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Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

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Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#141

Post by Someone »

Gmo wrote: post #51
wmeredith wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's got to be the most French way of cheating I've ever heard.

That's because you don't know about the early days of the Tour de France where the racers would drink wine along the way.

The early years were different, though. It was illegal to get any help. In one famous case, a rider got a 3 minute time penalty because he let a boy operate the bellows while he welded his own bike (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Christophe#1913_...)

And aside: alcohol works! The correlation between "drinking champagne during a stage" and "winning the Tour de France" is surprisingly high, even in recent years.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#143

Post by mikestew »

ars wrote: post #105
mikestew wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have to distinguish between output meant for a program and output meant for human. That pretty much defines my career, yes. Say someone gives you a logfile of problematic transactions - you then have to convert all the numbers to decimal points before using them in some one-off program that checks them. Say someone gives me a MongoDB full of transactions that need to be transformed into relational data for our…

I'm not trying to be annoying - I'm simply curious. I never had to deal with that (internally that is, I do localize for end users - but that data is one way), and I was wondering how people handled it, that's all. Sounds like it's a bit annoying, but you just deal with it because you have to. I guess it's a slight extra use of time, but nothing major?

Oh, I'm not taking you as annoying at all. I'm just having a hard time sussing where you're coming from. As a multi-decade veteran of the industry, to me the answer seems obvious. I want to explain in appropriate terms, but I don't want to condescend, either.

Anyway, to get to the heart of it, you just deal with it. I don't even find it annoying, it is what it is. It's like being annoyed by the fact that elephants have long noses. It is truly, after all, what most of us here do for a living. Whether it's slapping a one-off regex on a log file to get the currency format right, or sucking down JSON from a REST API and presenting it in a nice mobile UI to tell you when your Uber will be here, we take data and munge it, then put a pretty face on it. So were I to have to deal with currency formats in a text file that don't match what the machine expects, I just transform it appropriately without thought to "annoyance" or "inconvenience", just that it needs to be done.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#144

Post by adimitrov »

dghughes wrote: post #142

I've seen videos of this it's got to be one of the lowest things in a sport you could do. But I had to laugh out loud when I saw a video bikes crashing yet the back wheel was still spinning.

> But I had to laugh out loud when I saw a video bikes crashing yet the back wheel was still spinning.

Was that the old chestnut with Hesjedal's crash? Com on, that's just nonsense. The wheel was spinning after the crash from inertia — that is not only plausible, it's entirely expected, and the case in major crashes all the time. There's absolutely no reason to believe that this was caused by a motor.

Besides most of these motors (including the one just found) spin the pedals. So if the pedals continued rotating after the crash, you'd have a point. The ones that propel the wheels directly with neodymium magnets cost like 50k a wheel and are probably a lot less common to begin with, if they're even being used at all.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#145

Post by methehack »

methehack wrote: post #58
shpx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should install Bluetooth sniffers before steep sections, it would be cool to see a little ping on the radio and then watch one of the racers magically pull ahead.

While they're at it, they should make better humans.

My point here is that I have always found it so completely unfathomable that someone would spend so much time on an activity -- any activity -- and then cheat. Cheating is about looking better, not being better. At the same time, it robs others, equally devoted, of a fair basis of comparison.

That it ever happens is amazing to me; yet, it happens all the time at the highest levels of competition. And it happens in academics too! Same shit, different day. And in politics. Ok, I'm stopping now before I give up on us as a species. Again.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#146

Post by rasapetter »

ars wrote: post #137
nl wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much, much worse is the US mm/DD/yyyy format, especially if mixed with DD/mm/yyyy format, unlabeled, in the same file.

See, that's kinda my question. As a programmer I refuse to use anything except yyyy-mm-dd, unless I'm forced to. So do Europeans analogously refuse to use anything except decimal points, except where they have to?

Are you sure you didn't mean to write yyyy-mm-dd?

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#147

Post by matthewowen »

fahadkhan wrote: post #65
shpx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should install Bluetooth sniffers before steep sections, it would be cool to see a little ping on the radio and then watch one of the racers magically pull ahead.

Cyclist also (legally) use wireless candance, speed, power, gear ratio, heart rate sensors, etc. Though they're normally ANT+ and not Bluetooth.

BTLE is becoming increasingly popular (eg Polar has moved entirely to using it).

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#148

Post by huuu »

e40 wrote: post #128

“I was stood in the pit next to Femke’s entourage,” he said then. “I don’t quite know what it was, but something seemed a bit weird there. The whole team had walkie talkie radios, ear pieces and seemed pretty anxious and, overall, just a bit odd. I’d never seen that before and it kind of stuck in my head.” Very clear that everyone knew about it.

No it's not.

The quote and your command are all based on feelings and assumptions.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#149

Post by Someone1234 »

commenter1239 wrote: post #121
jschwartzi wrote: post #6

If the motor was installed by a family friend, why would that person need to conceal the switch?

It was alleged, that the bike with the motor, was not her bike but a friend's bike, that was left in their tent, and mistaken to be the althlete's bike. But also supports your statement, if this wasn't the athlete's bike, why go through the effort to hide the switch or mechanism at all if you're not competing? On the flip side, if the bike was actually a friend's bike, what do you say to that friend that got you bann…

More convoluted than even that.

She admits that it WAS her bike. But that she sold her bike to a friend who then installed a motor, brought it to her event, then her "helpers" mistakenly brought it out to the pit area.

See, her original explanation that it was just a friend's random bike didn't wash with it being painted like her other race bikes are. This new explanation of it being one of her bikes that she sold to a friend, now fits in with the narrative she is trying to spin.

Honestly the whole story is nonsense.

Re: Hidden motors in cycling: Van den Dreissche banned for 6 years, titles stripped

#150

Post by Symbiote »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #103
mirekrusin wrote: post #97

Why do they care about such a niche/illegal market, this idea is fantastic, imagine Boris bikes in London for example - they could recharge batteries when docked, it would be awesome to have this kind of engine in those tank-bikes. Extra points - please distribute heat on the handles because it's often cold. Thank you.

Apparently they were trialling/planning to trial electric boris bikes in some parts of London in 2013. I've been googling and can't find any follow up to it though

The hire bikes in Copenhagen have electric motors. And ipads mounted on the handlebars.

I don't know why, the system doesn't seem especially useful in a flat city.

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