For the big races, why don't they embargo the bikes prior to the race? Then xray them at random. Beginning of the day the rider pics up the bike, turn it in at night. The mechanic can work on it, whatever, in a special shop. Especially for the one day races. I can see how this would be difficult with multi-day races, but something like this should be feasible elsewhere.
Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
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Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#42What makes cycling so particularly attractive to cheating? Or is cheating in cycling just getting more publicity than in other sports?
Name a professional sport with lots of money involved that hasn't been heavily involved with cheating or corruption in the last 2 decades.
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#43Wow, people are really serious about those Strava KOMs.
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#44the thing with mechanical doping is that if you aren't caught red-handed, you are free, with doping some races/competitions will freeze your samples and they can be tested years later to find out if you were using something that wasn't testable yet, but with mechanical doping, once you're done the race you're safe. And over a course of a grand tour stage, even if the boost is only 25W, it can easily make the differen…
Seems trivial to detect now though. It's no problem to just tear down the bikes of the first X finishers to look for mechanical aids. Detecting doping reliably is much trickier. edit: I think most high level bikes use carbon fibre frames? You could probably just use x-ray or ultrasound imaging to look for anything suspicious in the frame.
It's quite common to switch bike with one from a support car during a stage (Due to mechanical faults or otherwise). This could make it tougher.
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#45What I don't understand is, how is neodymium undetectable? Wouldn't they notice the unusually strong magnetic force?
I don't know the answer. But my first guess is that (to a first approximation) a magnet inside a metal box does not create a magnetic field outside of that box [1]. Of course this depends on the material of the tube. [1] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/38759/does-farada...
A magnet inside a ferromagnetic box. The box material has to have a high permeability to shield an enclosed magnet from external detection.
You can think of permeability in this instance as the ability to contain a magnetic field. As long as the shielding material doesn't saturate (too much magnetic flux), the field from an enclosed magnet can be confined within the enclosing material. No external detectable field.
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#46If I were a competitor, who wanted an honest race, is there anything my team could do to neutralize either of these techniques?
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#47Am I the only cyclist here? I can't imagine voluntarily putting batteries in my bike on a long, mountainous stage. There's no way the batteries will last, and then I'm stuck with dead weight. And, looking through the actual documentary, I didn't see any incontrovertable thermal proof of a battery in any racer. In the guy posing for a shot, yes, but not in the cyclists laboring up the hill.
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#48For the big races, why don't they embargo the bikes prior to the race? Then xray them at random. Beginning of the day the rider pics up the bike, turn it in at night. The mechanic can work on it, whatever, in a special shop. Especially for the one day races. I can see how this would be difficult with multi-day races, but something like this should be feasible elsewhere.
I imagined a mandatory thorough backscatter scanning through a special path just before starting point on the race day.
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#49Seems carrying the weight of the batteries and motor would be totally counter productive. Perhaps they should pressurize the bike frame with air and then run that through a muffled impeller connected to the gear somehow :shrug:
In pro races bikes have a minimum weight and it's quite easy to make a bike under that weight using modern materials. So you just make a really light bike and have the batteries and motor make up the difference.
Re: Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors
#50What makes cycling so particularly attractive to cheating? Or is cheating in cycling just getting more publicity than in other sports?
Seems to me that cycling has gotten so competitive that virtually all of the top performers are on some sort of drugs, like it's a culture there. If everyone is mostly clean and one guy is using special drugs, than it's easy to say that the one guy is a cheating asshole. But if everybody is using drugs and you basically have to to be competitive, then it's harder to judge.