
Thermal camera footage allegedly shows pro cyclists using motors - phreeza
http://fittish.deadspin.com/secret-thermal-camera-footage-allegedly-shows-seven-pro-1771492666
======
paulmd
Just take the bike out of the race entirely. Declare a year in advance that
the bike will be XYZ model Q so people can train on them, and the race
maintains custody of all race bikes, spares, etc.

It's already a money-competition to see who can buy the best super-bike. Yes,
you have to have a minimum weight, but that just means that you can take a
superbike and spend the extra weight applying aerodynamic fairings whereas
someone else has to spend that weight on their frame or whatever.

Just take the bike out of the picture entirely. You ride _this bike_. Or one
of these three models. Or whatever.

~~~
jdietrich
Technology is an integral part of cycling, just as it is in motorsport. There
are some one-design motorsport racing classes, but they are far from the most
popular. Fans like to see innovation, we like to coo over the beautiful new
machinery on display.

Some of the greatest moments in cycling are directly related to technical
progress, most obviously the Obree/Boardman battle for the hour record. On one
side a professional champion with a million pound superbike, on the other an
unknown amateur with a bike he built himself. Many fans complain that the
current regulations are too conservative and provide too little opportunity
for technical innovation.

Cycle racing exists in a symbiotic relationship with cycle manufacturing. Race
wins sell bikes, bike sales fund race wins. Cut the manufacturers out of the
sport and they take a huge chunk of sponsorship with them.

~~~
dclowd9901
If technology is integral, then why ban motors at all? Small motors and
powerful compact energy supplies are technological advancements.

~~~
jdietrich
It's a balance between man and machine, between tradition and progress.

F1 racing cars would be faster if they replaced the driver with a computer.
The fans want to see the skills of the driver tested, so the sport bans common
driver aids like traction control and anti-lock brakes.

Cycling with motors isn't cycling, it's motorcycling. Allowing motors would
change the sport in an undesirable and irrevocable manner.

In cycling, technological progress is governed by the Lugano Charter.
Technology is an intrinsic part of the sport, but it is not allowed to play a
dominant role.

[http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano...](http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano%20charter.pdf)

~~~
erpellan
I'd love to see an autonomous F1 series!

~~~
jasonjei
That would actually be very interesting. Instead of drivers competing, it
would be code competing.

~~~
ccozan
or, even better, AI competing.

~~~
strictnein
AI is code

~~~
thenewwazoo
And code is speech. Does that mean AI is speech? Man, that's a weird thought.

~~~
samstave
Are they considered legal persons then?

------
SeanDav
I used to be an enthusiastic bicycle racing spectator. I would watch hours of
the Tour De France everyday if I had the chance and pay close attention to
other races.

No longer.

I have long since stopped watching, or caring what happens in bicycle racing.
As far as I am concerned, the winner is the best cheat who has not been caught
yet. I would not be the slightest bit surprised if half these guys had
induction motors in their seats and batteries inserted up their backsides.

This is deeply unfair to those who do not cheat, but I am so tired of being
disappointed by endless drug and cheating scandals in cycling that I would
rather spend my time watching golf or something that does not involve a lot of
cheating.

~~~
madaxe_again
Never mind batteries up their backsides, blood doping is still rife, even at
an amateur level. Many sportspeople have "that fridge", in which they keep
spare blood for races - and it's very hard to detect - you have to look for
puncture wounds.

------
tetraodonpuffer
the thing with mechanical doping is that if you aren't caught red-handed, you
are free, with doping some races/competitions will freeze your samples and
they can be tested years later to find out if you were using something that
wasn't testable yet, but with mechanical doping, once you're done the race
you're safe.

And over a course of a grand tour stage, even if the boost is only 25W, it can
easily make the difference between winning and being maybe in the top 10, ask
any cyclist how much a 25W higher FTP would be worth in a mountain stage...

~~~
randlet
Seems trivial to detect now though. It's no problem to just tear down the
bikes of the first X finishers to look for mechanical aids. Detecting doping
reliably is much trickier.

edit: I think most high level bikes use carbon fibre frames? You could
probably just use x-ray or ultrasound imaging to look for anything suspicious
in the frame.

~~~
cyberferret
Perhaps implement something similar to the parc ferme rules in F1? Where the
winning cars and impounded after the race for detailed inspection and
measurements by the stewards to ensure that they comply with the thousands of
regulations?

Drivers have been disqualified in the past for a spoiler or brake caliper
measurement that are millimetres out, and I remember Daniel Ricciardo was
stripped of his podium here in Australia a couple of years back when his fuel
flow regulator was found to have a flow rate that was a few mils out.

~~~
thom_nic
I think at this point the UCI _do_ always inspect the winner's bike after each
stage. Here's a scenario where a rider could avoid most scrutiny and get away
with it....

Say a rider doesn't finish in the top 5 for any early stages but stays near
the top of the pack time-wise. Meanwhile they are conserving energy e.g.
through use of a motor during mountain stages. Then at the end, stop using the
motor and have fresh legs because you haven't been working as hard as everyone
else, and experience a miraculous rise in the standings in the last couple
stages and clinch the GC win?

Although if you take the '15 TDF as an example, I think it was Froome was
right up top of the standings for a huge chunk of the race. So no doubt his
bike was inspected many time. Generally that's how it plays out, there's
rarely a dark horse that shows up right at the end.

~~~
crispyambulance
Yes. Also keep in mind that stage races are very much a team effort. The
winner can derive great benefit from teammates having motors while he himself
stays "clean".

~~~
thom_nic
You're right, very good point.

------
niels_olson
Am I the only cyclist here? I can't imagine voluntarily putting batteries in
my bike on a long, mountainous stage. There's no way the batteries will last,
and then I'm stuck with dead weight. And, looking through the actual
documentary, I didn't see any incontrovertable thermal proof of a battery in
any racer. In the guy posing for a shot, yes, but not in the cyclists laboring
up the hill.

~~~
aidenn0
Have you ever used an electric assist? a 50Wh battery weighs very little[1],
the motors are similarly light, even by road-bike standards. Remember that
there is a minimum weight, so you have a small amount of deadweight to play
around with as well.

That would give a pro biker a 10%[2] increase in power usable over 1 hour of
the stage. It would make the uphill parts way better while negligibly
affecting flat terrain and downhill.

1: Maybe 300g for such a battery were it lithium polymer. Lithium primary
cells can be even lighter.

2: Or 5% increase in power for 2h, &ct.

~~~
peter303
Ive some of these tube-size assists are 100 watts. That could be as much 30%
in sustained riding. They were designed to provide half the power for
commuters.

~~~
aidenn0
indeed; my point was that even a modest amount of power would clearly be a
net-advantage versus no assist, despite the weight.

------
ChuckMcM
Amazingly creative. At some point they will be wearing bike jerseys that are a
coil of conductors and their team will follow behind in the chase car with a
giant magnet to repulse them forward :-).

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Shhh ...

------
PeterStuer
Let's be clear. This is 100% cheating in races and can not be condoned. Otoh,
I don't get the outrage by someone like Eddy Merckx, calling for a lifelong
ban on Femke Van Den Driessche , the young female cyclist that was found to
have a bike with an seatpost motor in her materials stand. You have to realize
Merckx himself was caught several times on doping, receiving only mild
punishments, and also one of those ex-racers sticking 100% to the sport's
traditional muerta on the subject. At least these motors are not actively
preying on the health of the riders.

~~~
anjc
I assume that most people would feel that a _motor_ in a manual bicycle is far
more of an egregious rule-break than performance enhancing drugs, which are an
aspect of every pro sport in the world.

That video of her bike doing donuts on its own makes a complete mockery of the
sport.

I don't know if she should be banned for life, but certainly her career needs
to be affected. 3 year ban or something.

~~~
PeterStuer
I must be out of touch for sure. For me 'performance enhancing drugs' are not
to be accepted as just 'an aspect of pro-sport'. Ruining (young) people's
health, on top of making it near impossible for honest athletes to compete,
makes drugs far more egregious than material cheats.

~~~
aoeuasdf1
Absolutely, I don't understand how GP can causally accept how drugs damage
thousands of people's health while harshly criticizing a different form of
cheating which happens to use a different substrate than human flesh.

~~~
freehunter
It's not about the health impact, it's about the idea that PEDs exist in every
sport and are very well known and monitored for, so it's not as scandalous.
Yes, it has a major health impact that trickles down to the youth participants
and ruins lives, no one is debating that. The discussion is how big of a
scandal it is.

Barry Bonds used steroids to hit some home runs, and he got an asterisk on his
record. The 1919 Black Sox Scandal participants threw some games to make money
and received lifelong suspensions from baseball and changed the history and
rules of baseball forever because it made a mockery of the sport. Same thing
with Pete Rose, he made a mockery of the sport. Bonds is currently a hitting
coach for the Marlins, while Rose is doing commercials since he was banned for
life in 1989.

Steroid and other PEDs are terrible and have awful impacts on the users health
and are a bad example for kids, but their effects are still in line with the
sports. What you get is a bit of a stronger cyclist, but still a cyclist. With
a motor, you're making a mockery of the sport. It's not cycling anymore, it's
now a motorsport. You're not participating in the sport anymore.

There are plenty of discussions that revolve around how bad PEDs are. This
isn't one of them. This discussion is about how cheating using PEDs is
different from cheating by removing yourself from the nature of the sport
altogether.

------
WrathOfHypsis
I'm not sure why the focus is on the motors. They can be tiny and well hidden,
but what about the batteries ? They are bound to be hidden in the hollow
tubing. Why don't they just require a small hole where they can poke in a
stick to verify the tubes are hollow ? A simple weight check would also
suffice. The bike has a known legal weight, oh, suddenly its 3 kilos
heavier...

~~~
33degrees
> The bike has a known legal weight, oh, suddenly its 3 kilos heavier...

Part of the issue is that bikes have a minimum weight, but with modern
materials it's quite easy to go below that minimum. So they can cover the
added weight of the motor and batteries by cutting elsewhere.

~~~
buryat
moreover, it's not rare when the bikes carry additional weight to be UCI-legal
in terms of minimum weight.

------
dandare
There is a clear evidence from Vuleta 2014

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLMfzLTc8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLMfzLTc8M)

The cyclosport officials intentionally hide/enable the problem for years.

~~~
antientropic
That is in no way "clear evidence", the opinions of all the Youtube commenters
notwithstanding. It can just as well be explained by the rotation of the rear
wheel, see for example
[https://youtu.be/aN7HjwZI-k0?t=32](https://youtu.be/aN7HjwZI-k0?t=32).

~~~
WatchDog
It looks like the bike comes to a rest with the tire in contact with the road,
presumably stopping the rotation of the wheel. Then when the cyclist lets go
of the bike it takes off.

------
kazinator
Duuuudes, chill out! I just rebuilt my bottom bracket the other day and forgot
to grease it.

~~~
matheweis
And yet somehow you were faster for it, hmm...

~~~
kazinator
Seriously, though, in the image, the seat tube temperature seems to peak
several inches above the bottom bracket. The rear stays are cold.

------
Overtonwindow
For the big races, why don't they embargo the bikes prior to the race? Then
xray them at random. Beginning of the day the rider pics up the bike, turn it
in at night. The mechanic can work on it, whatever, in a special shop.
Especially for the one day races. I can see how this would be difficult with
multi-day races, but something like this should be feasible elsewhere.

~~~
jdietrich
It's logistically very difficult. All ProTour riders will have at least one
spare bike. The teams will also have at least 20 spare wheelsets available.
For a typical one-day like the Paris-Roubaix, that means at least 400 bikes
and a thousand spare wheels. These bikes and wheels all need to be checked and
maintained before every day of racing.

Cycle races often start and finish in small towns, so the teams may have to
stay in hotels some distance from the course. It would be impractical to find
a suitable building for parc ferme at most races and it would be costly to
erect temporary facilities.

The professional racing calendar is extremely busy, so a team mechanic may be
travelling continuously from late January to early December. There simply
isn't the time available for a parc ferme.

I think the current strategy is perfectly satisfactory. Riders are immediately
intercepted after the finish line. The race leaders and some randomly selected
riders will have their equipment inspected, in the same way that they are
tested for doping.

~~~
mschuster91
I don't see a problem with not testing the wheels - you can't really hide
batteries inside the tube.

------
agjacobson
What's with all the spiel, personalities, politics, scenery, etc. Just show us
the IR images!

------
pj_mukh
This is the most mind-boggling cheating scandal ever. It jiggles my
engineering nerves in place I didn't know was possible.

~~~
Johnny555
Racers are willing to put their health at risk with various performance
enhancing drugs and procedures, putting a motor on their bike seems to pale in
comparison.

~~~
azazqadir
Things people will do for money. You can write a book on it.

~~~
RIMR
That would sell really well.

------
westward
If I were a competitor, who wanted an honest race, is there anything my team
could do to neutralize either of these techniques?

~~~
ehnto
You're making me imagine a Mario Kart style escalation of cheating and anti-
cheating techniques.

Maybe an EMP equipped tortoise shell would do the trick!

------
8ig8
NY Times just published an article on the subject:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/sports/cycling/with-a-
disc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/sports/cycling/with-a-discreet-
motor-doping-the-bike-instead-of-the-cyclist.html)

------
liquidise
If these bikers lost these races, and i am left to assume they did since the
scandal hasn't boiled over yet, i think they can safely pack it in. Losing a
race you cheated in is about as low as i can imagine this getting.

~~~
baddox
Obviously there is still a significant desire to finish higher even you don't
finish first.

------
donretag
Wow, people are really serious about those Strava KOMs.

~~~
mayneack
[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-strava-
dopers-20160...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-strava-
dopers-20160415-story.html)

------
Swizec
What makes cycling so particularly attractive to cheating? Or is cheating in
cycling just getting more publicity than in other sports?

~~~
chickenbane
Most professional athletes are doing everything they can to get ahead, and
cycling is no exception.

That said, there are pretty amazing stories about cyclists cheating - perhaps
because the sport is so grueling that small advantages can really translate to
substantial gains. One of my favorites for the Tour de France was cyclists
being pulled by cars attached by fishing line to a piece of cork held in the
mouth!

~~~
qb45
WTF? Who did that and when?

~~~
freehunter
I'm not really finding any primary sources, but there is a lot of unsourced
blogs talking about it. Allegedly it was Hippolyte Aucouturier in the 1904
Tour de France, which apparently was so rife with cheating that it almost got
canceled.

[http://www.bikeroar.com/articles/the-4-greatest-bicycle-
chea...](http://www.bikeroar.com/articles/the-4-greatest-bicycle-cheats-in-
history)

~~~
qb45
Oh, OK. I was imagining something like that happening more recently and
couldn't quite believe it.

------
davidw
I've been following this one on the cycling blogs, and I have a fairly cynical
take on it:

* They didn't actually name anyone.

* They didn't catch anyone with a motor, red handed.

* They did, however, manage to produce another 'cycling is dirty' narrative.

Pretty useless, IMO.

~~~
anjc
Well except there's a video of someone's bike skidding around on its own on
the site. So the motors do exist in the sport...

~~~
davidw
Video is old and has been debunked.

~~~
freehunter
The only debunking I've seen is putting a spinning tire down in optimal
conditions, which of course has it spinning like it did in the video. The
video has the bike bouncing off the ground several times and coming to a
complete stop on the ground in the rider's hands, and _then_ him letting go
and it spinning away. At that point, the tire should have stopped all of it's
rotational inertia.

~~~
davidw
It's not like they're going slow in those races - the wheel probably had a lot
of momentum.

In any event, reposting an old video, with a couple of grainy shots of
unidentified riders whose bikes were not subsequently checked counts more as
"casting aspersions" rather than "proof" in my book.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if _someone_ somewhere was cheating, but I've
come to dislike these kinds of hit pieces.

~~~
freehunter
Well obviously no one is being disqualified on this video alone. The idea is
to draw attention to what could be a real issue.

But calling it debunked because of another video that is just as dubious seems
a little like hand-waving. What's happening is that people are trying to get
the officials to look into the idea that there may be tiny hidden motors in
some bikes. And what you're doing seems like you're trying to avoid that from
happening.

~~~
davidw
People have been talking about this issue for a while in the cycling
community. That's why they're doing tests. I'm more than happy for them to do
more tests, too, so... no, i'm not against that, _at all_.

What I don't like are 'accusations' that aren't aimed at anyone and so just
kind of sit there.

Also, when you see that the Corriere della Sera barely covers bike racing, but
then splashes out on big things like this, it's pretty grating. It's like bike
racing is only important when we're talking about doping or cheating or
something.

------
todd8
It's a sport. So the rules are the rules. Bringing a set of brass knuckles to
a boxing match is just taking advantage of better equipment, but of course the
people running the sport of boxing can define what's allowed and what's not.
It might be interesting to have an unlimited class, whatever that would mean
for cycling, but the sport of pro cycling gets to define what a legal bike for
pro racing is, end of argument.

------
Swannie
Seems a simple answer to me - require every rider to have 3 - 5 uniquely
identifiable bikes.

Require that all rider's bikes - irrespective of position, etc. be kept by the
race organiser at the end of the day. Randomly select bikes for testing with
x-ray/millimeter rays, electromagnetic sensors, and even destructive testing.

An extended "post race parc fermé" if you will...

------
dgudkov
It would be more interesting if it was legal with some reasonable limitations.
It could be one more reason for boosting the battery technology.

~~~
deelowe
I think they should allow it, but only with capacitors that are shorted prior
to start. This way, it can only be used to improve efficiency.

~~~
eru
If the people making the regulations were interested in efficiency, everyone
would be racing in a fully covered recumbent bike.

(They don't, because the regulations don't allow it.)

~~~
deelowe
Yet they allow advanced alloys and other materials. There's obviously a
balance. This is typical in racing.

~~~
eru
Yes. One guiding principle of the regulations seems to be that they have to
produce a bike that looks `normal' on TV.

------
thom_nic
What I don't understand is, how is neodymium undetectable? Wouldn't they
notice the unusually strong magnetic force?

~~~
alphydan
I don't know the answer. But my first guess is that (to a first approximation)
a magnet inside a metal box does not create a magnetic field outside of that
box [1]. Of course this depends on the material of the tube.

[1] [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/38759/does-
farada...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/38759/does-faraday-cage-
block-magnetic-field)

~~~
ridgeguy
A magnet inside a ferromagnetic box. The box material has to have a high
permeability to shield an enclosed magnet from external detection.

You can think of permeability in this instance as the ability to contain a
magnetic field. As long as the shielding material doesn't saturate (too much
magnetic flux), the field from an enclosed magnet can be confined within the
enclosing material. No external detectable field.

------
exabrial
Why not encourage this? F1 racing fueled innovation in this manner before they
went crazy with engineering restrictions

~~~
sliverstorm
Have you heard of Group B?

That's the story of why racing today has heavy regulations.

~~~
hatsunearu
I wanna learn more and wikipedia isn't very helpful; any places I should read?

~~~
crawdog
"Too Fast To Race" is a great documentary on it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imXk8u-reUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imXk8u-reUQ)

------
rhizome
A combination of FLIR and homologation could go a long way to solve this
problem. FLIR seems like an excellent start.

~~~
Viper007Bond
Later in the video it shows electromagnets that don't really generate heat the
same way the motors do.

~~~
rhizome
Yeah, that's the FLIR part, but homologation could help with the "batteries in
the seat stays" thing and other structural modifications. To be sure,
homologation doesn't necessarily prohibit modification, and these frames
typically have custom dimensions to suit the rider, so maybe x-rays could also
be thrown into the mix.

------
ajuc
It's nice that after all these years racing sports still come up with
innovations that can help "regular" people.

Now let's split the bike racing into assisted and unassisted ones to let the
technology develop, and the "pure" racing continue.

~~~
davidw
No one wants to watch motorized bike races.

------
doe88
The investigation's video is also available (in French):

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4543y2_video-un-moteur-
dan...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4543y2_video-un-moteur-dans-le-
velo_sport)

------
marze
With a fan and some aerogel insulation, it should be possible to avoid a
thermal sig.

------
relik
cycling seems to always be mired in scandal. why is this the case?

~~~
davidw
It's had its troubles, but there does also seem to be a tendency for the media
to focus on it.

Look at FIFA in soccer - it's completely rotten - and yet we're back to 'those
cyclists...'.

Also: if you consider the money in cycling, which is pretty modest, compared
with soccer or US sports... you're delusional if you think that cycling is
dirtier.

------
esaym
Seems carrying the weight of the batteries and motor would be totally counter
productive. Perhaps they should pressurize the bike frame with air and then
run that through a muffled impeller connected to the gear somehow :shrug:

~~~
mehwoot
In pro races bikes have a minimum weight and it's quite easy to make a bike
under that weight using modern materials. So you just make a really light bike
and have the batteries and motor make up the difference.

------
c3534l
I'm starting to think that all major sports are fake.

~~~
eru
Enjoy Wrestling, at least they admit it now.

Though, not quite sure whether doping (mechanical or otherwise) counts as
fake. It's just that the de facto regulations they abide by are different than
the de jure regulations.

------
awinter-py
This makes italian cold fusion research doubly suspicious

~~~
NamTaf
How is it at all related?

~~~
thom_nic
Look up, I think you'll see @awinter-py's joke passing over your head :D

~~~
NamTaf
All I see are the FBI planes taking my portrait :( I can't tell what's real
and what's dystopian any more.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Could you disable such motors with an EMP or so?

------
okonomiyaki3000
Suddenly, steroids don't seem so bad.

~~~
jethro_tell
I don't know about that. One is ruining your body to win and the other is just
cheating.

~~~
rubyfan
In related news _Hebrew University researchers unveil a sarcasm detector
[2010]_

[http://m.jpost.com/Health-and-Sci-Tech/Internet-And-
Technolo...](http://m.jpost.com/Health-and-Sci-Tech/Internet-And-
Technology/Hebrew-University-researchers-unveil-a-sarcasm-
detector#article=0MDVGMzY2RkMyMTVEMTkzQkVGM0M5NzI5NjQ4REYwQzU=)

------
hondo77
No, it doesn't.

~~~
GhotiFish
I have to agree with you here. The thermal camera footage they did show was
just shockingly weak. They had one instance where there was higher than
average temperatures coming off of the cogset. Which coincidentally enough is
a rotating joint with the weight of a grown man pressing down on it for an
entire race. Seeing heat here is not surprising.

~~~
yborg
Apparently you missed the part where they have this footage for just 2 racers
out of an entire peloton.

~~~
Zacru
Seems like that could just be because they need greased and/or aligned.

~~~
freehunter
It could be that. It could be something else. That's why the questions are
being asked instead of people being disqualified at this point.

Although I would really doubt any professional cyclist would have an
ungreased, misaligned hub and not know it or not trade it out for a bike in
better repair.

