81–90 of 149 posts
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I'm sure all these health conscious road bikers will love being blasted with X-rays. Millimeter waves sound so much more friendly.
They'll dismount and give the bike to the x-ray tech, of course. Besides they got a bigger dose in the scanner at the airport.
Radiation has cumulative effects, so that's a reason against it. You're right that they'd just dismount, though.
A few other commenters have touched on it, but I'll go ahead and say it -- the UCI really needs to drop the minimum weight limit which I think will be an effective disincentive (along with more draconian life time bans). They are artificially holding back the state of the art in a way that promotes cheating (if you need to add weight to your bike to make the limit, why not a motor instead of dead weight.)
But even a cursory look at racing history explains why. Group B Rally springs to mind. More power & lighter weight aren't really going to make racing that much more interesting, just more deadly.
FIA has tried to shift innovation to other aspects, e.g. ruling that an engine has to last at least two race weekends (setting a floor on durability sacrifices).
I'd never would have thought to use a worm ring geared motor hidden in the frame. Reminds me of how nitrous bottles are hidden inside roll cages and cooling systems in racing cars. Cheating is an art of itself.
"If you don't cheat, you look like an idiot. If you do it and you don't get caught, you look like a hero. If you do it and get caught, you look like a dope. Put me in the category where I belong," -- Darrel Waltrip, 1976
There are two videos on Youtube that have been regarded by bike fans as suspicous. I will let HN readers make their own minds up! https://youtu.be/8Nd13ARuvVE?t=3m35s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideiS-6gBAc I would love to hear smart people's thoughts!
Cancellara is the greatest time triallist in the history of cycling. Putting out immense amounts of power from a seated position is his raison d'etre.
Regarding the second:
That section of road is steep and banked. After Hesjedal unclips his right foot, the only points of contact between the bicycle and the road are the rear tyre and the rubberised hood on his brake lever. The bicycle is pulled downhill by gravity, but rotates around the brake hood because the friction there is greater than the friction at the rear hub.
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Yes, it was a mechanical valve built into the area. If you've never had a turbocharger in your hand it might be tricky to picture it in your head.
I have; although I was under the impression that pressure is normally regulated by the wastegate opening to allow exhaust to bypass the turbine - no restrictor required
There are two videos on Youtube that have been regarded by bike fans as suspicous. I will let HN readers make their own minds up! https://youtu.be/8Nd13ARuvVE?t=3m35s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideiS-6gBAc I would love to hear smart people's thoughts!
The second video is very suspicious. Cycle shoes attach to the pedal by a click system. When you fall, you usually detach from the pedal by one foot. The other one detaches very dependent on the situation, or not at all. You see this happening: Hesjedal falls, one foot clicks out. His second foot stays clicked in. After Hesjedal falls, you clearly see the kinetic energy stopped of the back part of the bicycle at one…
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In cyclocross your pit bike becomes the bike you are riding. They switch bikes out to clean mud buildup off of them. So she never used this bike but only because she didn't have a chance to. They discovered it on the first lap.
It literally says she was riding it. It doesn't say she is going to ride it.
I think it means "they took Femke's bike [that was] in the pit area", and not "they took Femke's bike in[to] the pit area". As your first quote says, this was done during the race. Unless they stopped the race to do the check, they couldn't be referring to the bike she was riding at the time. And since this was during the first lap, she had not yet ridden the bike that was in the pit.
Here's the original quote in Dutch: "Na één ronde op het WK heeft de UCI de fiets van Femke in de materiaalpost gecontroleerd met een soort van tablet. De fiets werd meteen verzegeld en werd meegenomen." I don't speak Dutch, but I think "de UCI de fiets van Femke in de materiaalpost gecontroleerd" doesn't say they took the bike to the pit, rather that her bike "in de materiaalpost" was "gecontroleerd".
Called "Mechanical Doping", and people are getting busted for it in races http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a19366/heres-how-... Sad sad world we live in
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That's the same exact case GP is talking about. Femke's spare bike was found to have the motor, not the one she was riding during the race.
That isn't what Wikipedia says at all: > During the race, the UCI checked the bicycles of Van den Driessche and found a motor in the bicycle she was riding. And: > “After one lap of the world championships, UCI took Femke’s bike in the pit area and tested it with some sort of tablet,” said Sporza journalist Maarten Vangramberen. “The bike was immediately sealed and taken. The UCI then called in the Belgian federation…
That doesn't make it right of course. The whole incident stinks. But the UCI did not, and to date has not, caught someone racing with a motor.
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Rotating a light bike like that takes a lot less energy than you might think. Kinetic energy is also V^2 and the out edge of that wheel is probably doing 30+mph as it's down hill, so IMO it's actually believable. Granted, it would be much easier to get a motor to do the same thing.
Rotating a light wheel that takes less energy, too, but that means too that wheel isn't a big power store. A light weight wheel is precisely the opposite of a flywheel; it should stop nearly immediately because it's _not_ a heavy rotating mass with lots of stored energy. If we're talking about Ryder Hesjedals video, he's still attached (right foot) to his bike, everything appears to be static (he's not sliding anymor…
I'm not arguing whether this may or may not be an assisted bike, but what you're saying about a wheel is patently wrong.