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.
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Method of detection is an interesting one here. I talked to Helen Wyman after the race, and she said that apparently lots of bikes were screened during the race by commissaires passing iPads over them. She said there didn't appear to be anything attached to the iPads (like thermal imaging cameras or whatever), though I think that must have been based on previous incidents because of course she was kinda riding her bike while it happened.
One explanation is that the whole thing was intel-led and that mass-testing is simply a ruse to convince all pros everywhere that - as Brian Cookson repeated over and over again at the press conference - "we know how to detect mechanical fraud and we will catch you".
Also: great racing at the weekend. Does anyone have a vid of the move van der Haar put on Van Aert down the drop with the left hand turn, in the last lap? Staggering skill.
Of course mechanical doping already exists... it's called Di2 and EPS.
Seriously, I don't see any philosophical difference. OK the Di2/EPS is not directly powering the bike but it is being used to help the functioning of the drive train which has a direct role in the bike's drive. They are both external power sources being used to replace or enhance human energy.
If anything a power reserve which stored the riders' energy and then re-applied it should be more acceptable than external battery power.
I said it when that stuff first arrived. A bicycle is a human powered vehicle and once you introduce external power sources it has become something else.
For everyone calling for her head, yes she has to be punished because she broke rules, but at a higher level I think the rules are hypocritical.
For some reason I had the feel that this article justified doping somewhat.
I heard she got busted because when she loaded her Koppenberg climb into strava and got the QOM her SRM only showed her putting out 96 watts.
@Gopha
Me too, but take a look at this simple demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN7HjwZI-k0 (@0:34)
@ChrisO
Something like 90% of pro peloton is mechanical doping ? And will probably be even more once the SRAM sponsored teams have all the eTap gear the need (and racers want?). There is no doubt that the motorized derailleurs work very well. And there are definitely little motors on the bike.
@sengelov
I was looking for that one as well.
Hmmmmmmm.......Hesjadal's seems to spin longer without slowing.......
Cancellera ?? Very interesting stuff......
https://youtu.be/8Nd13ARuvVE?t=3m20s
@sthilzy
But also, from what I've read about the tiny road bike motors is that you have to turn them off and on - in the Hesjedal clip they are descending, so why would he have his motor on? It's also in slow mo, makes everything look a bit weird.
I don't buy it.