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

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

#81

Post by discreteevent »

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 opinion, drugs are not used much compared to other relatively untested sports (maybe some microdosing). Instead sports science has taken over. Pogacar, the current TdF champion works with a someone who is a contributor in mitochondria research. Something that has made a big difference in the last few years is the amount of carbohydrates the riders take in during a stage etc. etc.

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

#82

Post by thyristan »

unsigner wrote: post #70
dr_dshiv wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will the average person benefit from all the interesting performance enhancing drugs that have been secretly developed?

I prolonged the life of my terminally ill dog using EPO. It wasn't exotic or expensive. Probably that means it's already in wide use for humans, too.

Yes, EPO is a normal drug used to treat certain disorders affecting blood formation, or to trigger increased blood formation before donations or operations.

Medication for human use has been availabe in various forms and brand names since before 1990, as Epogen, NeoRecormon, Eprex and lots of other names.

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

#83

Post by cesnja »

silverquiet wrote: post #50
floodfx wrote: post #35

Bikers and their teams are known for removing as much weight as possible from their bikes. Would love to see the math for weight/power/time ratio for a motor like this. Would it be worth it considering you'd have to expend additional watts lugging it around all stage? My guess is probably not. Especially on a mountain stage which is where the tour is really won or lost.

There is a minimum weight requirement for bikes. I remember reading somewhere that they actually add ballast to some of them because they can be made so light.

Not any more - nowadays being aero is more important and that adds quite a bit of weight. And disc brake sets are also heavier than brake pads used to be.

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

#84

Post by thyristan »

lillecarl wrote: post #4

At 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.

XRay is also somewhat privacy invasive to bike athletes, but not to "normal" people. The reason is that there is a huge competition on making bikes lighter while still being able to withstand the exact stress put on in in that one leg of the race. So they file off a little metal here, a little there, shorten some screws, etc. The secret is in how much you can take away in which places.

This can lead to bikes that are usable only for that one leg on that one day, after which you have to change the slightly deformed parts, because e.g. the braking downhill would kill your lighter, thinner, filed-down uphill tires.

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

dgacmu wrote: post #54
floodfx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10W for a sustained time perhaps but these are looong climbs. Col de la Loze is 26.4km with an average gradient of 6.5%.

A 60Wh battery weighs about 300g. That stage is about 5 hours. 300g seems a pretty small price to pay for a 10W boost, especially if you achieve it by making the bike be under the limit and then adding motor+battery (switchable with a dummy weight, of course) to bring it to spec. (The motor, of course, would probably weigh more - but it remains the case that you can build a bike that weighs under the minimum.)

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by veltas »

stdclass wrote: post #78

there are multiple documented cases of motor doping - here you can see wout van aert using motors multiple times in belgian cyclocross races in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUGNKwcbbDw

That video isn't conclusive and there's a lot of debate in the comments. Personally I agree with the people saying it's explainable.

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

#87

Post by gorbypark »

jancsika wrote: post #44
jeffbee wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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/battery (ie: the motor+battery weights 800g but there's 500g of extra average weight added to a bike, so they would only have a +300g bike..)

Note: I know pretty much nothing about racing but I have had that idea in my head for a while about the added weight. Maybe from a friend who told me his bike wasn't UCI compliant because it weighed too little?

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

#88

Post by ekianjo »

jamesblonde wrote: post #79

Fabian 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…

so did they find anyone using tiny motors when doing inspections?

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

#89

Post by stdclass »

veltas wrote: post #86
stdclass wrote: post #78

there are multiple documented cases of motor doping - here you can see wout van aert using motors multiple times in belgian cyclocross races in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUGNKwcbbDw

That video isn't conclusive and there's a lot of debate in the comments. Personally I agree with the people saying it's explainable.

in 2 of the instances you can see (if you go in 0.25x) that the wheels start spinning before torque is applied by the pedals - physically impossible. also when wout is running with the bike, it starts spinning after losing traction on the ground

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

#90

Post by ekianjo »

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…

> drugs are not used much

they just switched to drugs you cant easily detect.

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