeterB]

Re:

That said. It would be great to have the whole Stare 2 evidence at our disposal. And it's disappointing hat no journalist has yet tried to get their hands on it to scrutinize it the way you have.

Stade 2 themselves are journalists and as you say, they have the whole evidence. Why do you call on some other journalists to scrutinize it if Stade 2 themselves had the opportunity but were not able to deliver anything better? You seem to assume and suggest that evidence collected by Stade 2 contains some other breakthrough "great" things which are just waiting for some other journalists to be discovered but that simply does not make sense, does it.

 

[PeterB]

I have posted evidence and proof of Sagan lying.
If you think its my imagination then why dont you try and prove that I'm wrong?

I have impression that you may still think that having to change to Marangoni's bike in P-R '14 is a lie so I can offer the following evidence which in my opinion strongly supports their story that Sagan had a mechanical in this sector and therefore was forced to take Marangoni's bike (and therefore change back to his later on):

1. This is after peloton entered the sector (the timing is different from yours because I took screenshots from that other video with better quality). It is not totally clear from the image but I am almost sure the first Cannondale rider is Sagan. You can see how close to the front he is and when you watch the video, you can see how he tries to move up using side of the road.

2. Then the camera moves away and after just a minute and something, we can see Sagan at the very back of the peloton in front of the moto with camera.

3. Another minute later you can see from an aerial view how far Sagan is (he is still at the back, in front of the moto).

What explanation could there be for losing position so quickly? I find it absolutely plausible that reason for this was a puncture and changing bike with a teammate. Do you have any better explanation?

 

[yaco]

Re:

The excuses and the lies are in your fertile imagination - Nothing more or nothing less - Riders in every race change bikes for various reasons - Gee they even change bikes in TT's in mixed/variable conditions.

I have posted evidence and proof of Sagan lying.
If you think its my imagination then why dont you try and prove that I'm wrong?

Is every rider questioned by the media every time they change a bike in a day's racing - By this logic we would need 50 to 100 forensic interviews after each day's racing - Riders and teams tell lies every day about tactics/schedules/protected riders etc,etc,etc.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

That said. It would be great to have the whole Stare 2 evidence at our disposal. And it's disappointing hat no journalist has yet tried to get their hands on it to scrutinize it the way you have.

Stade 2 themselves are journalists and as you say, they have the whole evidence. Why do you call on some other journalists to scrutinize it if Stade 2 themselves had the opportunity but were not able to deliver anything better? You seem to assume and suggest that evidence collected by Stade 2 contains some other breakthrough "great" things which are just waiting for some other journalists to be discovered but that simply does not make sense, does it.

weird.
That's like saying well we had Walsh asking the questions of Lance. Why did we need other journos to ask questions? Or like, well we have the Daily mail asking questions of Sky; the other newspapers can continue cheerleading.

Scrutiny there cannot be enough of. I wanna know that what I'm watching in July is real.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

The excuses and the lies are in your fertile imagination - Nothing more or nothing less - Riders in every race change bikes for various reasons - Gee they even change bikes in TT's in mixed/variable conditions.

I have posted evidence and proof of Sagan lying.
If you think its my imagination then why dont you try and prove that I'm wrong?

Is every rider questioned by the media every time they change a bike in a day's racing - By this logic we would need 50 to 100 forensic interviews after each day's racing - Riders and teams tell lies every day about tactics/schedules/protected riders etc,etc,etc.

You have to take it up with UCI. As long as there is no serious motor testing, yes, every unexplained bike switch (though obviously especially those followed by a good result) warrants scrutiny.

 

[sniper]

Re:

El calor podría deberse a interferencias o a otras causas. Sin embargo, el equipo holandés declinó ofrecer cualquier tipo de explicación a los periodistas de Stade 2.

"The heat could have been caused by interferences or other causes. However, the Dutch team declined to offer any kind of explanation to Stade 2."
http://www.elmundo.es/deportes/2016/06/20/57681d2eca474180288b456c.html


And I love this slip of the tongue from Plugge:

'Als je goed kijkt, gaat het om de naaf. Dat zou voor het eerst zijn , dat daar een motortje zou zitten. Echt pure onzin.'

"If you look carefully, it's about the hub. That would be the first time, that there would be a motor in that place. Pure nonsense."
http://www.volkskrant.nl/sport/franse-tv-beschuldigt-roglic-van-mechanische-doping~a4324939/
Do tell us about motors in other places, Mr. Plugge. :lol:

 

[sniper]

It's also good to recall that Corriere della Sera collaborated with Stade 2 on the investigations, so it's not just those bitter jealous French making the accusations.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/mechanical-doping-used-in-strade-bianche-and-coppi-e-bartali-claims-investigation/
Two other things of possible interest there:

The two-page article in Corriere della Sera claims that the thermal detector showed heat from five sources hidden in the seat tube, with two hidden in the rear hub and cassette.

The results of the tests were confirmed by independent expert engineers, who ruled out that the heat could be created by electronic gear systems or other legal electronic parts.

I think the remaining question is why didn't UCI investigate. A rethorical question, obviously.

 

[Tienus]

I have impression that you may still think that having to change to Marangoni's bike in P-R '14 is a lie so I can offer the following evidence which in my opinion strongly supports their story that Sagan had a mechanical in this sector and therefore was forced to take Marangoni's bike (and therefore change back to his later on):

I said the swap might not have happened, which means I dont know. this is what I posted about Hornaing:
The peloton enters Hornain at 59:30. Sagan is filmed at the back of the peloton at 1:00:45. If the swap took place on Hornaing it was very quick and probably in the beginning of the sector.

Is there evidence for the swap apart from the cannondale story?

We are both talking about the same place the swap could have happened. I cant tell if the first cannondale rider was Sagan but if we look at this rider at the position you put the arrow and the last rider of the peloton there is a 12 second time gap. If the swap took place it was very quick taking into acount that its not a pre planned stop and two riders are involved.

What explanation could there be for losing position so quickly? I find it absolutely plausible that reason for this was a puncture and changing bike with a teammate. Do you have any better explanation?

It is plausible but there could also be other explanations. Maybe he made a mistake or a rider in front of him did. Maybe he was not the first cannondale rider. He could also have done a pre planned stop with someone with a bike at the side of the road.

There is no evidence of the flat tire and changing with Marangoni. I dont take the cannondale story for being true unless I see evidence. I have allready proven Sagan lied about the bike change in the 2015 tour. I have also given evidence that Sagan did not crash and damage his derailleur in the 2014 pr.

 

[Tom the Engine]

But Roglic heat bloom still doesn't look like a fluke. Nor does it look like friction. It looks like a hub motor. To me at least.

Again, I think we have to agree that neither of us at this point is capable to convincingly argue what this exactly is that we're seeing in these thermal images. So we either suspend judgement or we form an opinion mainly based on gut feeling, intuition and probably a bit of wishful thinking. I have no problem at all with the conclusion you're drawing.

There could be other explanations. But if you take some time to go through the Roglic thread, soon enough you'll become convinced that this was indeed a hub motor.

I only wanted to comment on the quality of the evidence presented in the documentary without focusing on any specific rider. In general it's crucial to critically evaluate each individual piece of evidence on its own first and afterwards combine all the evidence to paint the bigger picture (weighting the pieces with their quality in this process). If we mix up these two stages very bad things can happen. It basically opens the door for circular reasoning which is maximally detrimental to educated reasoning.

As a hypothetical example of circular reasoning let's assume we have for the same rider a bike change in one race (that we feel requires explanation) and footage from the thermal camera in a different race (that looks odd but is rather inconclusive on its own). Now the bike change makes the thermal image a lot more suspicious and the suspicious thermal image makes the bike change look even dodgier. Here we go, full circle.
It feels like combining evidence and connecting the dots but it really just introduces circular dependencies in your rationale that should not be there at all. It's very easy to fall into this trap and it happens frequently. Better be careful to avoid it.

My evaluation of the Stade 2 material is independent of other arguments. And it's even independent of the outcome: Should we find out some day that what we have seen indeed was a motor (which I acknowledge is very possible), nothing would change about my critisism on the quality of their material.

(And since you mention the Roglic thread: Yes, I openly admit that I'm not very familiar at all with his case. This is what I know about it at this point: Highly unusual career path; professional ski jumper who turned cycling pro at an advanced age after an accident; some stories about beating pros on a borrowed mountainbike to justify talent level; odd footage from thermal camera in Strade Bianche (a race he finished in some sort of grupetto); Lotto not commenting much except claiming he was on a wheel from neutral car at this point; two unexpectedly good TT performances at Giro; second place at first shorter TT; winner of second longer TT (where a lot of good TTers where handicapped by worse external conditions); last-minute bike change to an unchecked bike (?) before start because UCI ruled his TT bike non-conform due to geometry issues; Lotto claiming it was the same bike as in first TT and complaining about alleged inconsistencies of these checks; Roglic saying he took it easy and lost powermeter underway.
So from this very sparse information I'm really not in the position to comment on Roglic specifically or even form any sort of opinion about his case. I'll do as you suggest and carefully read through the Roglic thread later.)

And if this wasnt a motor, i want to see Lotto reconsruct what it was. It should be easy.

The exact opposite is true! If this wasn't a motor it's next to impossible for Lotto to reconstruct what it was days or weeks after the race.
That's why I suggested in this post that the documentary should either have presented high-quality evidence that speaks for itself (they are far away from that) or they should have used their collected evidence to identify and catch somebody off guard and at least document how a team or a rider went to great lenghts to hide something when confronted with it.

And it's disappointing hat no journalist has yet tried to get their hands on it to scrutinize it the way you have.

Do you know for sure that this never happened? It could just as well be that many journos asked about it but ultimately had to conclude that there is nothing in this material that warrants to run another story about it.
If these very disambiguous scences from the documentary are the best ones they could find then I would not be surprised at all if it turned out like that.

And Id expect them to sue Stade 2. Hasn't happened.

And if they indeed had sued Stade 2 you'd count this as evidence of their innocence? Honestly? You wouldn't bring up all these comparisons to other famous cheaters who tried to silence their ciritcs with lawsuits..?
You really play a vicious double game to end up at the same conclusion no matter what.
Depending on the circumstances it's also a viable strategy to try to kill a story by keeping a low profile and not unnecessarily feeding it. Independent of whether you're guilty or not.

Many questions. One straightforward answer.

No. A motor is certainly a realistic possibility. But there are still other answers that are just as compatible with the overall evidence as a motor is.
But if you already "know" the answer and stamp it on all the evidence you examine, then to the surprise of no one you'll get your answer back with high confidence. Plain and simple confirmation bias.

 

[sniper]

Cheers Tom. Thanks for expanding. Much appreciated.

Some fair points in that last post.

But i dont think you should speak of confirmation bias when you haven't yet looked into the Roglic thread and examined the evidence yourself. (And if you do, please focus on Tienus' contributions there.)

Taking pieces of evidence and putting them together happens to be what scientists and/or other people trying to analyse something do.
Basically you're saying science/logical thinking = confirmation bias.
Lets not go there. Accusing the doubters of confirmation bias is the classic Lance Armstrong / Paula Radcliffe defence, whose fans never showed any interest in the sum of the evidence.

Once you've assessed the evidence on Roglic, and you still think it doesnt add weight to the hubmotor hypothesis, then we can simply agree to disagree on how to weigh the evidence.

And no, I don't "know". I suspect, think, it strikes me as likely, etc.

I do think there is an onus of evidence on Lotto and Roglic to prove the journalists wrong. It's a serious accusation with serious circumstantial evidence.
Surprise surprise they haven't even tried.
I know if I were falsely accused of a Motordoping id do everything in my power to challenge the accusation.

I will concede this: I love Occams Razor.