The Swamp

wlu_lax6 wrote:Okay so doping is old news. Now it is mechanical doping.

There was an old video a few years ago that covered this with Fabian Cancellara and Greg Lemond has a demo of this (included below).

Well looks like they caught someone at the Cyclocross world championships. In cyclocross you can swtich bikes during the race at a pit. They pulled a persons bike and scanned it during the U-23 Women's race and.....
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-con ... pionships/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bike Snob NYC wrote:Vildary and Bonarrigo also talked to Hungarian engineer Istvan Varjas, the alleged creator of the hidden motors and suspected supplier to a number of professional riders. Varjas showed an early rudimentary version of a motor and admitted it may have been used as early as 1998. He suggested that it best worked with an extremely high cadence.

In case you're too young to remember (which is unlikely because millennials don't read this lame-ass blog), they key to Armstrong's climbing prowess was supposedly his high-cadence pedaling style, which Freds everywhere attempted to emulate after reading about it in "Bicycling" magazine.

But that's turn-of-the-century technology, and the latest system involves Bluetooth mag-lev crabon rims or something:

Varjas also confirmed that the most advanced form of mechanical doping is now hidden in carbon fibre rims, with neodymium magnets able to produce 60 watts of power. The wheels can be activated and modulated via a bluetooth device – even an expensive watch which has bluetooth – and can only be detected via a powerful magnetic field detector.

Which at €50,000 are only available to the top-tier pros, as well as the vast majority of Cat 4s in New York City and the Silicon Valley:

The wheels reportedly cost 50, 000 Euro but are only made available to a very limited number of athletes.

Adam Yates agreed that the jury made the correct decision. "I wouldn’t really want to take the yellow jersey like that, so I’m happy with the decision," he said. "If I was in Froome’s position and I’d lost the jersey like that, I’d have wanted the same decision as him. It was pretty dangerous in the last kilometre, but the fans make the sport and there’s not many sports where fans can get so close to the athletes. It is what it is. I wouldn’t have wanted to take the jersey like that. Froome is the rightful owner of the yellow jersey."

Rex wrote:I'd be completely in favor of a mountain stage where everyone has to ditch their bikes and run the last 500m.

Rex wrote:What makes you suggest that these guys can't have a proper throwdown?