Categories: Breaking The RulesCyclocrossDefining MomentsRantings from the V-Bunker

Motorhead

Motors are acceptable for this.

Motherfucker.

I honestly don’t like swearing in an Article, much less using such a word to open an article, but seriously. Motherfucker. A motor discovered in an U23 rider’s bike at the Cyclocross World Championships has to be the lowest of the low that anyone can go. I’m so pissed off, I’m rhyming. Which itself makes me madder than a hatter.

I have a pretty lenient stance on doping, which I hold to fairly wide criticism. I believe that the path towards doping is full of shadows and gradual steps towards the darkness. It is easy for me to imagine a young, ambitious rider who has sacrificed education and other vocations for the chance to become a Pro Cyclist, who is taken under the wing of an older, more experienced rider and to whom is explained the ways of the sport. If I was 18 and following that path, I cannot say with certainty what choice I would make, given the limited perspective one would have under those circumstances. While I hate doping and wish for clean sport, I hold limited judgement over those who have strayed down that path.

But we ride bicycles for the pleasure of propelling ourselves along the road under our own power. We push the pedals and we go faster, it is as simple as that; the motor resides in our heads and in our hearts. Performance enhancing drugs will, to various degrees, fine-tune and modify that motor, but there remains alive a notion that even a doped rider is holding true to this basic notion.

Competition is about finding out who is the superior athlete, it is as simple as that. We train, we fine-tune our equipment, we learn the strategy and tactics required to rise to the top. Doping certainly obscures that concept, but that a rider would abandon this fundamental principle of our sport by utilizing a motor in their bike seems to me an order of magnitude removed. It is gratuitous to the extent that there is no possible justification apart from an unabashed desire to win over all else.

This is bike racing, not motorcycle racing. For fucks sake.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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frank says:

Feb 1 2016 at 5:26 pm

@Gopha

Other articles keep mentioning Froome and Cancellara(I won’t accept that) but I couldn’t stop watching this video then and I can’t stop watching it now;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideiS-6gBAc

Embedding this everyone's enjoyment.
frank says:

Feb 1 2016 at 5:32 pm

@Ben

@Oli

…that or they’re far more competent at cheating. ;)

C'mon, Oli! Bite! Bite!
frank says:

Feb 1 2016 at 5:34 pm

@brett

@Gianni

Inconclusive. I ride up the Koppenberg at that same pace!

(Ok, I’m comment doping there…)

To be fair, they pull off before the steep bit on the cobbles. So what @Brett rides at that speed is actually the steeper, harder part that Geipel rides at that speed.
frank says:

Feb 1 2016 at 5:37 pm

@litvi

@wiscot

@Gopha

Other articles keep mentioning Froome and Cancellara(I won’t accept that) but I couldn’t stop watching this video then and I can’t stop watching it now;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideiS-6gBAc

I watched it several times. I’m no mechanical engineer, but if the rear wheel was being driven by a motor, wouldn’t the bike have swung in the opposite direction?

seems like the right direction to me, if the rearmost part of the wheel moves up, toward the saddle… no?

Agreed. But maybe @wiscot is confused about how he descends verses how a Pro descends?
frank says:

Feb 1 2016 at 5:39 pm

@Chris

I got dropped on Turn 4 of Alpe d’Huez by a 60 year old fat broad on a E bike. I ain’t been right ever since (Send EVERY doper/cheater a lifetime ban or this sport is dead).

Yes, but neither she nor your were racing. I'd suggest you should be able to get over that one quite handily.
frank says:

Feb 1 2016 at 5:41 pm

@litvi

@Teocalli

The thing about those motors and the way they work is that you have to pedal they don’t spin up the wheel on it’s own but rather give your pedalling more oomph (or should that be ookph). So if he’d had the same sort of system the pedals would have needed to be going round too.

“the thing about those motors” is no one is *supposed* to know they are even there, so how they work is a secret, by tautological inference. If Hesjedal’s bike had some kind of flywheel or similar device to preserve energy it would make sense the rear wheel – relieved of the rider’s weight (and most rolling resistance) – would keep spinning with enough inertia to turn the bike around a little. Like the workings in a self-propelled toy car. You know, the kind you roll forward a few times and it takes off on its own. You probably wouldn’t get much of an assist from the small-scale version of those workings you could fit into a downtube or seat tube, but it would be enough to help through little bumps, saddle adjustments, etc. The obvious downside is that some of your energy during a acceleration is channeled into the workings and stored for those moments you let off the pedals, making quick jump-offs that much harder, but if you are freight training it up long mountain passes, the benefit would outweigh that drawback.

Or an electromagnetic wheel?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/electromagnetic-wheels-are-the-new-frontier-of-mechanical-doping-claims-gazzetta-dello-sport/

But more to your point, I wonder if a dynamo powered only by the rider themselves is different from a motor. At least it is all energy that the rider put into the machine themselves. There was a guy I ski raced with that used poles with springs in them. They were heavy and ineffective, but even if they worked, it would just be an exaggerated version of using steel's flex to propel the bike during acceleration.
Teocalli says:

Feb 1 2016 at 6:01 pm

@frank

I guess one way of policing this may be via power data. If all riders had to supply power data then presumably anomalies would show if someone was generating a pace that their power at a could not support?
Dean C says:

Feb 1 2016 at 6:05 pm

This will not end well for anyone who touched, looked at or even knew a hint of that bike.

The UCI will load both barrels and not think twice about pulling the triggers, her brother and rest of family make them easy to not like in the first place, now this motor "thing" will not find too many ears that will listen to her "story" of how this happened which we all know is BS, just look at the her jamming up the hill in the video and how her upper body is very still and at ease while the rest of the riders are dogging it and upper bodies swaying all over the place.

But I feel the UCI is doing this also as a "here you go guys- here is your one fucking warning" to the road pros before Spring, to let them know with the hitting of an app on a smart phone they can "see" your motors; no telling how many motors/frames that were going to be used this Spring are heading to the dumps this afternoon. This was done with a purpose by the UCI, if they wanted bigger fish they could have kept the evidence on this girl and held onto the technology that busted her and gone hog wild and caught a larger fish come Spring, gone back and stripped her of titles, winnings and other crap. But we know that would not have done cycling any good in John Q Public's eye although we would have applauded it here.
Barracuda says:

Feb 1 2016 at 6:14 pm

@brett

@Gianni

Inconclusive. I ride up the Koppenberg at that same pace!

(Ok, I’m comment doping there…)

The fact that she wasn't pedaling up the Koppenberg may have been an issue.
Ron says:

Feb 1 2016 at 6:20 pm

What night of the week was The Fall Guy on? I have very special memories of certain awesome shows from when I was a kid and anticipating them as part of my weekly rhythm. I think the Fall Guy was in syndication but....

I can still recall eagerly awaiting Simpsons on Thursdays, then Sundays. And Miami Vice on Fridays.

Do we have proof that Femke was pretty good well before her cheating or did she shoot to the top via a spare motor? Imagine those family meals? Son is doping his blood, daughter is doping her bike. What the hell are Ma & Pa like?