They have moved on from pharmaceutical doping due to the extensive testing to what is referred to as "mechanical doping". Motors are hidden in hubs/frames and the organisation is busy doing everything they can to pretend that it isn't a problem.
They do systematic checks for the winner, whoever has suspicious performance jumps one day, as well as random racers. They do take it very seriously and what you are saying is a bit far from the truth.
Some people will try, and some scandals will happen, sure. But it is not a widespread problem and is unlikely to become one.
Through axels have become a very convenient excuse for bike changes. Watching Cavendish have his wheels changed in one of the early stages this year was so slow. It took a guy with a drill like a minute plus to do front and rear wheels.
We've had a handful of cases at the lower levels of the sport, but I think the scrutineering is just too strict for anyone to get away with it at the ProTour level. The UCI have got mobile x-ray facilities which they're starting to use much more rigorously.
Mechanical doping, a problem so wide-spread that only one person at the elite level has ever been found to have been doing it. To date, no one has ever provided hard evidence of another rider using a motor. I am not saying that this doesn't happen at the amateur level (it certainly does) but to imply that this is a pervasive problem in elite cycling is little more than a baseless conspiracy theory until someone shows up with some actual evidence of motors being used in major events.
Ghost in the Machine [1] is a great podcast on this topic.
Only one person has been caught. It's been a long time since I bothered to look into this, but LeMond suspected at least half a dozen people, with video evidence of varying degrees of plausibility. The thermal imaging and the fallen rider with the spinning wheels were especially damning.
But if you're analyzing old races how do you get a conviction? You can't.
And if this is the Toms Skujins case, it spins for like 3 seconds on video after the video cuts to him. It's obvious that he just had lifted his bike up and spun the pedals to see if everything was in order before biking on. And when an alternate video later was released, this was proven to be true.
the long history of cheating at the highest levels of every sport indicates that if there is not mechanical doping in cycling, it's because the mechanical technology is not as good at hiding yet as it needs to be. We are talking about human beings here.
To my eyes, that bike obviously has a battery in the downtube. But I'm not the average person where bikes are concerned so perhaps I should have said, "a bike that would fool other bicyclists."
Assuming the pros are cheating, the professional assistance is unlikely to be of use to a regular human. At the professional level, a 1% gain could be huge, whereas a normal rider could gain far more than that by better techniques/breathing/equipment/whatever.
I found that podcast terrible. At the time I knew nothing about road cycling and that podcast left me with the impression that it's a pervasive problem and a grand conspiracy. It wasn't until I spoke about this with some real road cycling enthusiasts that I realised I had been taken in by a bullshit conspiracy theory.
Impossible to use mechanical doping now with the current inspections.
Has it been used before these inspections were implemented? Very likely. An hungarian engineer developed a motor with spools in the rims and the stator in the forks. For sure at some point this offered a better risk/reward than PEDs.
Greg LeMond was one of the people calling for more scrutiny of bikes for mechanical tampering. One of the best pieces of evidence he provided were thermal cameras pointed at bikes while they were in motion. Lots of thermal blooming in places no professional bike mechanic generate a tenths that much friction.
One of the problems is that bikes can be made so light with unobtainium that there are rules in place requiring a minimum weight so that poorer teams can compete. So if you make a bike that's 10 lbs you have to stick weights into it to bring it up to spec. What else could you put in that bike besides chunks of iron pipe?
Bikes being too light and needing weight added to rich 6.8kg minimum is a tale of the past. With aero frames, disc brakes, deeper wheels and bigger cassettes most TdF bikes are way over the minimum, sometimes more than 1kg heavier.
No, not really. These motors exist, but it’s not really a thing on the Tour de France. And I only mention this race because I am not much of a devotee and don’t really follow the others, but I would expect quite a lot of noise if it were a thing in the other big races.
It doesn't seem to matter, there's another post alleging Bridgen said vaccine = holocaust 2.0. They've been radicalized to attack when they hear trigger words.
I see the early stand-up in a different way. I don't derive anything other than interruption and inconvenience from a stand-up so I'd rather get it out of the way first thing then I can get on with my work for the rest of the day without interruption.
One problem with daily meetings is that the two of you are making reasonable and yet incompatible arguments here. You can't have a meeting at the same time every day that is both conveniently out of the way for those who want large blocks of time free for real work and conveniently in the middle of likely working times for those who prefer flexibility.
Personally I think the solution to this is obvious and apparently so do many others here. Daily standups within a mostly stable and well-functioning team are almost always redundant at best and actively disruptive at worst. So don't have daily standups. Instead work on a culture where people communicate freely whenever they need to and you bring people together for larger and longer meetings when (and only when) you have a specific reason for that.
You're right and I agree with your proposed solution. Having no (useless) dailies at all is even better than having them midday. But I'm fighting an uphill battle here, especially as freelancer.
I'm always a bit amused when Product Owners are suprised that there's nothing to clarify at a daily since the team is constantly transparent towards each other about blockers etc.
But I'm fighting an uphill battle here, especially as freelancer.
True. Whenever I've done freelance/consultancy stuff in the past my rule has been that if a client invites feedback then I'll test the water once. If they're receptive I'll elaborate. Otherwise I'll usually drop any process-related feedback and fit in as well as I reasonably can with everyone else since IME that is normally the most effective way to work in that kind of environment. It's always a bit disappointing if you can see a client making obvious mistakes and you know how to fix them but sometimes it happens and if they're not interested in changing then ultimately that's their decision and their responsibility.
Regarding the number of insects around I've heard British farmers saying that neonicotinoids targeted certain insect species and since the ban they have switched back to using a broad ranging insecticide which kills everything. Whilst the insect population decline is certainly a phenomena which pre-dates the ban this change is hardly going to help, although maybe it is the lesser of two evils.
Neonicotinoids don't target certain insect species. They kill them all. The seeds are coated and then the whole plant is toxic to insects.
I like it how they say that neonicotinoids are active substances used in plant protection products to control harmful insects. Didn't know bees are harmful insects.
The standby instruments were working and falling back to them in the event of a primary flight display failure is part of the training