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news
Hesjedal e-bikeMechanical doping - the pro cycling story that won't go away
It’s the story that refuses to go away – are some professional cyclists using concealed motors to give themselves an advantage over their rivals in what is known as mechanical doping? If they are, no-one has been caught yet, but according to a Telegraph report there is interest in the technology, with claims published today representatives of one rider approached a manufacturer to see if it could be included in his bike.
The allegation, which comes two days before the start of this year’s Tour de France where the UCI says officials will be checking some bikes for concealed motors – as it first did in 2010 – was made on Telegraph.co.uk by Harry Gibbings, one of the men behind the Typhoon electric assist bike.
Gibbings wouldn’t reveal the identity of the person who approached him – it’s unclear whether it was a team manager, or rider agent, saying only: “I was approached by one rider manager recently asking if it could be incorporated into his client’s bike. I don’t want to be asked again. Next time I might go public with who it is. It’s important to stress that.”
Instead of pros, it’s aimed at amateurs, albeit ones with deep pockets, since the bike comes with a price tag of £8,500 – something unlikely to trouble residents of Monaco, where the company is based.
But according to the Telegraph’s Tom Cary, who visited Gibbings there, the cost is reflected in its performance, as he describes whooshing past ex-pro Baden Cooke on a climb near the principality.
The Typhoon is an electric assist bike rather than an electric bike – the rider needs to turn the cranks (handy, some might say, to help conceal the help he or she is getting) with the motor hidden in the downtube and the battery inside a bottle, for now – there are plans to conceal it in the seat tube.
There are three power settings – 50-70 watts, 120-150 watts and 250 watts, though you can imagine that anyone using the latter might come across a bit like Floyd Landis on his way to Morzine in the 2006 Tour de France.
Cary writes that the company has only been around since the start of the year, and certainly there are some unanswered questions in his article – besides the identity of that “rider manager,” the identity of the Russian inventor who sold the rights to the technology to Gibbings and his business partner Gary Anderson, previously designer for the former F1 team Jordan.
Suspicions that riders may be getting electric assistance surfaced in 2010, falling on Fabian Cancellara, with Italian ex-pro Davide Cassani, then a TV commentator and now national coach, explaining how he believed it could be done.
Cancellara, winner of the Flanders-Roubaix double that year, denied the claims, as did his then team, Saxo Bank. But Chris Boardman, then head of R&D at British Cycling, visited the UCI to explain how it was possible to conceal motors within frames, resulting in the governing body saying it would test for them at that year’s Tour de France.
Suspicions do fall on some riders from time to time, however, often fuelled by insinuations on social media – remember the furore surrounding Ryder Hesjedal, when his rear wheel kept spinning after a crash on last year’s Vuelta?
That caused his then Garmin-Sharp team mate Alex Rasmussen to post a video to show how the wheel could, in those circumstances, continue to spin quite naturally.
Even so, the Cycling Independent Reform Commission said in its report, published earlier this year, that the issue of concealed motors “was taken seriously, especially by top riders, and was not dismissed as being isolated.”
Shortly afterwards, UCI president Brian Cookson told Shane Stokes of the website Cycling Tips: “Our information is that this is a very real possibility. We don’t have any firm evidence but we are absolutely aware that these products are out there and that it is a possibility.
“Given that there have been various allegations and rumours and evidence given to the CIRC that this was a potential area of cheating, we have obviously decided that this is something we should check up on on a regular basis” – as has happened at several WorldTour races this year.
Two current WorldTour riders spoke to Cary for the Telegraph’s article, one of them Orica-GreenEdge’s Adam Blythe, who joined him on that ride with Baden Cooke.
He said: “When Harry first showed me, honestly, I was like, ‘---- me. I mean, you hear all these rumours. You feel a bit sick. For me, if anyone is using this ... it would be an absolute disgrace. As bad as [Lance] Armstrong. There is no grey area.”
The other rider, whose name or nationality were not disclosed, was sceptical however that it would be possible for a rider to engage in mechanical doping due to the number of people who would need to be involved.
“Absolutely no ------- way. It would require too many people to be complicit; mechanics, DSs, agents. It would get out,” he insisted.
A final thought. If someone did have a concealed motor in their bike, the weight of it plus the battery would have to be compensated for elsewhere – which would mean some seriously lightweight components elsewhere on the bike.
And that’s something that we imagine would raise the suspicions of any experienced UCI technical commissaire, who could probably come up with a pretty good idea of whether or not a bike is close to the minimum 6.8 kilogram weigh limit without too much of a problem.
For now, however, it’s not an issue that’s going to go away anytime soon, and during the Tour we can probably expect Twitter to spring into life should, say, Alberto Contador do one of his regular mid-stage bike changes in the mountains; something that during May's Giro d'Italia saw Mario Cipollini publicly question whether the Spaniard had electric assistance, with the UCI choosing his bike to be tested later in the race.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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My 6KU, replaced everything but the front chainring over the past 5 years.
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23 comments
Just watch out for a team using magnetically attached water bottles...
When you consider how often bottles are changed, it wouldn't be difficult to repeatedly fit fresh batteries through a race, so the bike would only need to be built as under-weight as the mass of the motor.
Batteries & cables are now commonplace through the Pro peloton, with few riders using mechanical systems, so in theory, the big tell-tale when the frames are x-rayed is obvious & present!!
I'm not saying that it is being done, just that it can be done. And what is more, no pro would need any more than a 50W system to make a huge difference to their performance.
Regen is also perfectly feasible...
Harry Gibbings, Do us a favour and F#*K OFF
What would happen if they did catch someone? Is it only the rider banned, or the whole team. If the stakes are made high, then it would make it less worth while.
I was just thinking its near the start of the Tour and no trumped up doping scandal. Well at least its not a french paper, thats the usual OM.
Amazing coincidence, i'm sure he's not trying to use this as a vehicle to promote his lard arse mobility system.
Wouldn't you need some you're of clutch? Assuming the battery could provide a few watts assist for 10% of a races duration. What happens the rest of the time. If you can't disengage the electric motor from the drive train it would be like riding with a dynamo fitted surely?
This is why it isn't happening in the pro peloton:
“Absolutely no ------- way. It would require too many people to be complicit; mechanics, DSs, agents. It would get out.”
Not to mention teammates, soigneurs, TV cameras seeing the h2o bottle that never comes out of the cage, the mere possibility of a crash and public, medics, ect getting their hands on an obviously motorized bike. It's too risky for even an idiot like Ricardo Rico.
Actual doping did/does happen in a very small, very tight knit world with maybe 2 other people knowing. Look what happened to Lance when the omerta ended.
It's not.
Nothing is too risky or stupid for Ricco.
http://cyclingtips.com.au/2015/04/hidden-motors-for-road-bikes-exist-her...
if you pair this with a battery that has 5mins run time it would work. You really don't need that much, when the main contenders are all putting out similar amounts of power an extra few watts for a few minutes, just enough to get a break. yes it weighs more, but with bikes weighing what they do, perfectly possibly to get the weight back down to the legal minimum.
A Segway battery may be 10kg... but it is required to provide 100% of motive energy for a workable runtime.
A 'mechanical doping' system may only need to provide a few extra watts for a few minutes just at the right time, so the battery pack may only be small and 'light-ish'.
The motor, on the other hand, would still be a wight, so yes, the bike would heavier then normal. unless you start with an underweight bike. Some of the lightest bikes out there are up to 1kg under the weight limit. This means that you could add upto 1kg of motor and battery for ow weight penalty.
Thing is... there are only two ways to integrate a motor and battery into a frame. Either you cut open an existing frame (which must be difficult to conceal) - or you effectively build the frame round the motor. So, if teams are cheating in the way, surly the manufacture would need to be involved?
Maybe the battery power comes from regenerative braking? Watch out for the bloke who's braking a lot - he'll be at the back...
Thomas De Gendt is starting to become suspicious about the new Lotto-Soudal member's choice of bike.
There should be no doubts about the feasability of 'mechanical doping'. The technology to do this has existed for at least five years. Cycling Tips look at it here... http://cyclingtips.com.au/2015/04/hidden-motors-for-road-bikes-exist-her...
And here is a doped bike being used undetected in a Dutch amateur race by a documentary team... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqhX8-dazOo
The time for doubting whether it is possible is long gone. The technology is here and it works and it can make the difference between winning and losing. The question is whether it has already made that difference.
You could do it mechanically, these aren't full electric bikes, it's just a boost of a few percent (over the total distance) on top of the riders own watt output.
Electric motors can now be made very, very small. Rechargeable batteries can store about 200Wh/kg which is a significant benefit benefit per gramme. Though the pro's wouldn't be limited to rechargeable batteries, the energy density goes up a lot if you can afford to throw them away each race.
Very silly story of course, it would be trivial to detect.
The main reason I don't believe this is going on - aside from a complete lack of evidence - is batteries. Anyone who's picked up a battery for anything capable of carrying a bike+rider will know that they're very heavy, and last for about 15 minutes.
A Segway battery, for example, weighs about 10kg. And e-bikes weigh a ton in comparison with regular road bike. This isn't the equivalent of hiding a couple of AAs in the top-tube.
You'll know if a bike has battery-assist just by lifting it.
And if someone working in cycling technology has cracked all the power/weight/duration battery problems, they could be making much more money selling it in thousands of applications rather than the niche area of cycling cheats.
care to search out relevant twitter accounts and its possible to link developer and rider
This story should never have been published if he refuses to name anyone, it's just free publicity.
Seriously? You really think this is not news?
You learn something new every day.....
I think it's an advert.
Sarcasm ? The lowest form of wit.
Or claim to have been approached to give maximum publicity to a start up company.
Have to say though, contrary to what Adam Blythe says, I find the idea of mechanical doping much worse than pharmaceutical doping. It becomes Moto GP then
I don't buy it. I think it's a cheap way to get publicity for his company, and e-bikes in general. If this is what is going on, I have to say it's a pretty wily move, though I wouldn't admire the dishonesty.
FFS. If he's been approached he should absolutely be going straight to the UCI, and if they're as useless as ever go public.