This is not new and they routinely examine bikes for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_doping Article created in 2016.
Yeah, I think I remember reading about this a long time ago. Either here or on Wired.
Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
21–30 of 354 posts
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#22I 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.
First, what is there to wonder about? Stakes. There are things to be gained from winning (and purposely losing).
Second, no one sport has more cheating than any other with similar stakes.
Third, "cheating" is more of a spectrum than binary. Travelling with the basketball is cheating and sometimes penalized. Having your husband kneecap your Olympic skating rival is cheating as well.
Fourth, "cheating" is relative and always in flux. You could head slap an NFL receiver in the 1970's, but no longer. Forward passes in the NHL were illegal in olden times, but fine today.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#23I 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.
Doping happens in all sports. It's pretty safe to assume that most/all top athletes are on something.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#24This is not new and they routinely examine bikes for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_doping Article created in 2016.
even before that, eg. WP article from 2015:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/07/23...
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#25At that level of competition, just keep xraying bikes so it can't become an issue? Drug testing is privacy invasive, having your bike xrayed isn't if you're not cheating.
You can swap bikes in the middle of the race if you have a mechanical issue. There was one famous time where someone climbed impossibly fast, had a mechanical at the top of the mountain, then finished the race on a different bike, leading us to forever wonder.
That seems like an issue with checking though. If you know people can switch bikes mid race, meaning it's allowed by rules then it is simply stupid to only "double check" the winning bikes that made it to the finish line. Obviously you would need to check every single bike someone used during the race. That's different from someone illegally changing bikes.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#26There was a lot of suspicion about Cancellara that was never really investigated. A couple of people have been caught... They brought out x-ray machines, and x-rayed bikes, but that's sort of fell by the wayside over the pandemic. I think the truth is, professional cycling, doesn't want to confront another scandal. So they just sort of turn a blind eye into it.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#27I 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 not unique. Different sports police themselves more & less, punish more & less, coverup wrong doing more & less. As you said, you've just heard about it more.
Yeah, in some sports cheating is so common that the cheating itself has become part of the competition... e.g. finding 'loopholes' or difficult to detect cheats in motorsports, doctoring the ball in baseball, flopping in soccer, etc.
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#28Motor doping has been around for ages. Nothing new.
Yeah, it's so common that literally nobody in high-level road cycling has ever been found doing it. "Motor doping" is the chupacabra: universally feared, never seen. 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.
Perhaps the math would make more sense if you swap the bike once the battery is depleted?
I'm still not sure that the tiny battery would give enough of an advantage to be worth the risk - I don't know take enough interest in road racing to know.
Oh - unless the peloton forget about the breakaway, then I take great interest! Love watching that race: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/25/anna-kiesenhof...
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#29Motor doping has been around for ages. Nothing new.
Yeah, it's so common that literally nobody in high-level road cycling has ever been found doing it. "Motor doping" is the chupacabra: universally feared, never seen. 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.
I agree it is rare - the UCI measures seem very effective.
I'm not so sure about the math though, it is trivial for a motor+battery to exceed the 6-7 W/Kg sustained that a human can achieve, thus raising the total system W/Kg.
Also consider that the lightest bikes are 5.5kg or so, and UCI has a minimum weight of 6.8 kg which gives "free weight" for these theoretical cheaters to use...
Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
#30I 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.
Road cycling is a sport of extreme hyper specialization. Skill is much less of a factor than dedication, training, nutrition and genetics. Increasing VO2max by 5% isn't going to make you Messi, but it can put you on a tour podium.