msu2001la

The level of team coordination involved with adding motors seems to be far higher than other forms of cheating.

With doping, an individual or group of riders can seek outside assistance and get what they want. No one on the team needs to know.

With hidden motors, at a minimum there has to be some collusion between the rider and mechanic involved. Likely others involved too given the complexity of building such a system while avoiding detection. It's not like the mechanic can just snap a motor in place in a few minutes, and then pop it out later to avoid detection. It seems like a motor would require some major internal modifications to frames, bottom brackets, cranksets, etc.

Aren't manufacturers reps around team bikes all the time too? I would imagine on Team Sky, there is an army of folks from Pinarello, Shimano, Fizik, etc that are constantly inspecting bikes, reviewing setups, etc. These guys pay big bucks to put riders on their equipment. A broken frame or component failure can be devastating to their marketing efforts.

I dunno... maybe there is some vast conspiracy to run motors in top level racing, but it seems really far fetched to me.

maartendc

Well, as someone mentioned before here, a huge level of coordination goes into blood doping as well, and it still happened.

Also, it does not take a lot of mechanical adjustments to the bike. You just plop the motor and battery into the seat tube, and you need to alter the Bottom bracket so the motor can engage the crankset. Done. All the rest can be done with remote control (as in lets say a watch).

And no, I don't think manufacturers reps are around the bikes 'all the time'. The team mechanics are the ones who handle, adjust, store, setup, wash, bar tape, etc. etc. You literally just need the involvement of the mechanics, the team manager (aka coach) and the rider(s).

Same level of involvement as in other kinds of doping. You are forgetting we were talking about organized doping here, not individual riders taking stuff on their own: The soigneurs were often used as doping carriers, the team doctors, managers and riders were all in on it, and helped conceal everything. Mechanical doping needs even less involvement actually, caus the team doctors and soigneurs don't need to know, just the mechanics.

GCN did a whole video series on the behind the scenes mechanics / team trucks. Gives you a good idea:

cold turtle

No wonder Froomey had so much trouble with that spare bike on Ventoux. Couldn't find the button for the motor.

gsa103

Blood doping is logistically MUCH MUCH easier. Precisely two people are required for blood doping, the rider and the team doctor, everyone else just has to look the other way. Drug use is even easier since riders frequently train away from the team and scrutiny, so they have plenty of opportunities.

Hidden motors require numerous people to be actively involved. And even concealing them becomes exceedingly difficult. For example, fans frequently mingle with riders at the race start, and winning bikes would be inspected at race end, so that's a double bike swap? A few minutes of extra power can win a tight race, but then you need to hide the bike.

As for accusations about Team Sky, they have proved their performance in situations where inspection was guaranteed and bike swaps would not be possible, for example, Froome's time trials.
I do agree that any bike more than a handful of grams over 6.8kg should get closer scrutiny.

Motorized bikes is a way to distract from the fact that riders are likely still doping. Less blatantly than in the past, but still occurring. Drugs can be hidden in food or taken with a few minutes of privacy. All riders are taking some level of nutritional supplements, and riders frequently train away from teams, when they can do whatever they want.

Doge

Guess I am guilty of not reading the whole post, but the idea behind a stepper motor is to digital pulse based on whatever the controller says. It is not much like a motor.

So a disc that had ferrous/nonferrous sections in it and the coil in the brake area could easily be used for most 10-50mph applications.

jamesdak 

LOL, not ashamed to admit that I used to say similar stuff about how far fetched it was for Lance to be doping....

And I was not alone...

Racing Dan

Has anyone tried to calculate what the Sky bikes should weigh based on components. Seem highly suspicious that a team known for chasing marginal gains would bring an overweight bike to the start line. At least if the course was not flat as a pancake.

gsa103

Im guessing there's some confusion about the weight. One of the cycling mags reviewed a F8 with mech SR, and listed the weight at 6.6kg. Sky uses Di2, but lighter tires, so that should put them at about 6.8kg. The TT bikes will be much heavier and probably the best place to hide a motor (tons of space, extra weight is expected).

If Froome's F8 was significantly above 6.8kg, I'd be surprised.

Racing Dan

Apparently all the other teams had tt bikes right at the UCI weight limit. Thats why it looks suspicious that the wealthiest team did not.

Kopsis

Motors commonly used today on e-bikes are brushless DC designs. They use Hall sensors and digital controllers to synchronously pulse the phase currents (and even high-frequency PWM the individual pulses for power control). Really the only difference between them and a "true" stepper motor is they're phased to provide smooth power instead of discrete steps. There's nothing magic about the stepper designs ... the same physics applies. They can both be designed for whatever no-load RPM you want, but you sacrifice torque and make them even more inefficient at lower speeds as you target higher speeds.

But it's doubtful the hidden seat tube motors in the historical cases in question could have been anything other than high power brushed DC motors. 90's era digital control electronics would have been a nightmare to integrate and would have significantly reduced power efficiency.

kc0bbq

They spent last year scanning everyone with infrared cameras because it is trivial to detect. Entropy is unavoidable.


There might have been a window when this kind of thing may have been feasible, but that window doesn't include last year, at least.

redfooj

What or who exactly is everyone? Do you have sources to back that up? The numbers I've seen only show a small fraction of bikes in a small fraction of stages/races are subjected to screening.

They don't have the capabilities and/or willingness to scan every bike. That's why new cheaters like dopers *continue* to be caught, at different levels of competition, with men and women, and even outside of cycling. Because testing is a small random sampling...And cheating is a calculated risk.

kc0bbq

This isn't random sampling, this is thermal camera crews on motorcycles out on the route just like any other camera crew. The TdF just announced they're doing it again this year, despite not getting any positives last year. I know cyclingnews had pictures of one of the FLIR crews in their article about one of the TdF stages from on the road.


This isn't like detecting tiny changes in blood chemistry. It's probably trivial to get away with this in a local crit or whatever, but it would be a total facepalm moment to get caught at the really big UCI events.

RJM

Y'all are assuming the governing body wants it found.

Nachoman

Ahhhh . . . a conspiracy theorist.

RJM

Nope, just a realist. It's not like outright cheating hasn't been swept under the rug before.

Nachoman

I agree. and if you watch the 60 Minutes overdrive segment on Hidden magnets, the correspondent says "I can't understand why someone would cheat. I thought the whole point was to show that you're the best, the strongest". lol. I guess there's one guy who's not a realist. There's also a clip of him riding a bike and falling over into some bushes.

chas58

I've been doing this since 2013 (for commuting purposes only!), I'm surprised that the regulatory bodies didn't think of it until 2014.

My bikes aren't quite that stealth (a gruber assist is easily available for about $2000, while my motor cost $80), and I know several people who put batteries in the frames of their bikes.

We are talking about 200 watts for 20 minutes. Its enough to put a strong rider in front of the pack when it counts.

Good point about 1998. Battery technology has changed a LOT since 1998 (or just since 2013). I could get this power now with about 7 cells, or about 400grams. The batteries alone would weigh twice that just 4 years ago.

redfooj

The official stance of UCI was initially to reject Thermal Imaging (for various alleged factors). I read it was employed selectively during TDF. In fact, I don't find any UCI press release or 3rd party reports imply its full-time used.

redfooj

Yeah. That's crazy talk. As if that's ever happened before. Like, say, a few years ago, in the most high profile case in the history of the sport. Total impossibility.

Complete nutter to suggest such a thing.

gsa103

Thermal imaging has a lot of flaws. Thermally reflective surfaces (metals and some paint) can throw it way off. If the motor isn't running it will look totally normal. It's usable, but I wouldn't pretend it's going to be some magic bullet.

Magnetic detection is far more reliable, since there are basically no magnets on a modern bike. Any motor is going to have a significant fraction of it's mass made of rare earth magnets.

The other reliable test is a scale. If the bike really is 800g heavier than competitors, that alone should be grounds for a more detailed inspection, including partial disassembly (wheel inspection, seat post, crank removal). If you find, for example, a seat post stuffed full of rocks (ballast), that opens a lot of questions, even if it's not true positive.

work4bike

On the 60-minute special, they talked about a new design that fits in the rear hub, but only said it adds ~800 grams to the weight. Notice they didn't show the design; I'd be really curious to see that design, not something you can just add to a standard hub, no where near the room, like in the seat tube.

Doge

A deterrent to using motors would be by requiring 12-13# bikes instead of the current >15# (6.8kg) - and then weighing them. In that range (with current technology) you could allow a motor and make it more interesting.

maartendc

The way that works is like an induction motor.

There would be magnets in the rim of the rear wheel. By having a current flow perpendicular to the wheel, from drive side to non-drive-side, a magnetic field would be induced around the hub. This magnetic field would make the magnets in the rim spin, in such a way that the bike moves forward.

So there would not have to be any moving parts in the hub, just an electrical current (and battery). I don;t know how hubs are built, but perhaps there would be enough room for an electrical circuit and a modest battery?

He did show the magnets in the rim of the wheel part in the video, but not the hub part.

redfooj

I was thinking about how some people scoff at the plausibility of this form of cheating because it would be soooo ridiculous and obvious...

...and remembered how, in the prior season, one of the most prominent riders (Vincenzo nibali) in one of the most prominent race (vuelta) grabbed his team car and was rocketed away out of sight in front of a 25-rider-strong grupetto.

The brazenness is hilarious