Very long-time lurker (no idea why I chose that username back in the day) but thought I'd finally chip in. This is all like a big, giant puzzle that we're all helping each other to solve. I've been following cycling since 2003 so I've seen my fair share but this is all just something else, as most of you also seem to agree. I'll go through the thoughts I've had on the whole motor question after just setting the scene.
So, what is going on with Pogacar, that is the big question. We already know the facts - a rider that wins in every terrain, all year round, without looking tired, and who went from being the best cyclist in the world to suddenly being by far the best during winter 2023/24, now producing watts that are absolutely unheard of.
It almost seems like there are two of him by now. There's a surprisingly human one that comes out once in a while (Le Lioran, Amstel, Dauphiné time trial the other day) and reminds us of the Pogacar of 2019-23, but that one is so far always followed by the super machine that absolutely cripples everyone else. Where, for other riders, a bad day is often sign that more bad days are coming, for Pogacar a bad day is sign that he is going to destroy everyone a few days after.
Why does the question of motors keep coming up? Probably because it lets us fit a lot of things together that we now have a hard time explaining because we're missing that 'something' (for example, a new drug) that might otherwise explain things. Unless, of course, you buy the Javier Sola story, which you might, but which you probably don't unless you're new to cycling
The use of motors is, on the face of it, a ludicrous idea. I still think so, but not as much as I used to. Looking into it over the past couple of years, my attitude has changed mainly because there's now just so much smoke about past use that - given the history of cycling - it is not unreasonable to claim there may have been a fire. We have the chief of the French Anti-Doping Agency being told by insiders that 12 riders used motors during the 2015 Tour (
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-investigates-hidden-motors-and-pro-cycling/), we had the by now famous French documentary showing what may very well have been use of motors during Strade in 2016 (that video has now been taken down from YouTube, I see), there's the LeMond saying he heard that Cancellara used motors (
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNFyYjKCcKU
), and then there's former UCI anti-motordoping tsar Péraud who just last year said that he was "confident it’s not happening any more" (
https://spectrum.ieee.org/motor-doping-cycling). That is, confident it's not happening "any more". And lastly, there's the journalists speaking out in the Ghost In the Machine podcast who seem certain that it was going on, who have found evidence that a pro team bought motorized bikes, but who just cannot get someone to speak out publicly. There's also a former pro in that podcast saying that motorized bikes were used.
So, by now there's now a lot of people who need to be lying for no particular reason (nobody's become rich claiming something on motors) if we still want to claim that motors weren't used in the past. So, if it was happening 10 years ago, why wouldn't it be happening today? I think that's an interesting question.
There are two often-heard claims against the motordoping theory. One is not very good, the other better, I think.
The first one is that UCI would not allow it, that they would easily catch the ones doing. I don't believe that. They apparently haven't found the people using motors in the past. And say Pogacar was using a motor, and you put yourself in the shoes of the UCI. What do you do? Imagine you catch him using a motor and go public, and you have the biggest cycling scandal ever. You then probably lose the sponsorships of the UAE - who sponsor two cycling teams, one of the biggest cycling races, who sponsor the World Championships on road in 2028 and track in 2029, and who are indirectly the main sponsor behind the UCI's e-bike World Championships. The UCI have NO interest in catching Pogacar. This fits how the UCI tried to hide Armstrong's and Contador's doping cases. Most probably, they don't check bikes in a very thorough manner - they do just enough to show that something is being done but not enough to ever catch someone. And if you follow Lappartient on Twitter, you can see him glorifying Pogacar - no way he wants to take him down.
One should remember that many of the big cycling busts have come with the help of police investigations. This was because doping was seen as a threat to public health. But there's no threat to public health here, so the police won't care. Another vessel of doping busts were journalists. But cycling journalism has mostly become fanboy-ism. Everyone's a freelancer these days needing their next contract so nobody wants to mess with the show. In Denmark, we used to have some quite good, critical journalists (who played large parts in getting Riis and Michael Rasmussen down) but none of these are in cycling journalism anymore; instead, because of the great success of Danish cycling, nobody probably is allowed to rock the boat anymore.
The better objection against use of motors is that, if one team is using them, why not others? There's no good argument here, only that perhaps some teams are less willing to take that risk than others. Reading Michael Rasmussen's memoirs, it's clear that the old Rabobank leadership were never supportive of the full doping programme that Rasmussen needed to win the Tour, they always tried to hold him back a little from those last blood bags at the right time, seemingly afraid of the consequences. It may also be that there's a technical aspect where one team has an advantage, not unlike Formula 1 where you might also say "why don't the others just do this" - and the answer is that they don't know exactly what the others are doing.
So, none of this proves that Pogacar is using a motor. But the motor explanation just helps us right now. It explains the massive increase in ability between 2023 and 2024. It explains the seated accelerations. It explains why he's never tired, it explains how he can be so good all the time, how he can increase his level massively from one day to the other, and may also explain why he seems less and less happy to actually win. It doesn't, however, explain why he just once in a while doesn't perform. What was wrong on the time trial the other day? Why was Pogacar so interested in Vingegaard's bike?
Here's a theory I had: Pogacar is a true winner, above all else he wants to win. He was humiliated on Comboux in 2023. How could Vingegaard be so good, he must have thought, I did pretty well myself. Ok so, during winter 2023/24, UAE conjure up something. They quickly realize that this is just some next level stuff they've found, whatever it is. They know that people are going to ask questions. So, they leak some information of the transformed Pogacar to the most gullible, attention-seeking people around them that they know of. And there's somebody who catches on to it, his name is mou. So now mou spreads all these stories about the transformed Pogacar and the better training and so on, so that when Pogacar turns on the heat in the third week of the Tour 2024, it comes as less of a surprise. Of course he's so good now, UAE can then say, people already knew of this back in March! And now there's no turning back. Pogacar and UAE are too big to fail.
And a last interesting point, there's talk in the peloton - not about motors per se, but about whether UAE are doping or not. Some in the peloton think they are, said Magnus Cort in a recent interview (unfortunately behind paywall now:
https://www.feltet.dk/nyheder/tanker_om_pogacar_og_ucis_dumme_boeder/10830607)
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