https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rasmussen_(cyclist)#Un...
What? Why? Who cares whether the 500,000th-fastest bicycle racer in the world is cheating?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femke_Van_den_Driessche#Allega...
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.
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.
I'm still not sure that the tiny battery would give enough of an advantage to be worth the risk - I don't know take enough interest in road racing to know.
Oh - unless the peloton forget about the breakaway, then I take great interest! Love watching that race: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/25/anna-kiesenhof...
I'm not so sure about the math though, it is trivial for a motor+battery to exceed the 6-7 W/Kg sustained that a human can achieve, thus raising the total system W/Kg.
Also consider that the lightest bikes are 5.5kg or so, and UCI has a minimum weight of 6.8 kg which gives "free weight" for these theoretical cheaters to use...
Also the gains from your device are probably erased if Pogi forgets to poop before starting the stage.
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 authorities told us the British Team Sky was the only team with bikes heavier than the rest—each bike weighed about 800 grams more. A spokesman for Team Sky said that during a time trial stage bikes might be heavier to allow for better aerodynamic performance. He said the team has never used mechanical assistance and that the bikes were checked and cleared by the sports governing body.[1]
That's 800 extra grams-- the same weight as Varjas' little hidden motor that he sold for $12,000.
I'd find it quite strange if you think a hidden battery-powered motor doesn't pass the smell test, but dragging around the same weight for "aerodynamics" does pass the smell test.
1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-investigates-hidden-...
> Team Sky said that during a time trial stage bikes might be heavier to allow for better aerodynamic performance
(emphasis mine)
TDF time trials are almost never uphill. And yes, they have different bikes, showing that that while they might trade mass for drag during a time trial stage, they would do the opposite for hill climb stages. So "aero is the only thing that matters" is clearly false.
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?
But for a TT bike and such as upthread... Or anything where it's not mostly about climbing... Weight is a less important factor than aerodynamics, by far.
I personally think that the whole "motor doping" thing in the pro peloton (ie races like the TdF) is a contrived boogeyman. Unlike drug doping, which could happen with just one or two people besides the athlete, a modified bike would take a bunch of folks to know about it and keep quiet, which is notoriously a problem and would likely leak out.
You'd need the person or folks who modified the frame, the mechanics, the riders, the folks swapping the bikes out pre-inspection, the folks destroying the bikes, and then the litany of people who look over bike and rider photos and video for any little thing (odd buttons, pressing unexpected things at just the right times, etc).
The least they can do is give all contestants the same equipment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_doping
Article created in 2016.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/07/23...
It's just clickbait to co-incide with the end of the TdF.
https://telegrafi.com/en/keshtu-funksionon-motori-vogel-per-...
The video of him reaching behind his seat is interesting I guess.
Second, no one sport has more cheating than any other with similar stakes.
Third, "cheating" is more of a spectrum than binary. Travelling with the basketball is cheating and sometimes penalized. Having your husband kneecap your Olympic skating rival is cheating as well.
Fourth, "cheating" is relative and always in flux. You could head slap an NFL receiver in the 1970's, but no longer. Forward passes in the NHL were illegal in olden times, but fine today.
recovery help is where it's at these days i expect, in most sports.
there are obvious performance benefits for traditional endurance sports, but the testing infrastructure is pretty robust and the financial incentives are much less than those big team sports. it's harder to dope (and get away with it) and the financial pressure is less.
Sure, there's no drugs that will turn you into prime Messi. But there are drugs that will let Messi play like prime Messi for 90 minutes, 3 times a week, 48 weeks a year, which is incredibly valuable.
That's not the same in basketball or most other sports. You can't just jump on gear, lift weights and suddenly become Michael Jordan. Plenty of people could beat Pogacar if they could use anything they could, though, just like manufacturers could build an F1 car that would dominate every race if they could circumvent the rules.
Basketball is highly skill based.
For a professional athlete it’s not hard to be in shape enough to run for an entire game. It’s just not a limitation.
For cycling, it’s nearly all physical ability.
Cycling was also at the center of the explosion of EPO use between the 1990s and 2000s -- there was no known screening process originally and it was extremely effective at improving performance in endurance sports with low amounts. Cycling has spent a lot of time working to restore the reputational damage from that period.
I remain optimistic.
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.
EPO is used in medical conditions.
Several anabolic steroids are prescription drugs and can be used in cases of muscle wasting or cancer.
Most people don’t understand the consequences that come with using these drugs. They’re often not a free lunch where you take the drug and become a better human being across the board. There are negative consequences for altering the body’s systems directly in most cases.
In medical conditions doctors can weigh the tradeoffs and use drugs sparingly to achieve an outcome while monitoring the negative effects. When a 20 year old gym bro starts juicing with excessive doses to get swole, they’re not thinking about how it’s going to damage their testes for the rest of their life or disrupt their HPTA axis.
This doesn't explain why cycling seems to attract more doping than running. I don't even know if it's true that it does. But there might be something there given the institutional problems cycling has had with doping. Back in the day, it was entire teams doping, with the team staff and doctors in on it, and it's not like they all left when the sport tried to clean up. Either way, the reputation has stuck around.
I wonder if this contributes. Imagine you're a sport person, your job depends kn your performance, you are at the mercy of your team, and it's not even like you can win. So why not help yourself to some pills.
But then, as siblings say, I don't even know if cycling is worse than other sports.
Whether it is so more than other sports... I don't know. As was mentioned before, in cycling as in other endurance sports, doping can push you very far. Then there is the way the whole sport is organized. In the tour de france, privately sponsored teams compete against each other. I think this is very different to, say, a world championship. A country or trainer may have the interest of pushing their athletes beyond what is legal. But in a privately sponsored team, the pressure could be much higher.
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.
they just switched to drugs you cant easily detect.
These are riders in their twenties, that's such a long time to rely on getting away with it I personally do not think it's happening at the highest pro-level.
That’s easy to solve. Use some of the prize money to stage an elaborate heist of the blood sample and replace it with a clean sample.
I bet this would make a good movie. Could be called “Blood Spoke”.
this drug would be worth a lot of money, but we'll keep secret except just for the one top performer, because wide distribution would increase the risk of a leak substantially.
and remember: the top performers getting busted would probably mean the end of pro cycling as we know it for decades. cycling isn't a huge money maker for financial investors like football, rather it's a money pit for sponsors. do sponsors love a podium placement more than being forever associated with dirty cheaters? they'd risk it all for modest gains. a young superstar would trade a life of a good salaried position with some more money but also a high risk of being banned from the sport forever, thus no source of income at all and also the questionable title of being the killer of a whole sport.
so imo: it's possible, but unlikely.
Doping has been a cat-and-mouse game for decades, it's not unrealistic to think this is still happening.
The fact that Pogacar this year managed to reach Bjarne "Mr. 60%" Riis levels of performance in the mountain makes you wonder if this is only standard athletic and performance science or if they're something else.
It’s also worth thinking about the incentives to test and catch cheaters. Do the organizers of the Tour de France really want to bust the biggest names in the sport? That would destroy their livelihood. Do the national anti-doping authorities want the athletes from their country busted (look how many national antidopingborgs have successfully appealed adverse rulings through CAS)? It’s in everyone’s best interest to bust a low level doper here and there to make it look like they are watching but to ignore the big names that fans are coming to see. All of this is also why motor doping is unlikely. Motor doping leaves incontrovertible evidence of cheating. Positive drug tests can always be challenged as either inaccurate testing or unintentional contamination.
sure, they pay off is high, but the risk - at least in cycling - is even higher, exactly because they've been caught once and now all eyes are on them. if pog gets popped, nobody will trust cycling to be clean ever again; it's hard enough today, as this thread proves.
You mean, like when Lance Armstrong got caught?
It was less than 20 years ago and yet you still argue like it didn't happen. Undetected doping was indeed possible (he did it for years) and no it didn't destroy pro cycling…
i don't know how hard pro cycling was affected after his bust, i just remember reading that it took a few years to recover (i.e. a few teams got dissolved, some sponsors jumped ship).
even today, if you talk about cycling to an outside person the FIRST thing they ask you about is doping.
so in my opinion, professional cycling is on its doping redemption part - forced, whether they want it or not - because if they (and by "they" i mean Pog) get popped big time again, it's going to be viewed as irredeemable. they'd have had their chance after LA and blew it.
So imo: it’s possible but more likely than you think.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36317927/ https://www.usada.org/wp-content/uploads/R058.pdf
Now I cannot say this cannot be proven in the future, but right now it is definitely possible, and not even a secret.
The difficulty has been toned down a lot since the early days though. (You'll never see a 466km long stage like the first of Tour de France 1903[1] ever again).
[1]: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_Fr...)
If you mean there are no prizes, then fair enough, but that's not my definition of a race.
After the event some racers upload videos for spectators and it helps them with sponsorship. This video gives a glimpse into what its like to race the Tour Divide competitively. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azJS106xeNA
The number of people watching the trans-europe or other similar solo events as they happen is likely less than the population of a typical US liberal arts school. The monetization that might follow from YT videos that occurs later is completely different from what the TdF manages to encourage. The winner of 2023's Tour Divide has 58k views ... even Lael only gets 300k or so views for her adventuring and racing videos. This is not a spectator sport in any sort of historical sense of that term.
But I'm not surprised they want "extra help" with that
* cycling is a mix of moderate money and lots of drug testing. there are significant incentives to dope, but it's fairly hard to do these days since there is a lot of testing.
* big money sports (in the us especially - nfl, mlb, nba) are the jokes of the testing world. they rarely test and often inform their athletes when a test is coming. the big money basically assures that the incentive to dope is also big. but you'll never get caught if the testing process is a joke, so there is nothing to report.
This reminds me of compliance training when I worked at a trading firm.
>Canada is perceived to have the least corrupt stock exchange in the world.
>>Makes sense ... wait perceived?
>Yes.
>>So no one looks at the actual amount of fraud?
>No.
>>...
>...
The bigger difference is that endurance sports have more options for doping than others.
Frankly, I think too many things are banned. Blood doping seems no worse than sleep chambers and hgh in correctly applied regimes would take some of the punishment out of football.
It is a sport literally built around doping. You can't take things to the Tour De France level and recover from those workouts without drugs. Beating the test is part of the sport.
In the NFL/NBA, drug testing is just a theatrical performance. I know in the NFL because careers are so short, the players basically have a gentleman's agreement that whatever you have to do to stay on the field is fair game.
Cycling though is just such a sport of watts per kilo there is no way around doping being a huge variable.
The stupidest thing to me is every player basically says they will do everything they can to win , no matter what the sport. Everything but the thing that will help them the most in PEDs. For some reason the public just wants to believe this bullshit.
You absolutely can. However, you will almost certainly be impacted as the days progress, and this doesn't work well for the largest spectator single sport event in the world.
Also, watts per kilo is irrelevant in pack cycling and flat time trials. It only matters on when climbing.
Add on that most of them only play for a few years and there is every incentive under the sun to dope and maximize their earnings. I'm not endorsing it but if its essentially a widely accepted secret and you cant compete without it then you get what you incentivize.
This makes a lot of sense to me. A very singular goal of "maximum output" without much need for fine motor skills and strategizing. I'd guess sprinting/marathons might have similar issues?
Unfortunately for them it just wasn’t enough to make the difference in the GC.
More generally, there is a lot more to each stage and to the race as a whole than the general classification.
If power to weight is all we cared about, we could rank all riders based on their power curve as measured on an indoor trainer and call it a day.
For the athlete, or for the team?
For professional racing strategy is in the hands of the team members on the sidelines - it's less of a team sport (as in athlete) and more of a group sport (as in information parity.) Whether it's motor races or TdF, there's a significant number of factors to consider. What you are going to have your team do? What are other teams doing? What you should do in response to what they're doing? What will they do in response to your response? What is the average performance of your team? What is the current and maximum performance? What's the condition of the equipment? What tires are being used? What is the forecast for the next few hours? How will changes in weather impact the equipment used? Will you have enough spares to make it through? Do you have good comms between you and the athletes? Etc.
For example, sometimes two athletes on the same team might be one behind the other, only for the coach to tell the lead to let the other teammate to pass. For the audience, it might be unclear why or it might even feel unfair, but there are reasons why they made that call.
Maybe the leader looks gassed and needs to hang back to collect himself.
Maybe they want to encourage the secondary by giving him the reigns for a while, and in turn, push the lead to work harder.
Maybe they want to keep the wear and tear a little lower on the lead by holding him back in case a team close behind ends up overtaking in a sharp turn up ahead.
Maybe they're worried about a pile up that hasn't been cleared yet.
Maybe the sun will be facing the direction of their next turn, so the secondary is providing shade for the lead.
So on and so fourth. An individual athlete can only receive and process so much of that information in a cohesive way.
I believe long distance running takes that spot
Is it? I don't know how to ask this without it sounding argumentative, but how are you measuring this?
Just by the number of times an athlete is tested a year?
If so where are you getting the data for this to compare it to other sports drug testing regimes?
You have heard much more because from cycling over other sports, because the other sports don't want their dirty secrets aired out, and you heard about the huge scandals in cycling in the 00s.
so, if they don't cheat as much, what's left? todays cyclists are actually a lot better than the stars of yesterday, mostly due to better nutrition. training efficiency also improved as the young stars of today are of the first generation that grew up with power meters.
i'm not very knowledgeable in the sport and my last point is a bit of an assumption, but here we go: pro cycling is mostly based in europe. the UAE team is swiss, astana qazaqstan team (a team representing the state kazakhstan) trains in spain and austria. girona (spain, near the pyrinees) is _the_ classic cycling hotspot. this means testing by officials is comparatively easy.
in other sports the training facilities are, for example, in the chinese mountains, russian provinces or in the iranian back country. getting regular testing there is hard. so imo no: cycling today is probably less dirty than most others sports.
tbh i think pogacar is just one of those rare genetic talents that show up from time to time to dominate a sport, but is doubted more than others due to cyclings tainted history. it may be possible he uses newly developed drugs that are undetectable, but i'd say innocent until proven guilty is still applicable here.
NFL players can be tested once during the season. It's a joke.
NBA players can be tested four times in-season and two more off-season. Less of a joke than the NFL, but still pretty relaxed compared to cycling.
"Tiny motors
In my wheels
Giving Gauls
Goofy feels"
That said, bikes can already be made under UCI weight minimums of 6.8kg. Yet from what I've seen, most tour bikes are in the 7-7.5kg range.
(The motor, of course, would probably weigh more - but it remains the case that you can build a bike that weighs under the minimum.)
There is always a way to cheat.
Ugh ... journalism. We know that's not why. At most some cyclists are "gliding" faster than others due to assistance.
"As electronic bikes — with motors that provide up to 1,000 watts of power — have become available for recreational cyclists, hobbyists began building lighter road bikes with more discrete motors."
Surely they mean "discreet".
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...
There is not reason to believe him more than a crazy uncle.
Remember when he was forced to issue an apology to Lance Armstrong for calling out his relationship with Dr. Ferrari(doping connoisseur)?
The LeMond is probably my favorite. Great geometry, great road feel, and a fantastic paint job. I put some new wheels on it this spring and it gives it such a rad look. Totally modern and retro at the same time. Such a bike would sell really well right now.
https://frugalaveragebicyclist.com/2022/05/15/guide-to-vinta...
Still have it. My son wanted to try it one day, his response was "that bike wants to go fast"
Edit: I also had aluminum (too stiff) and titanium frames (too flexible, or floppy as I called it). The 853 was excellent
I've been on the bench for about a year, but I spent the last 15 years as a pretty intense recreational cyclist. I was in the tier that you might describe as "the craziest you get without having a racing license."
There were very few steel bikes on those rides -- say, less than 10-15%. Carbon is by far the most common material, followed by Ti for the more well-heeled folks. Most of the steel is "modern", but there are some vintage frames, too.
I rode a boutique steel frame from Ritte for a long time, but went to a lovely carbon Giant about 2 years ago after the steel frame failed, which astonished me and everyone I knew. It's honestly better in every way -- quicker, lighter, more comfortable, etc.
The vintage steel frames these groups are generally pretty high end holdovers. You leave some stuff behind by staying on a frame from the 80s or 90s, and some of those things really WILL make you slower vs. a modern hot-rod frame, but if you're strong enough you can make the trade. Weight's one, but so is gearing. Current normal for a road bike is 11 or 12 cogs in the rear, which means you have a VERY smooth progression as you accelerate. And older frame might not accommodate electronic shifting, either, which I'd be loathe to give up now.
In non-flat places it might matter that the older frames won't allow for disc brake systems, but where I lived (Houston) that didn't matter.
My new wheels have rim brakes - I would have added disc if I could. And the rear wheel/hub has room for an extra cog on the cassette. But I feel that once I wear everything out, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get a new bike rather than fight against the lack of new equipment that fits old bikes :(
I expect PART of that is the fact that where I lived until recently was pancake flat, so there was no real disadvantage to staying with rim braking, but still.
Just sold it this summer. The geometry is just too tight for me now and couldn't support tires wider than a 28.
If it's silly then why are they trying to counter it for over a decade?
Example: there is no antidoping in amateur races. Amateurs dope themselves to win those races.
Were there any instances where people cheated in spite of testing, and were undetected for years?
But otherwise that's probably correct, whatever they could find, they used.
I'll never pour a single cent worth of money into that activity, nor a nanosecond of my attention to avoid anyhow supporting it even by accident, voting with my wallet and all that. It almost seems like if there is enough money in the sport it becomes cut throat business and stops being what it was intended to be, in fact exactly the opposite.
That's how I raise my kids, there are tons of sports on the bike and off it to enjoy and even watch and admire if one is in passive mode. But as always doing sports > watching them and I really don't have enough time to do both.
I love a good bashing, but are you aware doping runs rampant in amateur levels of any sport or even physical activity? Why do you presume that competitions would be different?
I don't think you understand. Some amateur athletes purposely resort to doping even if they are not particpating in major competitions. Hell, check out steroid abuse in bodybuilding circles. Is taking ADHD drugs also a kind of doping?
I'm not sure you get the "performance enhancing" part of performance enhancing drugs. The pull is not from the competition, but the way they enhance performance. Capitalism has zero to do with this.
And yet we have the major sports who don't test in any meaningful way.
Maybe the mistake cycling made was testing for real. If they tested like the major sports do, nobody would ever be caught.
If you had the opposite idea of "doping is okay in sports" and applied the categorical imperative to it, we'd have a bunch of roided superman doing insane sports and it would be awesome. Daniel Tosh of all people proposed this jokingly in some standup years ago but why not just admit that everyone is doping and accept it?
Rant aside - The sport of cycling is quite cool. I feel bad for those athletes because they have to dope. It's simple game theory, if enough of a critical mass of people are doing it, you have to as well to be competitive. It really shouldn't have been as big of a scandal as it was. At least, making Lance Armstrong the face of the scandal wasn't really fair since, IIRC, almost all the front runners did that. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think the way they do it now is reasonable. They test and ban so that people likely severely limit cheating. If they simply made it allowed, or had very limited protocols, it would be a total arms race similar to the Armstrong era where riders would have to run tons of gear and chemicals to even attempt to compete and it would have tons of knock on health effects.
I don't think the opinions of these fringe conspiracy theorists were ever widely held. Not in the cycling world, not among people with an understanding of physics, and not among the general public.
It does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femke_Van_den_Driessche
Aside from allegations about Cancellara (basically that his seated attack was too strong, plus he 'moved his hand suspiciously' just before) I always struggled to find an alternate explanantion for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideiS-6gBAc
> There has not been a single case at top professional level even though they have looked for the motors for over a decade.
Or, no-one has been caught as they stopped before the checks were brought in, as it's impossible to hide without a much broader conspiracy?
> But journalists, bloggers, and youtubers love to bring it up as a exciting story they don't need to do any work to write.
Agreed. WaPo is about a decade too late on this one.
People like you keep going with these two, even though they mean nothing. And then the conspiracy shit. The motodoping topic is closer related to pizzagate than it is road racing.
I was always thinking this was a really underserved market. Ebikes have been really in demand for a long while, but most of the offer was based on very heavy city bikes. I was always thinking that a much sportier, more efficient race ebikes would be a huge hit. I saw some prototypes on kickstarter but nothing that sticked.
I wonder why. If I had the energy and resources I think I would try going into that product space. Seems like ripe for disruption.
I ride ebikes a lot, and I used to ride race bikes a lot as well, years ago. For a long time I thought that a heavy city ebike is similar to a very efficient race bike that in terms of effort required. After I started to ride them simultaneously (more or less), maybe an ebike is in fact more helpful over longer periods, but a light race bike isn't far away. So a product that captures best of both worlds would do great IMO.
LE. Apparently I'm late by around 5 years. When I last had this thought there was literally just a kickstarter project. Now I see most big brands have electric road bike offerings. Still, at 4-5k EUR price points, there's still a lot of value to capture.
But your parent poster posted an interesting-looking video, and you responded with "it means nothing" without any explanation. Care to explain?
Seated attacks are becoming more and more popular. Pogi uses them almost exclusively these days. "A little too strong" is nonsense.
Plus, bikes are xrayed.
I makes no sense to carry around the weight of a motor in the off chance you might use it for a single attack. These people care about grams. They're not going to waste it on a motor that may or may not be used to give them a tiny boost.
Not only that but any motor linked to the drive train is going to add resistance and cost the more net watts over the ride than a tiny motor with a tiny battery that may or may not get used, could ever provide. It just makes no sense tradeoff wise.
There's way more reasonable explanations than a conspiracy theory.
This all reeks of nonsense like that cis gendered athlete that got hounded by the nutters about being trans
I appreciate the point about dead weight though.
And if a (comparatively) little-known mid-level U23 crosser (therefore with comparatively little money behind her) was doing it, you really think it's limited to just her?
Lastly, the video I posted wasn't Cancellara.
In which case you'd expect a performance drop when they stopped (like what happened with EPO), which hasn't happened at all.
Firstly, in 2025 (let alone a decade ago) LiPo batteries are pretty heavy for a meaningful amount of power. Even if you could hide them in a frame, there would be a disadvantage to pulling a lot of weight around for hours. (Try riding a ebike with the engine turned off.) It's therefore most likely that their power capacity would be relatively small - a lot less than today's consumer ebikes.
Secondly, a top pro rider can output an average of ~350-380 watts for 4-6 hours. [0] The limited capacity of a small battery is likely dwarfed in comparison. It's therefore most likely that (per the Cancellara example) they'd keep the battery power for a limited number of short attacks at a crucial moment which might help them drop an opponent and then allow them to ride clear for a win.
If this logic is correct, then the impact on overall times would be negligible as they're not using it for a significant proportion of a race, but the impact on a rider's liklihood to win might make it worthwhile.
[0] https://www.cyclistshub.com/mathieu-van-der-poel-statistics/
There have been suspicions about this for about 15 years. Yet, in that entire time, not a single road cyclist in a UCI competition has ever been found to be doing this.
Even just from a practical POV, it makes little sense. Stock road frames do not have room to even mount such a motor. You would also need a sufficiently large battery somewhere on the bike that can deliver enough power to make an impact. Examples that people have built are usually replacing one of the bottles on the frame with a battery, but that would obviously be noticed immediately upon closer inspection of the bike. Even if you can remove the battery bottle, there would still need to be some kind of cable to connect it that you cannot remove on the fly without anyone noticing while in a highly public space.
They have also been scanning bikes for years for potential signs of motors. Nothing has ever been found. So, if it does exist, someone has found a way to build incredibly tiny motors and batteries that don't show up during checks, but are still powerful enough to make a difference for a cyclist who is already pushing 400-500w or more.
The much simpler explanation is that it's a complete myth that some people keep pushing for whatever reason.
I think it's simply because the top cyclists are now blowing the performance of doped cyclists of decades past out of the water and people get suspicious. I personally think huge advances in nutrition + altitude training are making the difference, but I understand people being suspicious especially in this sport.
I agree with you, btw- I've yet to see anything proving conclusively that this form of doping even exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
I didn't realize the biggest reason against it is that the majority of headline questions aren't yes/no.
Oh well, it's still funny to silently answer any (yes/no) headline question with "no!" before reading.
They compute power metrics based on climbing times in the mountain stages. The trend these last few years is quite worrying, reaching and going above peak doping-era performances [1].
The website is maintained by a former pro-level coach of the festina era.
[0] https://www.cyclisme-dopage.com/
[1] https://www.cyclisme-dopage.com/actualite/2025-07-26-cyclism...
However, these year-by-year comparisons often miss a few key points...
- Technology advances. Looks at the jerseys worn during the peak doping era (Lance, etc) vs today - they look downright baggy in the 90s vs now. The bikes are more aerodynamic as well. The tire roll faster.
- Nutrition has changed MASSIVELY in the last ~5 years. Gone are bananas and pastries (even from the Italian and French teams). The "bonk" is almost completely a thing of the past at this level - cyclists are consuming carbs at rates that would have put most people on the toilet a few years ago. Part of this is better mixes; part of it is humans can simply consume more carbs than we thought possible (with appropriate gut training).
- Training itself has changed. It's year-round, it's far more structured. Everybody has a power meter, glucose monitor, etc. Kids are starting this structure training at younger ages.
Anyway, do I think pro cycling is 100% clean? No, of course not, there's massive incentive to cheat. Do I believe the top cyclists (Pogi, Vingegaard, etc) are clean (per current rules)? Yes. They're testing far too often to not be. Are they possible pushing the limits of what's legal? Probably (see also: CO training last year, which is now banned).
I'm trying not to pick sides but here are a few arguments they oppose to these key points :
- Technological advancement : Although it does play a role, they measure power in long climbs to limit that bias. Speeds are lower so aero plays less of a role. Bikes were already as light or even lighter in the 2000s. They also calibrate their power predictions against riders of the peloton who publish their power on strava.
- Nutrition has indeed changed, it helps producing near max power efforts at the end of long stages (aka durability) but doesn't play a direct role on pure max power (VO2 max related) which is what they are worried about.
- Regarding training, I'm not really sure, I think the pro peloton already had access to power meters in the 2000s.
- Regarding testing, it's indeed quite frequent but it's not bullet proof.
- I think the history of the sport is so bad it's hard to see the half full glass.
A proper ebike won't stand a chance against the modern queen stage of the tour de france, even if ridden by a professional with appropriate gears otherwise, because the battery would run out half way on the first HC and it would just be a very heavy bike for the rest of the stage.
Same with a tiny motor - you gain tiny amount of force but you'll have to carry a full bidon with you on all the climbs, not to mention that the delicate mechanism can break easily.
I'd rather believe they're doping.
The same should he true here, right? The added energy needed to carry the weight of the motor would be easily overcome by the gains from regenerative braking?
There's also the matter of mass: lot more momentum/energy to be gained from a 1500kg car versus a 70kg bike + rider. That said, less energy needed for the motor so don't know how the math works out there.
Edit: all of this is moot anyway because of the point zettabomb made as well.
In any case, the weight of the motor is overcome by the motor itself, using the power stored in the battery.
In January 2016 – almost six years after initial allegations of a pro cyclist
doping mechanically – the first confirmed use of "mechanical doping" in the
sport was discovered at the 2016 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships when one
of the bikes of Belgian cyclist Femke Van den Driessche was found to have a
secret motor inside. One blogger described it as the worst scandal in cycling
since the doping scandal that engulfed Lance Armstrong in 2012.
But also: no one's ever thought doping wasn't cheating anyway. It's certainly not a euphemism in cycling.
A motor easily provides enough power to overcome its weight, and they wouldn't need assistance for the entire race, just an edge at key moments.
Think of the riders themselves as incredibly efficient batteries and motors - they can also recharge at 120g carb/hour. The motor itself is just deadweight over most of this process.
For much of the stages, the top guys are not doing much work, they spare their legs for the climbs. They will hide in the pack, doing only very light work drafting. If you could put a smallish battery able to recharge on flat / downhill sections and only provides a boost on the critical uphill parts, that would be a massive advantage.
*You can of course get a non-race bike with a fixed chain, but UCI rules require use of a freewheel.
Bikes in the Tour de France have a minimum weight of 6.8kg imposed by the UCI. So if you manage to build a normal bike that weights 5kg, you still have 1.8kg of weight available to try to add some more hidden power "without adding more weight to the bike" (small battery+engine, small compressed air tank, whatever).
Ultra light bikes can be as light weight as 2.7kg. That gives 4kg to hide a battery and motor and still hit weight. A really good lithium battery offers 350 Wh/kg. 1kWh can grant 100 miles of range by itself.
You can save at max a bidon before rousing suspicion, and the whole operation is just not feasible in terms of cost vs. benefit.
Batteries and a motor are a huge benefit. Even if you can't squeeze in a full blown motor or 1kwh of battery, just getting an additional 200 or 300 kwh of assist in can make a huge difference.
As for cost, these guys are already doing crazy things like blood doping just to get a tiny edge.
A small motor had to fit in the tubes, somehow connect to a control, have to be integrated into the gearing which are constantly under about 300 W of torque and can be easily discovered via X-ray or maybe heat gun. That's a lot more risk vs. a much smaller reward since your laptop sized battery is likely less juice than a single energy gel.
Funnily enough, you're correct in your belief, even if by accident and in defiance of your own preconception. Mechanical doping is the topic your speaking about! :)
Here's some of the more obvious examples out there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSfLbALqUgM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZerARsCqAE
https://youtu.be/1CnyvcAFTlA?t=36
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbg4BjZna4Y
This video covers a bit of the history of mechanical doping. https://youtu.be/JMZbU6on43k?t=610
More likely, you'd use it on select stages for very specific reasons... for example, a rider could use it to avoid the time cut on an ITT stage (effectively getting extra rest vs their competitors). Similarly, a pure sprinter could use it to stay in contention on a punchy "sprint" stage (like a stage that MvdP might be a favorite instead of a pure sprinter).
Edit - I don't think anybody is doing this at the top levels of pro cycling. Maybe in regional racing (masters, etc).
But something I've noticed across several sports is amateurs really can't grasp how elite some human beings can be biologically due to accidents in evolution
So any significantly elite performance is indistinguishable from tech/drug doping
It's all in the mitochondria and someday they might be able to test at birth (or even before)
And now they are developing mitochondria transplants so just imagine TdF or the Olympics in a few decades
Kidding aside, this is one of those fields where I don't know how to use Occam's Razor.
Given the fact: "in a sport that is mostly about physical capacity, some racers now routinely achieve better performances than racers that where dopped, but excaped controls, 20 years ago".
What is the explanation that requires the less priors:
* some teams have perfected training regimen, equipment quality, etc... in order to make the same performance today, but without doping (something that never happened)
* some teams have found another way to escape controls (something that happened in the past)
So of course, "Past does not predict the future", it's unfair to accuse without proofs, etc... And maybe the performances have improved dramatically in other sports (surely the number of goals scored in football is increasing exponentially, etc... ?)
I have to give Pogacar credit for one thing: he knew that things were getting really suspicious, and he had the sportmanship to let other people win a couple of stages.
I really wonder how long it will take for the case to be settled !
By the time they get serious and have access to professional coaches, they've had maybe 5 years of good quality training.
As well as bikes have improved a lot. Clothes have improved a bit. But the biggest factor of all are the drugs. I mean I don't know. I'm just cynical.
I think it's a level playing field, though. I think it was a level playing field during the armstrong era.
Maybe armstrong had better drugs, better doctors, but it's not like the other riders were clean.
this is something I never expected to see on HN.
I mean, I am sick and tired of cyclists in general because of the way they act where I live. They obey no traffic laws, run red lights, never signal, blaze through intersections, and generally act like they own the road.
It's amazing how many of them forget that they are like cars and must abide by the same laws.
It's a cash cow.
bookofjoe•3d ago