How Olympics officials try to catch “motor doping”
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
Instead, how about sealing up the downtube and filling it with a weakly exothermic gas producing mixture* and then adding some turbine blades — sorry I mean “triple butted crank stiffeners”, your honour — to the bottom bracket instead? One doesn’t normally pedal at 10,000 RPM so some other sort of gas-energy harvester design would be better but you get the idea.
In a similar way to the case of the [spoiler alert] man stabbed with an icicle, the evidence will neatly and literally evaporate into thin air**.
*Something on the chemical spectrum between “science fair volcano” and “sugar and fertilizer oh whoops I’ve made a pipe bomb” ought to do it.
**Erm, apart from the gas turbine bit.
I love this idea. You're hired.
Is this possible? Would it be against the rules as written?
[1] Probably by article 1.3.010: "The bicycle shall be propelled solely, through a chainset, by the legs (inferior muscular chain) moving in a circular movement, without electric or other assistance." - https://www.uci.org/regulations/3MyLDDrwJCJJ0BGGOFzOat
Well that just says you need to build your regenerative braking system into the chainset. Use of stored energy is obviously allowed or else you couldn't make use of gravity when on a hill.
> Even if not, there's a rule along the lines of "any technical innovation must be pre-approved,"
What innovation? Mechanical energy storage is ancient technology.
> What innovation? Mechanical energy storage is ancient technology.
The actual unwritten rule is not so much against inventions, as against having any fun.
Recumbent bikes are also forbidden.
The rules, written or not, are about trying to adjudicate a competition of people, if you want a no holds bared technology based competition nothing precludes creating a different one (or participating in one, there’s no dearth of alleycat races and other odd events like the singlespeed world championship).
What irks me a bit is that they are supposed to be about bikes, but in reality they are only about bikes that look exactly like the ones they have in mind.
Eg (if I remember right) they also specify a minimum wheel radius, because at some point people started doing well with those, and the people in charge didn't like that.
And they might as well be right: they have an entertainment business to run. They don't care about finding the best or anything like that.
How do you find the best cyclist if the quality of the bikes is wildly different?
In any experiment, you have to control for the factors other than the ones you're looking to test. I don't think its fair to say that they don't care about finding the best, they're just trying to find the best of a different category than you're interested in.
As GP said. There is also space for different competitions about technology (in motorsport, formula 1 has both a driver championship and a constructor championship which is about the technology).
And even then the technology is severely curtailed, it has to compete within a fairly restrictive design envelope.
In that case, you should probably give everyone the same 'official' bike.
Just produce the same identical bikes, and assign them randomly at the start of the race?
You can have spec bikes, but there no way they'll all be tuned identically, all have the exact same lubrication in all the bearings, all have the exact chain tension, all have the axles torqued identically. All the derailers built exactly the same... One bike will get inevitably have an advantage over the others.
In any case, you can make a bunch of different official sizes.
They already override plenty of individual preferences that people might have with their bikes.
No, the main point (as already explained by someone above) is that this competition is about the cyclists, not equipment. The idea is quite simple, but leads to complex, sometimes somewhat arbitrary rules, but they in the end work quite well to regulate the competition.
No offense, but you're clearly someone who doesn't know much about cycling, but are insisting that the cyclists (competition organizers) are "doing it wrong". Arguing with that is tiring, so I won't continue here.
It's about entertainment.
Of course you are. If you’re against any rule you personally dislike or misunderstand you’re not for rules.
> What irks me a bit is that they are supposed to be about bikes
See that’s your problem: you completely missed what the competition was about.
The competition is no more about bicycles than an archery competitions is about bows and arrows.
The competition is about the athletes, the gear is only the means through which it happens. That’s why the name on the podium is that of the cyclist, not of the bike manufacturer.
> Of course you are. If you’re against any rule you personally dislike or misunderstand you’re not for rules.
Haha.
Wouldn't this be best done by having one group make a bunch of identical bikes that are randomly assigned? Anything more than this and it is allowing some technology innovations and customization, regardless of if the reason is deemed justifiable or not.
Just like you couldn't make footraces fairer by making everyone wear the same shoes.
Human body variation far exceeds any kind of standard sizing. There's a reason that anything that fits a body often has hundreds of different competing designs and materials and size specs and different people are more comfortable with different ones.
It's bordering intractable to try to make a "standard" bike that fits the full variation of human bodies. Making that a requirement for a race would favor people who happen to have bodies more congruent with whatever your geometry and materials and sizing quantum are.
The chainset is a transmission device, it will store a minute amount of energy elastically, but anything beyond that will get you punished.
You've walked past gold in search of silver. A biking competition that disallowed the use of gravity would be wild. What would that even look like? How could it be run? Compressed air jets to maneuver bikes onto friction platforms? Entire courses built into the non-rotating sections of space stations? Racers suspended on bungee cords to counteract natural forces?
Advantages from wind would also be negated, but I believe that's in spirit of the rule. At first just a single wheel speed sensor could be used, but once the meta evolved to doing stoppies/wheelies on downhill sections both wheels would need to be fitted with one.
I mean, I kinda get it, it's a traditional upright bicycle race where they want the human factor to dominate. But somewhere in there's a ~65% performance improvement they are leaving on the table (that is the difference in the "1 hour distance record" between traditional and fully faired recumbents).
After the stage the doping controls check the regular bike, but are unaware of the existence of the doped bike.
The only time someone has been caught for motor doping was for a spare bike that they never used in that race.
Cancellara had a mechanical issue and did a first bike chance. The main mechanic jumps out of the car and gives him a new bike. A few km's later Breschel has a real issue and requests a new bike, but the main mechanic isnt in the car anymore resulting in Breschel getting the wrong bike, losing a lot of time and never returning to the front. A few km further the images show Cancellara suddenly sitting on his original bike.
What happened, at the point where cancellara did his first bike change, the stage makes a loop. The mechanic had to walk 500 meter to get on the other part of the stage. What does amateur footage reveal. In a turn everybody where makes the short turn, Cancellara goes wide where the main mechanic is waiting with the original bike and you see Cancellara do a lightning bike swap.
Its a sad thing but after all these years I am convinced Cancellara cheated.
(Stolen from a comment on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6z7uUe0tVA)
You vastly overestimates that tiny battery and motor vs. the athlete's legs.
The only time it make sense is in sprints where it can contribute a significant torque increase for a short while. Over 100 km you might as well be better off without that weight.
There's a reason why all electric vehicles are heavy and burly looking electric bikes only have range of 20mi, and those batteries are not constrained by weight or shape to fit in a road bike tube.
Anyway, GP is onto something interesting here. I'd watch the hell out of a sport based on creative attempts to overcome the rules and hide it from the judges.
NASCAR. This sport is all about bending the rules, gray areas and just plain trying to cheat. Back in the old days they would fill the roll cages will ball bearings during inspections, then pull a plug and drain them out before the race. The jack men, used to strategically dent the side of the car to strategically steer the air to get better downforce.
Larry McReynolds has a video series on such things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-o44EmtRDE it's a fun watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuEBl4iUDg antenna placement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxJOiDsgxl4 "accidentally" denting the sheet metal
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a46973038/nascar-driver-gl...
Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank by using 11-foot (3 meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 US gallons (18.9 liters) to the car's fuel capacity.
To appreciate the peculiar beauty of cycling you need to understand what it is. It is not merely a sport or an athletic competition, it is itself the art of cheating.
Baseball is also rife with gamesmanship. stuff that feels like it could be cheating, but isn't - or, stuff that's cheating, but mostly unenforced. There's too much to be worth talking about here. Just read [1] instead.
It makes sense that Baseball would be this way. It's stochastic. The outcome of one pitch has no innate correlation with the outcome of the next. There's relatively little causality in Baseball, and when everyone is a pro, it's hard to rely on talent alone. Some might even say it's a fool's errand.
[1]: https://thebaseballcodes.com/2021/06/24/gamesmanship-in-base...
> In another incident, Yunick showed up for a race with stock fender wells still installed on his Chevelle, even though the rules stated they could be removed. After the car qualified well due to improved aerodynamics, fellow competitors complained. Yunick replied, "The rules say you MAY remove them. They don't say you HAVE to." After qualifying, Yunick promptly cut out the fender wells. After further complaints to NASCAR, Smokey said, "The rules don't say WHEN I can remove them."
A racer after HN's heart.
If the advantage is aerodynamic he should've kept them the whole time. If the point was to lose weight for the race, I don't get why doing it in qualification. Can someone explain?
If I had to guess taking the fender liners out could help cool the brakes. Qualifying is short so the heat buildup isn’t as important as in a full race.
NASCAR racers have also been known to blatantly cheat in one area to deliberately get caught and draw the attention away from additional cheats. The inspectors find one thing, flag it, then pass the car when it is fixed, leaving the bigger cheat undiscovered.
TL;DR: Fender wells give better aerodynamics but prevent easy tire changing.
In the middle of nowhere, festoons are hanging over the streets of a small village. It's a long forgotten village, except for today, when for around 10 seconds, it becomes the stage of a show in which the nation's biggest hero's and antihero's participate.
The noise of the television helicopter coming closer is the sign for the butcher and the baker and their customers to leave their shops and head for the street. Here they line up next to the village's grandads and grandmothers, who are firmly holding the hands of their grandkids, equally excited, eagerly awaiting the caravane of sponsor cars and police bikes that signal the head of the race.
There is nothing quite like the vivid brush of colors of the jerseys of a peloton rustling by at 60 km/hour. The whoosh of two hundred times two 25mm rubber tubes rolling over asfalt, a peloton displacing itself through air as one giant organism, the sound of shifting gears, the shriek of someone hitting the brakes, a shout perhaps to warn for a pothole or the odd street furniture. A sunray hitting the large sunglasses covering most of the faces of the riders, the rest of which give away a familiar mix of concentration and nervousness. The same questions racing through the minds of all the riders. "Did I train enough?" "How much will I be able to suffer today?"
Vamos!! Alé alé! Cries from the spectators at the side of the road, transcending any language, the grandma and the grandkid equally loud. Support, not for a particular team, less for a particular rider. Encouragement that is as much destined for the champion, feeling the pressure, chasing a new record, as for the anonymous rider who tries to make him or herself believe that if everything falls into place, it is possible for him or her to sneak away and grab an upset victory. It has happened.
A rider at the back of the bunch, looking for distraction, his legs hurting more than they ought to, spots a kid at the side of the road and throws his bottle at her feet. Rare will be the moments in her life that she will feel equally much at the center of the world.
Ah, the beauty of cycling. Maybe I misunderstand what it really is.
One of benefits in my beloved climbing, alpinism, paragliding etc. - even top people there struggle to have good living and thus pros and amateurs alike are in for the actual sport, not chasing sponsors, getting an edge above the rest at all costs. Something about morality, fair game etc. Call me old fashioned if you want, I'll gladly wear that badge with honor (also a word very much applicable in these scenarios).
[1] https://theconversation.com/death-on-everest-the-boom-in-cli...
Also amateurs try to emulate pros whenever possible.
Taking an extreme example - imagine if we said “everyone must wear size 9 shoes so everybody’s on equal footing”.
For example, road bikes have different frame shapes that are suitable depending on your torso length compared to leg length.
Of course, the natural next step would be allow some flexibility (different frame size but same material), but you can see how that could be a slippery slope of legislation and lobbying that would end up in a similar situation to where we are today?
You -should- be able to just mandate Hubs and cranks to get around this.
Or make sponsors provide a 'slew' of wheels and cranksets for all their riders (i.e. spares as well) that can get inspected before the race, and are randomly distributed between the riders sponsored.
Buuuuut UCI hasn't even figured out doping, so lol
Well yes, but different sports are also better suited for different individuals. It's just making the equipment part of the definition of the sport.
Take a look at the variety of weightlifting shoes, as an example of gear for a specific sport.
It seems reasonable that these sports could narrow down the list of approved equipment down to a few approved suppliers every year.
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1427-broomgate-a-curl...
Same for swimming with high tech, low drag, bouyant swimsuits. Again, the international body had to step in and ban some materials/designs to prevent domination by nations that could sink resources into the engineering.
but rules around the type of equipment you can use, and the race host supplying specific equipment to all riders, is a very different thing.
External influences should be minimized within reason.
Viewership would break records, at least.
So it doesn't sound as crazy to me.
Would it make for more equal footing if everyone had the same model? Yeah, probably, but does that happen elsewhere in the Olympics? Does the host supply skis, shoes, bows, bobsleds, etc.?
Therefore, since we can't all have exactly the same bikes, we need to come up with a definition of what is "fair" to adjust for the bike that someone races on. Sure, this allows for some degree creative engineering, but is that really a bad thing so long as money doesn't become the determining factor of who wins? It pushes the science of bikes forward and eventually that new tech will make its way to everyone, including amateur cyclists.
This is not backed by fact.
Most world tour riders have very little choice on their equipment, nor do they choose the team sponsors. They have some leeway on a few third party components of their choice and can usually which frame model they use among a tiny selection of less than 3 models but that doesn't change drastically how the bike ride really as long as the bike fits. You could totally make a race where everybody ride the same kind of bike, and riders would be able to choose the frame size, saddle, stem and handlebar size, and possibly clipless pedal models that would make everything more standard.
Actually in Japan they do something similar in keiring. All frames are built with steel tubes, they use old styles of pedals with clips, and only parts stamped by NJS, following design and construction principles of track bikes of the late 70's, are approved. Sometimes regular olympic track racers spend a few months in Japan in the off season to get some additional money, they swap their high end carbon bikes prototypes to what looks like vintage track bikes of the 70's, you can actually see the bikes bending under load, yet the best riders with the best strategy of the day still win.
As far as restricting technology, stopping at 70s tech seems really arbitrary. There are already rules and regulations for what you can use.
One final note: I’m pretty sure UCI would get a big lawsuit if they mandated one bike from a particular manufacturer due to antitrust concerns.
I don't think so. It happens all the time in lower series of Motorsport and even the highest for tires. Formula 1 and Motogp are working respectively with Pirelli and Michelin if my memory is correct.
For esport world championship the UCI used Zwift in the early years and now it is their competitor MyWhoosh.
The keirin regulation using 70's tech was just an example to illustrate that controlling specs is possible. Same could be done but with a single make of bikes and just various frame sizes available for world tour. The issue is mostly that team would lose sponsorship so nobody has anything to gain. In the grand scheme of things, the difference between pro bikes is rather marginal and doesn't decide the outcome of the races.
I'm not saying it's not a good goal to have, just you kind of have to view it as an inherently unsolvable problem to get anything productive out of it.
https://assets.ctfassets.net/761l7gh5x5an/6cmP3f8KY4mTfI6hAY...:
“Equipment shall be of a type that is sold for use by anyone practicing cycling as a sport.
Any equipment in development phase and not yet available for sale (prototype) must be subject of an authorization request to the UCI Equipment Unit before its use. Authorization will be granted only for equipment which is in the final stage of development and for which commercialization will take place no later than 12 months after the first use in competition. The manufacturer may request a single prolongation of the prototype status if justified by relevant reasons”
So, that gives manufacturers an incentive to innovate, but won’t give teams an advantage for long.
Other sports have similar regulations.
For example, the quality of basketball, soccer, and baseball you find in the pro leagues is all MUCH better than in the Olympics. Track & Field has a regular annual season that's already international (Diamond League), plus many standing invitationals, any of which are as likely to see records broken as the Olympics.
It's not like we just have naked people wrestling each other these days. The equipment is a part of the package now.
Yes, sailing. I believe all but Formula Kite are one-design classes (Laser, Laser Radial, IQFoil, Nacra 17, 49er, and 470). A few have options between licensed manufacturer (but to same spec) and a few are true one-make (Laser, Laser Radial), not sure about the others.
Single-design classes are standard in sailing, so the olympics uses them also. They are not standard for cycling, and it would be a huge deviation from conventions of competitive cycling for the olympics to demand them.
That doesn't mean they can't or that it wouldn't possibly be worth while. But there are huge costs to doing that, like possibly few or none of the major competitive cyclists competing.
I’d love to see track cycling get more standard equipment. As it is today, some nations pump a ton of money into aerodynamics and RR to substantial advantage. More so than the difference between a Cannondale or Specialized road bike. Or so it seems to me.
The Olympics (or, perhaps more generally, national team cycling events) _do_ make a huge deviation from the conventions of competitive cycling already: no team radios. One of the reasons they are so fun to watch :-)
Another exception is that the Olympics and world and continental championships are ridden with national teams instead of the various commercial teams. That makes quite a difference too.
All the real improvements in bikes have been banned for a very long time and pro racing is used these days to sell all kinds of things which have been sideways moves at best.
In track racing, the bikes are required to have fixed gearing.
The earliest Tour of France required riders to be self supporting, meaning they had to carry their own spare tires etc.
One thing I've observed is that for us commuters (me too), bikes are no longer tied to racing. We can have anything we want. The ubiquitous "hybrid" is used in no racing discipline, and the classic mountain bikes that are favored by many computers are largely obsolete for competitive mountain biking.
the olympics is only one event, and only happens once every four years. the rest of the season, that happens every year, is much more important and doesn't have an olympic host to provide bikes. so there needs to be some procedure that catches motor doping at all the races, not just one infrequent race. The olympics is just going to follow the same procedures that are used for all the rest of the worldtour level races. and while the olympics might not care about keeping the rider's bike sponsors happy, the rest of the races do.
if riders weren't out there promoting bike brands and riding bikes provided by their sponsors, pro bike racing wouldn't be a thing.
Therein lies an answer - change the disincentives - instead of banning cheating riders, ban all of the sponsors of those riders for a time. Now the onus is on the sponsors to discourage cheating.
Jumbo Visma is the same team as Visma Lease a Bike. They have the same riders, managers, athletic director, staff, etc. Just a different name on the jersey.
As for how a team is banned: you simply ban them. In most of cycling you need to be a member of a team (professional) or club (amateur) to even enter a race. Your racing license will name your team/club. If your team is banned you may not register for the race.
Also, at the World Tour professional level, your team would have several cars driving within the race to support riders with food, bottles, and mechanical assistance. Since the race will be on a closed course, only official vehicles can drive with the riders. Even if started the race, you would be at a serious disadvantage to race with no team support.
Unfortunately, the UCI usually reissues the license if the team pinky promises not to dope again.
Team Astana signed Lance Armstrong in 2009 and we all know how that went.
The name change from Jumbo Visma to Visma | Lease a Bike didn't happen between the Giro and the Tour, it was a lot earlier. I would say, but I'm not 100% certain of this, that the name change happened between the 2023 and 2024 seasons. I think teams have to register their name with the UCI, and can't change it during the season.
For example here is a photo of Jan Tratnik finishing first in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on 2024-02-24, long beclearly wearing a Visma | Lease a Bike shirt.
The team did change the design of the shirts before the Tour, because their old shirts had a lot of yellow which conflicts with the yellow jersey of the GC leader. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?
Tons of teams are still run by folks who were heavily involved in the 1990s and 2000s doping scandals. They all claim they're all clean and reformed but most of them were never really punished.
WADA's budget is something like $50m. The likes of Ineos & Red Bull have sports marketing budgets well into the billions.
Well, either that or it would triple sales overnight. "Hey, this stuff really DOES give you wings!"
I don't think their target market is that susceptible to reason.
At least as far as the Federal Trade Commission is concerned that’s not an issue.
Individual riders/teams are motivated to win and get sponsor dollars, so may resort to cheating. They know they will lose sponsors forever and be banned if caught, so they try to hide it from sponsors and officials. Basically: the same disincentives exist today. They just need to catch folks. It's just doping v2.
Everything-goes sounds fun in theory but in practice it'd just kill the athletes (and the sport, by extension)
Not to mention, every person responds differently to doping protocols.
What if you're a C rider who becomes an A+ rider when doped? And you race against a B+ rider who becomes an A minus rider when doped. Still not an even playing field.
This is effectively what lance did. He had record levels of hematocrit naturally, and an extremely high vo2. It meant he had a magnified sensitivity to doping protocols that the other riders didn't. So his doping advantage actually increased his relative abilities even -higher- than his also-doped competitors.
Not to mention kids coming into the sport. Would be a massive mountain to climb to go from a prodigy 16 year old against doped pros.
100 die of the drugs during childhood
700 suffer the rest of their shortened lives from consequential medical issues
perhaps its easier to just throw the 'failed' 990 into a meat grinder to ensure there is no controversy later
but sure, its fun to watch the 10 athletes at the peak of their game!
east germany
Notably, this is probably part of why the Olympics doesn't have bodybuilding, powerlifting, or strongman on the program, as sports need to have a WADA-approved antidoping program to qualify.
Also, the Olympics itself from the 50s to the 80s basically was what you're asking for. This is the time between when synthetic steroids were first widely available and when tests for them became possible. In the meantime, with no way to catch anyone, it was anything goes. I wouldn't say that led to pretty outcomes. Records that stood for 40 years, sure, but eastern bloc nations with mandatory athletics camps were injecting 12 year-old girls with testosterone and telling them it was vitamins. At a reasonable dose, most performance enhancing drugs are fairly safe for men but virtually none of them are safe for women because of the masculinizing effects. The changes to a female body are permanent.
That would be a bonus.
cycling is getting there, a lot of the big teams have petrostates or oil companies as sponsors now, but the bike brands are still too important to cut out.
It is the teams that are begging for money, all the teams need sponsorships for bikes and everything else. Teams in cycling have no home stadium and have no place they own and can sell tickets. They aren't in control of TV rights or anything like that for races that are big enough to be televised.
It's one of the unique things in cycling. Even at the grassroots levels clubs were often volunteer but race organizers might have been or are for-profit. Even at the grassroots level the organizer charges entry fees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Camaro_(third_genera...
Kinda quietly making fun of folks who show up on (e.g.) $10,000 road bikes and then get dropped 5 miles into the ride is a whole Thing.
True life, I'm not sure there's a good reason for a person spending their own money to buy a new road bike that costs more than $4-5K new. You can absolutely get started for way way less (probably $1500 new retail), but once the hook sets and you decide This Is Something I Like, there are things you'll want.
Carbon frames are far more comfortable to ride than aluminum. This extends to handlebars, stem, and seatpost.
Lighter-weight wheels -- also carbon -- are an upgrade you can feel IMMEDIATELY. I think it has to do with rotational weight vs. static weight. Nicer wheels have nicer bearings in them, too.
Electronic shifting doesn't make you faster in and of itself, but once you've used it you'll fall in love with it. Shifting is effortless, and combined brake-and-shift actions become viable in a way they aren't with mechanical shifting.
My Giant was just under $5k, and that's after an upgrade or two (mostly the addition of a power meter). Do I ride with folks on $10-15k bikes? Oh yeah. MOST of them are pretty serious riders, but they're not any faster on that Pinarello than they would be on (e.g.) my bike. It's effectively jewelry at that point.
(Now, the exception is if you're shaped in a way that makes off-the-shelf frames difficult. I know a couple folks -- one very well off and very short, the other decidedly middle class and VERY tall -- who got fully custom frames, but for both of them it was really the only way to get a bike that fit. For the middle-class guy, this means his bike is worth more than his car, but it's a forever-bike (titanium frame), and he's an 8-10,000 mile a year guy, so...)
its all a matter of equipment preference and for sports that involve using equipment i think that would be a personal choice of minor optimizations and preferences that you should be granted given you would have worked a lot with it to get to the olympics
Every rider IS effectively on the same bike. They're either running Shimano drivetrains, or SRAM. I don't imagine the Olympics could spend the millions in R&D to invent their own drivetrain system for a once-every-four-years event.
If you were referring to the bike frame itself, it's kind of the least-important part of the bike.
If we're talking about emotors, they need to be compatible with the drivetrain, regardless of frame.
Example: Pogacar's Colnago is decidedly not aero; Cavendish's Wilier ain't the best sprinter bike.
But they're all competitive, because like I said, the role the frame plays in the overall "system" is negligible. It's marketing. The aero gains on the new Madone are entirely in the handlebar, and are erased if you add a rider to the bike.
But why invest millions to develop a bike? Get a few score identical (but the fit) top model bikes off the shelf and call it a day.
It's purely a branding and sponsorship related piece.
Everyone is essentially riding very expensive version of the same bike. 90% of riders will be on Dura Ace and equipment that the biggest distinguishing qualities are paint and size.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/tour-de-france-2024-tec...
You're reasonably close to right: 18 of 22 teams ran Dura-Ace, which surprises me because in my enthusiast circles locally the split with Shimano and SRAM is much, much more even. (I personally prefer the latter.)
What REALLY shocked me is this:
"2024 marks the first year that the Tour de France has been without a team using a Campagnolo groupset. This means that it was a two-horse race between Shimano and SRAM for stage honours."
I mean, I know Campy wasn't what it had been. I only know a few folks who run Campy groups, and I don't know anyone who uses the Campy electronic groupset. It's all so expensive, and most shops don't have someone with any experience with their gear anymore, which becomes a death spiral for people who buy their own gear. Still, the idea that the only Euro maker got shut out of even participating in the Tour is amazing to me.
More and more new bakes are sold with SRAM components than it used to be. So people have now more opportunities to pay for SRAM products on a new bike, and afterwards buy replacement parts when required.
Also, for each given price category, SRAM is usually a bit cheaper than Shim.
Meanwhile Campagnolo is more and more expensive while offering nothing more than the two others. Also less partnerships with bike manufacturers, even Italian ones.
And some Asian brands are starting to be more and more reliable.
Another is there would be no pressure on the bike technology so the audience would know they're not performing as well as they could on some consumer bike, reducing the appeal of it. It's already stink that there are weight minimums.
The actual EV revolution that the Worlds needs is through bikes, not cars.
Which is _only_ the majority of the global population.
And those incredible new records by the top riders can only be explained by doping. Faster than with EPO. Mechanical doping is still an additional possibility, sure. Esp. after several riders complained about those motor noises last year.
This truth, however, is obfuscated by mental side effects of erythropoietin, which tend to convince users of it’s efficacy
These categories are much more focussed on the driver, as the racetrack and cars are all identical.
I'm pretty sure that something like this can be brought into cycle racing. Everybody gets the same frame, wheelset, crankset and groupset, and you install your own cockpit (saddle and handlebars).
Another alternative would be if the transmission was provided by the officials and would be fitted to the bike and sealed before start but that could also spell problems.
In javelin and pole vaulting the athletes bring their own equipment. Has anyone ever cheated there? Interesting possibilities...
I'm sure some athletes would prefer a more ergonomic discus or shorter hurdles in track and field, maybe the gymnasts would like a slightly different geometry or spring characteristic for the bars or vault, but they don't get that choice.
I understand that people need differently sized bikes because they have different heights and slightly different ratios of leg/torso/arm lengths, but I can easily imagine having three or four standardized frames with adjustable seatposts, seat rails, and stem length, with a selection of various length stems and cranks. Just put the same wheels, the same mech, the same bars, and everything on every bike and see which rider is fastest. Call it an "Olympic bike".
The Olympics are a one-off that happens infrequently, but still draws from the same set of world-class riders as the rest of the racing season (a season that happens ever year, and contains far more important events).
There's zero chance what you suggest will ever take root.
I’ve always wanted to represent my country in the olympics, and maybe one day I will on a standard Olympics bicycle!
Anectdotal evidence to support this.
Specialized had pretty high end helemets for cyclists, but for some reason, the Italian riders would also complain about them. They finally got some of the Tour riders together to try and figure out what they could to do solve this issue.
To me, it was pretty funny. They complained that the straps that came down on both sides would lay on their face and cause tan lines. I'm not kidding, this was a major issue and Specialized changed the straps so they were embedded in a way that hung off the riders face so it wouldn't cause tan lines.
You had to show people how cool it was, it was such a minor thing, but to these guys, it was a big enough problem they actually solved and then put into their high end helmets.
I ride a lot, and I barely have them, because sunscreen exists and I don't want cancer.
Some brands fit, but not comfortably. Some brands (POC, for example), just don't fit my head at all.
What happened was cyclists lost interest in the hour record because the bike became too dissimilar to the bikes they were riding professionally.
After a new rules for modern bikes were introduced for the hour record, interest was renewed in the discipline.
For something like the Olympics which is a one day road race or individual time trial, I think the current UCI rules for those bikes are fine. Everyone is on roughly competitive bikes. Marketing aside, I don’t think anyone really thinks the top Specialized bike is better than Canyon or Cervelo or Trek or whatever.
That's the same as standard course for all cyclist, which happens today.
The equivalence in swimming for organizer provided bikes is providing standard swim suits to all swimmers, that has not happened.
It takes a special kind of person to continue to proclaim their innocence so fervently even when presented with irrefutable proof that they’ve cheated.
Is it?
I'd say that everyone has the potential for this weird survivorship behavior where you can't admit the truth for yourself.
It's probably related to a deep rooted cognitive dissonance where it's less painful to keep maintaining your innocense than to admit the truth.
In the right environment (such as an ultra competitive one where your livelyhood is at stake) most people would rise to the occasion. Just as most people would be able to kill people in a war.
There's probably more recent ones too, this was posted here recently so was on my mind.
No? By denying it there's still a chance you'll get out of it, however tiny that chance is. That chance becomes zero when you admit it. A "shred of integrity" won't pay your trainers mortgage.
200W is a LOT in cycling. See
https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/blog/2018/06/how-does-your-...
We talk about one's Functional Threshold Power, which is the amount of power you could produce for a solid hour and then be completely spent. There are a variety of ways to arrive at this number (ie, other than trying to do exactly that, which is fraught with peril b/c of pacing issues), but the metric is well respected and is used as the foundation of most cycling training plans.
So the wattage is one thing, but your weight is the other. Watts per kilo is the magic number, because obviously it takes more power to move 6'3" Wout Van Aert than it does to move 5'9" Tadej Pogacar. Big men make more power, but it takes more power to move them, so usually the winners look more like Pogi (or, in the case of this year's Tour de France, they look EXACTLY like Pogi, ha ha).
Anyway: 200W is a BIG number. A LOT has been made of Pogacar's performance this year, and it may be his output was the highest ever seen in the sport. Estimates places his FTP in the 7w/kg range, which is bananas.
Pogi weighs 66kg, that implies power of about 462W. He may well be the most elite, powerful guy to ever race, and a 200W motor would add 40% for HIM. Van den Driessche is not in his league; it's likely 200W would come close to doubling her FTP.
If you're going to cheat, you need to be subtle. 200W isn't subtle. 200W output also implies one HECK of a battery, which would be obvious when lifting the bike. Given that the bike in question was for cyclocross -- where competitors carry their bikes often as they cross obstacles -- I'm thinking that must be a mistake.
The article ALSO note that while the maker of the motor in question is out of business, you can also experience a 200W push with a bike from Lotus. However, if you click through, you find that Lotus is claiming the motor in the bike they're selling "weighs just 300 grams but packs a powerful 125W per kilogram." IOW, the assist motor puts out only 37W.
https://www.maxongroup.us/medias/sys_master/root/88825569607...
It's 30mm diameter to fit in a down-tube, 200W, and 300g. But just because it's 200W doesn't mean you have to run it at maximum capacity, there's no reason you couldn't run it at 5-50W.
https://escapecollective.com/exclusive-tour-riders-are-inhal...
Doping is usually in reference to banned substances. But huffing CO genuinely seems completely out of left field of any rules that I know. They probably will ban it, but before they do is it correct to call it doping?
As other commenters have said, the very purpose of this all is to see who can cheat in a way that's not outright illegal.
We are at a point of such peak human performance and conditioning that if you bring in equalisers such as the same bike for everyone etc, you'll just have a whole peloton crossing the finish line at the same time.
It's like saying "cyclist get better by drawing blood" when they just have their bloodwork done to see how they are doing with training.
They aren't sleeping attached to a car exhaust.
> A second, more aggressive approach, which is called carbon monoxide inhalation and uses the same equipment and techniques, steps into the scientifically new and much riskier realm of inhaling the poisonous gas for the express purpose of performance enhancement. A growing body of recent scientific research suggests CO inhalation can have a powerful impact on measures of aerobic capacity like VO2max, or maximal oxygen uptake.
> And there is no hard evidence that any WorldTeams are currently using CO inhalation for performance gains. But multiple sources for this article voiced concern that it might be imminent, and possibly already happening in cycling or other sports.
To go from that to "people dope now with CarbonMonoxide" is dishonest.
i think it's equally as dishonest to believe anything these teams say about topics which relate to doping, performance enhancements etc.
of course not a single team says that they're using these methods to get performance gains, why on earth would they admit it?
> https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/658593
It doesn't need to be pedals either - it could be a standard crank arm or any other easily accessible part that can effectively house a power meter.
I'm sure there are plenty of other issues with this power meter based approach, but securing the data is probably doable to a reasonable degree.
This is not that different to amateur motor racing, where its expected you only bring a helmet that's certified by an external body (Snell/FIA etc). There are generally only a handful of pedals designs in use in the pro-peleton today, so not like we are talking about moving a mountain, and the UCI already regulate a lot of existing parts.
As I said, I suspect this is not the main problem with this approach, there are likely many other much better reasons why this isn't a good idea.
The issue with drafting would be that it comes and goes. In a sprint finish, one moment you might be drafting, another trying to overtake the other guy (so not drafting), then fall behind again and draft, all in a matter of seconds.
Then, there's the road gradient, also a massive impact on the power/speed function, and it's highly localized. You might know that a stretch of the road is 8% on average, over say 100m segments, but locally it can be much more or much less. On sharp switchback the inside of the corner can be 20+% when the outside is only 5-10%.
Plex it's a race, power goes up and down in response to events, one moment you're sitting in a group, another you're chasing the guy in front. Presumably that's also where you'd press the boost button - when you'd legitimately be putting down more power.
In amongst all that I doubt you would see an extra power boost.
The battery and the motor would be significant weight to carry when it comes to the mountains, not to mention this deadweight must be carried all the way from start to finish and only be used for maybe 60 seconds.
Bikes have a minimum weight of 6.8 kg in UCI competitions and the lightest bikes are at least a kilogram lighter than the minimum, so they have to add weight anyway.
Overall, it's just simpler to just scan all the bikes.
However, mandatory power recording could become quite valuable over the long run. The peloton should be large enough to allow data scientists to detect the abnormalities (unless all the teams reach an agreement to cheat consistently ;)). Once a history is built over a decade or longer, "unphysiological" power output could be detected quite easily.
This would theoretically detect the opposite. The power meter (on the crank arm) detects force applied on the pedal. The discrepancy would be if they're overtaking other racers pedalling the same wattage.
It really boggles my mind that there are people who are capable enough to be in the competition and still decide to cheat in order to win. Not because it’s immoral or dishonourable or anything like that, but just because it’s so fucking lame.
If your competition is cheating you are going to lose if you don't cheat. It has nothing to do with honor - it's just about winning. Cheating may be lame but it's a reality. It's not just limited to sports either. In fact I can't think of anywhere I studied/worked where cheaters/liars didn't get ahead (I know multiple cheating students who got into MIT for grad school, and I know multiple abusive liars who were consistently promoted at unicorn startups or FAANG while simultaneously working to get their honest coworkers fired).
Such is life.
I put that in category #1, which isn't exactly cheating because it doesn't buy you an advantage. Cheating at school or at work is an interesting example. Perhaps by the time cyclists are considering motorizing it's just like... a job? And you have to win to eat?
If you have devoted your entire life to a particular sport enough to compete and make a living in it, there inevitably will come a time when your ability to compete is not enough, whether that's due to declining ability or increased competition. When faced with the decision of ending a career or cheating, it is not too surprising that people could choose the latter.
Of course there are many other reasons for cheating, but I imagine that to be a common motivator.
I do find it a bit surprising, myself.
Ok let me phrase it perhaps in a more relatable way -
Your employer asks you to do an unethical or illegal thing. Not doing so will result in you losing your livelihood. Doing so presents a small but measurable risk to you, but you keep your livelihood unless caught, in which case you lose your livelihood anyway. Do you think there is a significant subset of people that take the first choice?
Sport qua job has a different feel than sport qua sport, as a sibling commenter illuminated.
‘If only I hadn’t torn that ligament a few years ago, I’d probably be very slightly faster. I deserve to win this because I’m naturally better. In a perfect world I’d win. By taking this drug, I can negate the unfortunate circumstances and ensure I live up to my true potential.’, etc.
In reality, of course, it’s still plain old cheating. But I imagine it’s fairly easy to rationalise it in your head by thinking along these sort of lines. It’s probably not the same sort of feeling as robbing someone in the street — your morals can remain genuinely intact.
Cycling is a really good example because it is so stark: 1) If you win you make more money, probably a lot more money. I don't know the current numbers, but during the Armstrong years there were plenty of Tour de France level riders that worked wrenching bikes to make ends meet and lived with their parents in the off season. You had Lance on private jets, and then guys on the team making under $30k supporting him. 2) Genetics is huge, you can do everything possible and simply not be good enough, if you've dedicated a big chunk of your life to this dream, you've won at every level, you live a completely monastic lifestyle and constantly diet and you reach your limit the desire to get just a little bit better is strong. The drugs work. 3) If enough people believe that "everyone is doing it" then the psychology of cheating disappears. 4) There is no external pressure or risk; the teams and sponsors don't get burned. When Lance won on a Trek they went from being something like a $200m company to a $2.5B company. They may very well have played a part in it, perhaps unbeknownst to them, but they never had any jeopardy.
They're talking about what is physiologically possible after this year's Tour, it was a complete ass kicking. If your competition is doing things that are believed impossible, do you hang it up? accept defeat? Or rationalize that a few watts isn't really cheating since he's doing something impossible?
Baseball has a history of guys corking their bats and when caught the excuse is always that the practice bat got mixed in.
What do you mean your mind is boggled that pro cyclists cheat? Some people will literally sell their grandmothers if it brings them an inch closer to worldwide fame and fortune.
Somebody in the athlete’s inner circle suggests “hey, you’d be faster/stronger if you did X…” and it goes from there.
It’s all upside if you can’t compete without.
The bike I used didn't have a "cruise" setting that moved the bike along while your legs sat still, like I've seen on some bikes.
Fun fact: net net, people are more active with an ebike, even though they expend less energy at any point of any particular ride.
Obviously it's going to vary a bit with individual cases. As an ebike myself it's handy you can choose the effort required depending on your mood etc.
I think Scott has one of the cleanest looking road bike ebikes around, but many other brands do the same. With how chunky aero bikes are they are indistungishable to the masses.
https://www.bianchi.com/store/us_EN/yqbn8-aria-e-road-ultegr...
I think your usual high end bike makers all have some e-road bikes, some of which are going to be pretty stealth.
I think so far no one has been caught motor doping even though they've looked for it for years. The rumor is the new magic is carbon monoxide rebreathing
Some quick searching yields this:
"Based on the numbers, Tadej Pogačar has an FTP close to 7w/kg. These are the highest numbers that we’ve ever seen in professional cycling, and what’s even more incredible is that Pogačar is pushing 7w/kg for 40 minutes after four hours of racing."
https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/tour-de-fran...
This is an interval on par with Pogacar's climb, although Lance had less same-day load going into the climb.
[0]: https://www.stickybottle.com/races-results/cycling-fastest-t...
And the training is just as drastically improved. Nutrition dialed to the individual, seven days/week. Power meters are ubiquitous. No more “go ride 5 hours with your roommate” for a Saturday training ride - it’s all planned all the time.
This has all happened since Pog was a small child.
Feel free to believe that nutrition, material, aero etc. will give you a 10% improvement over the most doped people in the history of cycling, especially on the final climb on plateau de beille, with incredible heat, headwind and after four cat1 climbs. Watch how Pogacar casually drives freehandedly, grabbing a bottle while Vingegaard pushes the fastest climb ever recorded, pulverizing Pantani's record, and seriously tell me this is because he had better breakfast.
This was the moment when I stopped watching. I like Pogačar and there is no way for rider to rebut all the accusations even the rider really is clean. But it doesn't help that he is riding under people who were doping and managing teams with doping scandals.
Absolutely, I do. The bikes are more aero. The position on the bikes is different - Pog rarely gets out of the saddle on climbs, where LA and Pantani were often slogging out of the saddle. The training plans and nutrition are absolutely superior.
Does any of this mean Pog or Jonas are clean? No. We don’t know either way. All I do know is the anti-doping program is one of the strictest in sports. If people still dope, there’s not much we can do about it. Regardless, I‘ll continue to enjoy cycling as entertainment - there’s no higher meaning to sports - it’s all for fun.
These are just stylistic issues which might bring you a percent or two. The 10% we are seeing now is a world of difference on that level, especially because Pog simply exploded this year, beating both Giro and Tour without much trouble. I also heavily disagree with entertainment being the highest meaning of sports, because then I guess we would just all watch WWE or Peter Thiel's mutant games, but that's a topic for another day.
Don't be surprised if cyclist suddenly all started spending their off season in Tibet or something.
Any battery and motor which can deliver that for any appreciable amount of time should be plenty big and heavy enough to easily locate. 30 watts for a 2 hour race = 60 watt hours, over 200 grams of battery. Thats gonna be hard to hide on a bicycle made to be super lightweight.
Looks like the real cheaters are switching bikes between the inspection and the race.
Is it just that we see it more there? Or is there actually more cheating in that sport than others?
In hockey you'd never see the sort of diving that you see in soccer. You'd be laughed off the ice.
In soccer you'd never see the sort of casual violence after the whistle that you see in hockey. You'd be kicked off the field.
If you weren't willing to play with people who will fake an injury, you wouldn't play soccer.
If you weren't willing to play with people who will take physical shots at you, you wouldn't play hockey.
if you weren't willing to be around doping... you wouldn't go into professional cycling.
So once a sport gets that sort of reputation, of course it persists. The reputation causes the problem, the problem causes the reputation.
If you want to spend $15k on a bike - go ahead, just don't be upset when you get overtaken by a 17 year old in gym shorts on a second hand clunker.
Professional gaming tournaments that don't issue/mandate equipment have this issue as well, professional paintball has had this issue, etc.
Motor doping is not a realistic issue, there has been one cyclist getting caught in 2016, and that was in cyclo cross, not road racing. It's just not happening on the higher levels. For instance, this years olympic road race course is 273 km long with 2800 meters of climbing. Even if you could hide a motor and battery from the inspection and other riders, even if a team would be willing to risk their entire future if they got caught, even if nobody in the entire team would say anything, you're only going to fit a very small battery inside a road bike. For most of the 273 km it's unnecessary weight, so even if it was possible to get away with, which I don't think it is, would it even be a net benefit? I doubt it.
More generally, it’s obviously an ideal sport for some forms of doping given it’s based around extreme endurance. But there’s probably also lots of doping in other appropriate sports - running has plenty of history, swimming, biathlon, cross-country skiing, etc.
Without illegal methods you wouldn't be able to perform at this level. Go watch "Icarus"
But there is doping even in curling.
Hmm, they could try building an energy storage spring made of some composite materials.
Nobody is hating on ebikes here, just using them to cheat to gain an advantage at the olympics... in a sport ripe with doping since day 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6z7uUe0tVA
For those not familiar with Tom Boonen, Cancellara effortlessly spinning up the Kapelmuur and putting in so much time that the chase helicopter can't even find him would be like beating Usain Bolt in the 100m by 5 seconds.
I wouldn't be surprised if Cancelaara is in excess of 1400w for short parts of that hill.
Mountain bike (MTB) enduro is stage racing. Specifically, timed downhill-only sections separated by untimed transfers between stages. The name comes from motorcycle enduro racing. Riders do not go head-to-head like in road cycling, cyclocross or motocross. eMTB enduro is exactly the same format but using electric-motor assisted bikes and, IIRC, one timed uphill stage thrown in.
MTB/eMTB enduro is great fun as a participant sport but either not-there-yet or not-suitable as a spectator sport.
For those not familiar with the subject: Only one racer was ever caught doing it.
I find it tremendously hard to believe that no one is cheating.
Same reason that you see riders jettison their bidons just before a climb in the tour de france.
The most important, kamikaze is a term used specifically for a human terminaly guiding themself along with their bomb onto the target. This is what made it so horrifying, If you are doing it remotely, it is not kamikaze, if a computer is guiding, it is not kamikazi.
Secondly, Why invent a new term? If I asked "what do you call a device that is launched, autonomously guides itself to a destination, then explodes" the answer would be a "guided missile", this term has served this role well for many years, drones were unmanned aircraft used mainly for reconnaissance or training/target duty. When you strapped a bomb to it, the term for this sort of unmanned aircraft was "cruise missile"
This is also my problem with the term "motor doping". doping makes absolutely no sense here in any previously used form of the word. When the magic low friction swimsuit was developed then banned, nobody called it cloth doping. the banned brush spike for running shoes, nobody called it shoe doping. Just because you are cheating does not make it doping.
i actually disagree more with your suggestion of calling them 'cruise missiles', as that's an actual current-day term which is actively being used to describe weapons in current conflicts. they're self-navigation missiles cruising to their target.
most of the 'kamikaze drones' we see in ukraine are being flown by humans, the only reason the operator doesn't die is because they're controlling it remotely/virtually.
i get what you mean, however i don't understand why it bothers you so much. lots of terms and words we use are not 100% accurate but understandable because of a shared context.
I hate it how we do this to language as well, but this is the nature of culture, it cannot really be mandated, it will just change as people see fit.
The etymology of the word is telling, apparently it comes from the dutch word for sauce.
I hath spaketh.
nutrition and sports science have made training far more effective than it used to be. materials science has created lighter/better/faster everything.
the only harm i can see is if it encourages unhealthy behavior (i.e., convincing people to take dangerous supplements, potentially early in their career before theyve even come close to 'making it')
i often think this about the olympic gymnasts, some of whom are so much shorter than normal for the ages that i wonder if the activity altered their growth.
Seriously, let's not. Those drugs are bad. Let's protect the people from the ridiculous pressure to win. Let's have some dignity.
It’s also nothing new. Cycling has been known for doping for 100 years or more. Armstrong took it to new heights but it’s always been there and always will be.
For me, I’m more interested in doping control for the safety of athletes. Potentially equalizing competition is second to me. After all, it’s “just” entertainment.
In other sports its so common that its considered normal.
Everyone comes roided up and doped out of their minds, and we see the limits the human body is truly capable of.
Edit: yes https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/enhanced-games-...
But my real take is this hopefully gets everyone to understand how meaningless/ugly this all is and actually combats PED use that way.
Having seen what kind of adults such bubble wrapped children turn into I think that perhaps some risk should be acceptable, let nature sort a few things out, and understand we're not all going to survive to old age. As sad as it is to see a child die before their time, I think it's more sad to see adults who have never lived.
I taken a lot of PEDs for therapeutic reasons to combat the effects of ME/CFS, mainly hGH peptides and Test Cypionate but also some of the esoteric stuff as well. So I'm generally pro PEDs when done in moderation. Obviously some people go overboard. I think a lot of innate athletic prowess is higher endogenous level of many of the same PEDs so you could probably identify likely athletes with DNA tests. So what are these competitions for, to figure out who has the better DNA + work ethic? I'm all for armature sports done for the benefit of the participants.
Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRLAiEZLpVg
Second, not everyone has access to the same "help". I mean to a point this is true today as well as not everyone has access to universities developing snake scale outfits or what have you, but at the same time most olympic sports are still about the human performance. But this is why e.g. F1 has such strict regulations that get tightened every year; if it hadn't, the richest team would win, or the one that has an innovation this year (like side skirts) that other teams don't.
Actually, my entire premise for this is actually based on F1 racing, and how they operate. Every team literally has no rules, other than: Do not kill or injure anyone. Nearly anything else outside of that very broad limit would be allowed. I just think it would end up being very interesting and funny.
This honestly sounds like a very interesting competition to me that I'd love to see: a competition that is about both the athletes and the engineers behind the winning athletes.
Which would totally ruin the vibe. If I wanted to watch guys killing themselves for my entertainment, I'd watch motorcycle racing.
Powerlifters don't die nearly as frequently and it's largely because aesthetic dryness isn't required.
Olympians also aren't explicitly trying to obtain mass as a goal and wouldn't customarily be walking around at 5'10"/300lbs (for instance - extrapolate) as a bodybuilder might in their off-season. Excess mass is usually detrimental in most Olympic sports and is avoided.
Being medically obese, regardless of body composition, is tough on the human heart - add in extreme/forced dehydration, stimulants, and possibly recreational drugs, and you have a recipe for early expiration.
Folks who would participate embrace the "live hard, die young" mantra. We love folks who do this in our society. James Dean is still the coolest man who ever lived, and a significant reason for that is that he joined the 27 club in a car crash.
Basketball isn’t really a contact sport, is it? With a few exceptions, making contact results in a personal foul (https://official.nba.com/rule-no-12-fouls-and-penalties/#fou...)
(Can't find it, I think it was in Omni magazine in the 1980s)