Mechanical doping: Tour de France to use thermal imaging kit to look for hidden motors

Thermal imaging devices will be among unprecedented measures used at this year’s Tour de France, which starts in Normandy next Saturday, according to French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

One thermal imaging camera, mounted on a motorbike, will be used while the race is in progress, while bikes will also be checked at stage starts and finishes using the magnetic wave scanning technology deployed by the UCI since the start of the year.

The French military will also be loaning another thermal imaging device to race organisers ASO, which the newspaper says is due to announce tomorrow the measures aimed at combating technological fraud.

The measures have been implemented after the country’s secretary of state for sport, Thierry Braillard, put together a working party to look into the issue of hidden motors.

"This problem is worse than doping,” he said, quoted on Sky Sports News. “The very future of cycling is hanging in the balance.

"Under my orders, research centres have been hard at work to establish the best way to combat this menace," he added.

In January, a concealed motor was found in a bike prepared for Belgian under-23 cyclo-cross rider Femke van den Driessche at the world cyclo-cross championships, the first time one had been discovered.

French TV sports magazine programme Stade 2 has reported on concealed motors on three occasions since then, and has claimed that thermal imaging equipment is more reliable than the UCI’s scanners, which are based on an app linked to a tablet computer.

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