Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors? • Hacker News Board

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#331

Post by ben7799 » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 2:12 PM UTC

timost wrote: post #286

alistairSH wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't read French, so can't directly comment on the content. However, these year-by-year comparisons often miss a few key points... - Technology advances. Looks at the jerseys worn during the peak doping era (Lance, etc) vs today - they look downright baggy in the 90s vs now. The bikes are more aerodynamic as well. The tire roll faster. - Nutrition has changed MASSIVELY in the last ~5 years. Gone are bananas and pa…

Thank you for your answer ! I'm trying not to pick sides but here are a few arguments they oppose to these key points : - Technological advancement : Although it does play a role, they measure power in long climbs to limit that bias. Speeds are lower so aero plays less of a role. Bikes were already as light or even lighter in the 2000s. They also calibrate their power predictions against riders of the peloton who pub…

I raced in the early 2000s. Power meters were expensive, but Pros had them.

The only thing back then is they sometimes didn't use them on race day for fear they were too heavy.

Bikes are actually much heavier today than they were back then. Almost all bikes were near the weight limit back then, I just read an article where they weighed riders bikes at the TdF this year and some bikes were over 18lbs.

Disc brakes + Aero + Electronic components have really made the bikes heavier and have made it much more expensive to get a bike at the same weight as 10-15 years ago. You're either spending about the same money and getting a bike that is 1.5kg heavier or you're spending 2-2.5x more money to get a bike as light as what you would have bought in 2010-2015.

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#332

Post by Aperocky » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

TheAlchemist wrote: post #308

Aperocky wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

motor yes, battery no. Think of the riders themselves as incredibly efficient batteries and motors - they can also recharge at 120g carb/hour. The motor itself is just deadweight over most of this process.

But the weight doesn't matter most of the time - on flat sections and downhill, which are 90% of the distance covered, it's completely irrelevant. For much of the stages, the top guys are not doing much work, they spare their legs for the climbs. They will hide in the pack, doing only very light work drafting. If you could put a smallish battery able to recharge on flat / downhill sections and only provides a boost o…

A lot hinges on this magical contraption that can both accept connection and command, deliver power in sufficient amount when needed while being integrated into the hub, light enough to hide in a bike and somehow even be able to recharge. Have you seen the ebikes that they sell and the hubs that they have?

Now it could definitely work if you only care about a single attack - not even a full climb, but maybe 200-300m where you want to distance your rivals, but the risk (not just of discovery, but of malfunction, etc) just doesn't seem to be worth it. There's domestiques for a reason.

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#333

Post by ben7799 » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #47

jancsika wrote: post #44

Earlier 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…

Aero is basically the only thing that matters, second only to recruiting freak-show riders with horse lungs. These guys are averaging 40km/h. Have you seen Vingegaard's ridiculous mushroom helmet that's pushing the boundary between headwear and faring?

This is just what the bike companies are selling right now since an Aero bike with disc brakes and electronic components that comes in at the UCI weight limit is like $15,000.

If you can have it all you want it all.

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#334

Post by wyre » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #293

wyre wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantically, brevets are not races.

In what sense is PBP not a race? It is a timed event, with a cutoff. The organization that runs it maintains a results list that includes times. If you mean there are no prizes, then fair enough, but that's not my definition of a race.

The nature and culture around the event discourage treating them as races. The point is completion, not competition. It shares a lot of the definition of a race while not being one.

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#335

Post by littlestymaar » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

mft_ wrote: post #285

littlestymaar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, no-one has been caught as they stopped before the checks were brought in, as it's impossible to hide without a much broader conspiracy? In which case you'd expect a performance drop when they stopped (like what happened with EPO), which hasn't happened at all.

(While I'm not arguing that motor doping was widespread) I don't think that's how it would be used. Firstly, in 2025 (let alone a decade ago) LiPo batteries are pretty heavy for a meaningful amount of power. Even if you could hide them in a frame, there would be a disadvantage to pulling a lot of weight around for hours. (Try riding a ebike with the engine turned off.) It's therefore most likely that their power capa…

For classics maybe, but for TdF, a “crucial attack” isn't going to do much if you aren't able to ride faster than your opponents in average on the whole climb, and doing that is going to have an impact of the timings (each “col” has its own record table).

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#336

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

crashbunny wrote: post #318

kjkjadksj wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only things an older frame won’t accommodate is electronic shifting and disk brakes. You can run 12 speed its the same cassette width as its always been since probably 7 speed. Stuff like external cables actually are better for you as someone who isn’t a pro cyclist since shifting is smoother without under handle wraps, cables last longer with less tension in the brifter. Easier to service yourself than running t…

i don't know if braking performance is the main reason for disk brakes. I suspect the biggest benefit is bike makers get to sell new bikes to people who don't need new bikes. For professional riders who don't buy their own bikes, it's probably more about areo, and maybe weight, as the rims don't need a braking surface. They have more creativity with the shape and material. They only brake for emergencies and going in…

You gain different rim designs sure. But you also lose out on fork innovation as the disk side of the fork is now particularly strengthened. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some pro rider who would still ride rims if their sponsors allowed for it.

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#337

Post by labcomputer » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

stefs wrote: post #198

pge wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

EPO was always detectable. The trouble was detecting synthetic EPO. In fact, the maker of synthetic EPO (Amgen) was the title sponsor of the Tour of California!

After they developed that test stage speeds dropped dramatically. Now speeds are back up to where they were right before the EPO test was developed. You really think that’s natural?

Cycling has a doping scandal once every decade or two. Why would another one kill the sport this time when it never did before?

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#338

Post by labcomputer » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

stefs wrote: post #145

ekianjo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drugs are not used much they just switched to drugs you cant easily detect.

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 think that you have to actually watch the grand tours to understand why this seems plausible:

Both Pogacar and del Toro (UAE’s gc riders in the Tour and Giro, respectively) are able to keep up with (and even drop) the strongest climbers, and then look fresh as a daisy across the line. Like they aren’t even trying.

This was most obvious when del Toro lost to Yates on the last stage of this year’s Giro, but Pogacar does it too. They start the final climb a few minutes behind the leaders, then match the fastest rider up the climb and then magically have zero fatigue for the final sprint across the line to pick up a few spots. Yates only won because del Toro made a huge tactical mistake of focusing on Carapaz

Everyone else is dying and the riders from this one team look like they could do another stage… and we’re supposed to think that’s natural?

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#339

Post by borroka » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

discreteevent wrote: post #81

gwelson wrote: post #16

I 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.

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…

This is a naive view of doping, sport, and physiology. Of course, they use doping nowadays, just as they did yesterday. I would go so far as to say that all top professional athletes in individual sports use banned substances. They use methods and substances that allow them to avoid testing positive. At the highest levels, all athletes are genetically gifted. However, the performance differences created by substance-induced physiological alterations are too great to be compensated for by slight differences in genetics, training, and nutrition.

Almost all records in individual sports have been broken since competitions were basically not subject to doping controls. Athletes from the DDR and the Soviet Union, and more recently from China, have used enormous amounts of hormones. Yet almost all records set in the 1980s have been broken. Is there better talent selection today? Certainly, along with better training, science, and nutrition, as well as better surfaces and shoes/equipment. But physiology reigns supreme.

Re: Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

#340

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #330

kjkjadksj wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only things an older frame won’t accommodate is electronic shifting and disk brakes. You can run 12 speed its the same cassette width as its always been since probably 7 speed. Stuff like external cables actually are better for you as someone who isn’t a pro cyclist since shifting is smoother without under handle wraps, cables last longer with less tension in the brifter. Easier to service yourself than running t…

>Stuff like external cables actually are better for you as someone who isn’t a pro cyclist since shifting is smoother without under handle wraps, cables last longer with less tension in the brifter. My bike doesn't have cables at all, since SRAM's electronic groups are wireless, and the brakes are hydraulic. Actual gear range on a modern 11- or 12-speed bike can be FAR wider than you'd get with 7- or 8-. On gravel bi…

Well someone who isn’t a pro cyclist doesn’t care about pacetime rides. I commute. 11-28 is fine on 8 speed. If I am out of gear I shift or pedal faster or slower. Not a huge ask. My chains are also like $10 and don’t stretch for years.

Electronic shifting I see as a con. Di2 at least is not serviceable and reaches an end of life. I am not as familiar with sram but I assume its the same. Either way just yet another old thing (index shifting) served to you in a new way that needs yet another battery to charge and eventually replace. Shifting is plenty fast on a mechanical brifter.

I have no interest in hydraulics and bleeding brakes. Brake cables stay in spec basically forever if they are stainless steel for the most part. By the time you’ve fouled up a mechanical system you are talking years of neglect exposure to the elements type wear that would do a number to any other bike system all the same.

Wet no issue the rim calipers squeegie off the water in the first rotation. The real limit of the reaction here isn’t the braking system. It is the tires. Even cheap ancient rim brakes are sufficiently overpowered to lock up a bike wheel even on new tires in dry conditions. Let alone wet.

Imo a lot of this tech is marketing vs true innovations. I mean brifter designs that shear off the end of the shift cable just because of rider ocd wanting it under the wraps, come on. Just that one marketing driven change has lead to diminished shifting experience and more difficult servicing for the end user. And basically all newish paradigms over the last 10-15 years of road bikes fall into this where its a dual edged sword that really only benefits the people racing professionally who have a justification to demand each and every legal free watt from a system, while hurting you the consumer with more expensive bikes, components, more expensive and complicated service, more forced obsolescence and eliminating old oem patterns of spare parts. We really did peak at 10spd side exit mechanical imo. Although 8 speed is more reliable and stronger components with wider tolerance to derailleur adjustment.