Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were all doing doping. That stuff goes back to the 70s.
And earlier than that, they jumped on the train.
And did amphetamines on trains...
Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
191–200 of 354 posts
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The math doesn't even begin to pass the smell test, with regards to how much energy you'd get out of some tiny battery vs. the amount you'd spend dragging the dead battery around France all day. But there's already evidence that some cyclists were at least dragging around exactly that much extra weight: > In the 2015 Tour de France, bikes in the peloton were weighed before one of the time trial stages. French autho…
I was under the impression that bikes have a minimum weight in the rules and actual bikes are pretty much always under that weight these days? They then add little lead weights in strategic places the get them to the minimum weight (and help improve balance by placing the weights in the right spots). I'm not sure of the average added weight is, but you'd think it would at least negate some of the weight of the motor/…
Supporting what you're saying, it's not hard to find bikes that are under the UCI rules. For example, the Specialized Aethos often comes in at less than the required minimum weight.
But for a TT bike and such as upthread... Or anything where it's not mostly about climbing... Weight is a less important factor than aerodynamics, by far.
I personally think that the whole "motor doping" thing in the pro peloton (ie races like the TdF) is a contrived boogeyman. Unlike drug doping, which could happen with just one or two people besides the athlete, a modified bike would take a bunch of folks to know about it and keep quiet, which is notoriously a problem and would likely leak out.
You'd need the person or folks who modified the frame, the mechanics, the riders, the folks swapping the bikes out pre-inspection, the folks destroying the bikes, and then the litany of people who look over bike and rider photos and video for any little thing (odd buttons, pressing unexpected things at just the right times, etc).
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UCI weight limit still seems to be in place. Disc brakes have been allowed since 2018 it seems.
It is, but the minimum weight is harder to achieve with the extra weight of the disc brakes...
The Specialized Aethos shows it's not hard to achieve at all. These are regularly built up to less than UCI minimums.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
ah, the magic undetectable drug that's just the right kind of effective without the pesky side effects, which you'd need other undetectable drugs for. this drug would be worth a lot of money, but we'll keep secret except just for the one top performer, because wide distribution would increase the risk of a leak substantially. and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling a…
> and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling as we know it for decades You mean, like when Lance Armstrong got caught? It was less than 20 years ago and yet you still argue like it didn't happen. Undetected doping was indeed possible (he did it for years) and no it didn't destroy pro cycling…
this also supports my point, though: armstrong got caught. he was stripped of all his titles. there were whistleblowers (even though they were ignored back then). everybody knew they were cheating but nobody did anything about it ... well, until they did.
i don't know how hard pro cycling was affected after his bust, i just remember reading that it took a few years to recover (i.e. a few teams got dissolved, some sponsors jumped ship).
even today, if you talk about cycling to an outside person the FIRST thing they ask you about is doping.
so in my opinion, professional cycling is on its doping redemption part - forced, whether they want it or not - because if they (and by "they" i mean Pog) get popped big time again, it's going to be viewed as irredeemable. they'd have had their chance after LA and blew it.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#195Fabian Cancellera was widely suspected of mechanical doping in Paris Roubaix in 2010 (possibly also the tour of Flanders that year). Since then, however, they x-ray bikes for motors. More importantly, riders aren't switching bikes they way they used to. Greg LeMond claimed Chris Froome used on in the TDF. References: https://www.bennionkearny.com/the-hidden-motor-mechanical-do... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgbvu…
> Fabian Cancellera was widely suspected of mechanical doping I don't think the opinions of these fringe conspiracy theorists were ever widely held. Not in the cycling world, not among people with an understanding of physics, and not among the general public.
I think it was largely pushed by Phil Gaimon who was trying to get into the news to sell his new (at the time) book.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
He had first hand direct information about that stuff. Not true about motors. I believed him 100% about EPO but the motor stuff is silly. they check for motors for over a decade now.
> I believed him 100% about EPO but the motor stuff is silly. they check for motors for over a decade now. If it's silly then why are they trying to counter it for over a decade?
Because where there are no checks there are the cheaters.
Example: there is no antidoping in amateur races. Amateurs dope themselves to win those races.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#197I am definitely a layperson when it comes to organized sports, but from my POV it seems like competitive cycling attracts WAY more fraud/cheating/doping/etc. than many other kinds of sports. At least I have heard about it a lot more. I wonder why that is.
It's the most tested sport by far. Mostly because a couple of huge scandals - Festina and Armstrong. It's an endurance sport which is a natural target for doping because of the huge gains that can be made and it's also probably the most popular endurance sport too. That said, it's a problem in other sports but they just don't test as much or publicise it as much. It's become a real problem in Rugby, https://www.bbc.c…
> endurance sport which is a natural target for doping
This makes a lot of sense to me. A very singular goal of "maximum output" without much need for fine motor skills and strategizing. I'd guess sprinting/marathons might have similar issues?
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
ah, the magic undetectable drug that's just the right kind of effective without the pesky side effects, which you'd need other undetectable drugs for. this drug would be worth a lot of money, but we'll keep secret except just for the one top performer, because wide distribution would increase the risk of a leak substantially. and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling a…
I would argue that history suggests this is likely. The dopers have substantially more financial resources than the testers. EPO is a great example. It was widely used in cycling for almost 10 years before tests were developed. It was pretty much a miracle drug from a performance standpoint and undetectable. The very few cyclists that tried to blow the whistle were run out of the sport. Similarly, blood doping was wi…
i'm unconvinced. EPO was undetectable, but not anymore. new undetectable substance would run the risk of being detectable in a few years. who would ignore whistleblowers today? and the USADA did bring the hammer down on LA at some point.
sure, they pay off is high, but the risk - at least in cycling - is even higher, exactly because they've been caught once and now all eyes are on them. if pog gets popped, nobody will trust cycling to be clean ever again; it's hard enough today, as this thread proves.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's such a tough sport. The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it. In other words it was set up to be extremely hard for most normal athletes to compete without some kind of artificial assistance. So there was a history of drug taking from the start. But after the scandals of 20 years ago it became one of the most tested sports in the world. So now, in my…
> The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it. The difficulty has been toned down a lot since the early days though. (You'll never see a 466km long stage like the first of Tour de France 1903[1] ever again). [1]: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_Fr... )
There are still races with much longer "stages" than 466km, but they are not part of the contemporary pro-cycling world. The classic brevet events, Paris-Brest-Paris and Boston-Montreal-Boston are 1200km ridden as a single stage. PBP is older than the TDF also, starting in 1891. The nature of brevet events means that they can essentially never be a spectator sport, hence the lack of any significant attention to them.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way of thinking about it is how much a sport is skill-based versus fitness-based. Team sports and racquet sports tend to rely more on skill. Cycling and track and field rely more on fitness. A good soccer player isn't going to become a great just by getting a bit fitter, but the advantage given by doping is exactly what it means to be a better cyclist. This doesn't explain why cycling seems to attract more doping…
Soccer very much depends on fitness too.
Yes, and I remember the years around 1990 when teams with tall men with a lot of stamina and not much else were giving headaches to top teams with top players. But soccer is also a team sport and there are dynamics that go beyond fitness. The morale of a team has a lot of impact. There have been many cases when the same players started playing well suddenly after a change of the manager. Looking at normal workplaces: fire the boss that hates everybody and everybody hate back, put somebody not abusive or toxic in charge, the workers will start performing better.