Retired pro cyclist Jérôme Pineau, who rode for Quick-Step for five seasons and won a Giro d’Italia stage during his 16-year professional career, has suggested Jumbo-Visma are doping mechanically.

The eyebrow-raising remarks came on RMC’s Les grandes gueules du sport podcast, Pineau unable to provide any hard evidence except his own opinions on Jumbo-Visma’s Col du Tourmalet performance, asking: “How can you explain that?”

The Dutch team is the sport’s dominant Grand Tour force at the moment, on the men’s side of cycling at least, winning the last two editions of the Tour de France as well as both of this year’s Grand Tours, and are well on track to completing the clean sweep with Sepp Kuss, Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard going into the third week of the Vuelta a España in first, second and third place on general classification.

And it was race leader Kuss’ performance on Friday’s Col du Tourmalet summit finish which attracted Pineau’s scpeticism.

“The international bodies are destroying cycling,” he said. “They let too many things happen, don’t control anything any more and do what the big teams want. That’s the danger. Then you can start thinking whatever you want.

> A brief history of motor doping in cycling, from the pro peloton to amateur hill climbs

“We see the images… I’m not talking about doping, but about something much worse. Mechanical doping? Yes, mechanical. If you look at Sepp Kuss’ attack on the Col du Tourmalet, against riders like Juan Ayuso, Cian Uijtdebroeks – who is seen as a great talent – ​​and Marc Soler. They’re not losers on bicycles, are they? Kuss rides ten kilometres per hour faster during his attack, then has to brake by a spectator and then rides ten kilometres per hour faster again.

“How can you explain that? Cycling is my sport, I lived from it and still live from it. It’s my passion, but I’m scared. It worries me very much. I see certain things happening… On the Col de Spandelles (during the 2022 Tour stage finishing at Hautacam) Kuss goes ahead for ten seconds without pedalling. I don’t know how that’s possible.”

On the lack of evidence question, Pineau said: “There was never any evidence with Lance Armstrong, but we riders in the peloton knew about his deception. Now exactly the same thing is happening.”

road.cc has contacted Jumbo-Visma for comment. Merijn Zeeman, a sports director for Jumbo-Visma, told GCN they are the “comments of a ‘team manager’ who signed multiple riders and staff and then in October it turned out that he was fooling everybody and put all these people in a bad position? That person can talk about others?”

Zeeman’s comments reference Pineau’s role as team boss of former second-tier French outfit B&B Hôtels-KTM, who were last autumn linked with the signing of Mark Cavendish and Audrey Cordon-Ragot as part of a project to find new sponsorship and keep the team in existence beyond 2022.

That search came to nothing, Cordon-Ragot in January angrily speaking out about the saga, saying she had been told “elite-level lies” and “pushed around”. 

It is not the first time Jumbo-Visma has been accused of motor doping. During the 2016 Giro d’Italia, French TV programme Stade 2 raised suspicions about a bike change made by Roglič shortly before he started – and won – the stage nine individual time trial.

However, after this year’s Tour de France, the UCI said it is “impossible” to get away with hidden motors, as all 997 Tour de France tests came back negative. With the stage winner and race leader’s bike routinely checked after every stage, we can estimate Vingegaard’s bikes would have been checked at least 17 times during the three-week race.

> Mechanical doping: All you need to know about concealed motors

Former Belgian cyclocross rider Femke Van den Driessche remains the biggest name, and only top-tier professional, to be caught mechanically doping. In 2016, the UCI banned her for six years and handed out a 20,000 Swiss Francs fine following the discovery of a concealed motor in a bike prepared for her at the World Championships in Zolder.

Other riders and teams have been subject to accusations over the years, notably Fabian Cancellara by Phil Gaimon, however the seven-time monument winner always strenuously denied the accusations which disappeared due to a lack of evidence, leaving Van den Driessche as still the only top-tier professional to be caught mechanically doping.

At a lower level, in September 2022 we reported how a French pensioner was caught motor doping during a hill climb after the 73-year-old aroused the suspicions of race organisers by finishing just three minutes behind the winner on the 10km-long climb.

And while there is yet to be a high-profile case in the UK, in 2016 a to-the-point website called Doped Bikes launched purporting to sell motors specifically designed to be hidden within bikes during races, only to later reveal it was, in fact, a ‘honeypot’ operation aimed at finding out who was prepared to cheat.

Founders Moreno Grazioli and Roberto Bassi said they were part of a “group of concerned racers and industry insiders” who wanted to “find out who was prepared to cheat our sport”. The pair alleged they had been contacted by an unnamed “UK team boss”. No further detail was ever given.