Quick napkin math: 100g of lithium battery could give ~100W for 10min, scale any of the three factors linearly as desired (e.g. 100g battery, 200W, 5min). The basic physics are plausible. Implementation without detection would require good engineering but not impossible. (continued in next reply)
People said the same thing about Lance Armstrong. Literally went on for years, with multiple people involved and he almost got away with it. I have trouble believing that these teams would risk everything to use one.
Some of the many ways you could hide some of the components: battery in bidon, shoes, built into carbon (a little out there but maybe possible). Motor in hub, bottom bracket, etc. In no way am I claiming "motor doping is happening" but as a longtime skeptic I have come around to at least seeing technical plausibility and practicality (i.e. not too heavy for the benefit given).
There’s a much easier solution to this: make power recording and sharing with UCI compulsory in races. Power at crank can’t be cheated by a motor, and the discrepancy between power and speed can be flagged very easily if they were sampling the whole of the peloton
Sorry, but pedal stroke efficiency and cadence speed (RPM) and just pure smooth pedal strokes can produce speed with less power going through the drivetrain. It was a good idea, but, would only work for mechanical not biological. You could take a power lifter with the strength to lift 1000 pounds, have very square uneven pedal strokes and show on a power meter high watts, but speed would not be with him. Add to this the weight of the riders would all have to be identical. Add to this taller riders carry more useless weight in the upper body, so do most sprinters that are shorter. Many variables.
@@WildernessMusic_GentleSerene I see what you mean, but it's all resolved if you record from all riders all: you compare each rider against its own power curve. With enough data you can predict speed and compare with real speed. We build similar data models in the lab routinely :)
@@socopower What about compromised immune systems, fighting a virus and not knowing it. What if the food they ate wasn't giving them energy, what if they didn't sleep good last night. Biological being can't be tracked easily. Take the Stage 18 winner, for the first time in four TDF he was up to the task, everything was working, his power output out front in the breakaway must be 50 to 150 watts over where he is usually sitting in the draft of the peloton. We can't deny him a win can we?
I don’t know if anyone is doping (motor or otherwise), however, a version of every one of these arguments was used during the Armstrong years. If forced to take a bet, I would take the “there has never been a time in professional cycling that didn’t have some kind or another of doping in use” side of the bet.
After Lance, and after watching Icarus I just immediately assume all super human results are just that. WADA is a joke. UCI is mostly theater. Too much money just creates bad incentives to cheat.
Dear Ollie and Alex, I would like to thank you and GCN for costing me a small fortune over the last few years from 1st showing me how to save myself some cash and change a BB about 12 years or so ago. I have recently finished my 10th bike build. I finally caved and got a proper road bike (a Ritchey Road Logic) and then thought “hmm? Perhaps Olly and Alex are right? Do I get some 50mm deep carbon wheels for my new steed?”…. Ok so they were over 3 minutes faster on my 13 mile test loop this morning. Looking forward to ever more new content and keep up the good work!
I think what he referenced is that there are brushless motors where the magnetic field that is normally generated by the magnets is generated by coils.
Let’s remember that while the uci and the tour claim to test and be against doping, most doping scandals involving the big names have broken because of police investigations, intrepid journalism or disgruntled team mates. The money must flow and everyone has a stake in keeping the circus going: sponsors, media, organisers and riders. I thought it was interesting that Lance spoke about the politics of the peloton and keeping teams happy, it didn’t sound like he was just talking about letting teams contest breakaways, but also not exposing them to extra scrutiny with superhuman performances. 7 w/kg with 23% efficiency and sustaining 90% of vo2max…wouldn’t that require a vo2max of over 100?? At some point you reach a physiological limit and the answer to these questions has to be mechanical assistance. But of course the circus are now on a campaign to distract. So we get the Eurosport team tasting ketones, constant reminders about tech improvements and even articles saying that really 2x tour winning pog was on an amateur team with schoolboy training and now he’s fulfilling his real potential. Give me a break!
Can't dismiss motor doping because of the number of people involved, see Lance Armstrong and US Postal. Everyone knew except the sponsors who gave them money (they say) and money talks. Large bags of cash can easily buy silence, plus things like NDA's for employees etc. I'd argue it's way easier than you'd think and it's naive to think no one is cheating.
Did everyone really know? The mechanics didn't need to know. In any case, look at how that worked out for USPS. A bunch of people ended up talking and it turned into a huge legal battle.
People love to dump on lance, he was just the best doped rider. Not a doped rider cheating others. Every top 10 finisher tested positive as well. The race officials looked the other way and took any reasonable excuse made by riders.
But it did fall apart because of the people involved. There will always be cheating. Personally I think motor doping would involve too many people in the conspiracy.
I disagree. You needed 9 riders who are deeply incentivized to not tell, 1 DS and a soigneur to successfully run a systemic doping program. So basically pay off one person who has few reasons to not tell With motor doping you need to include all the mechanics and the entire staff who are privy to power data of riders. Which in today's teams could be upward of a dozen people. Because they'd have to know how a rider is going faster at the same power in a race than they were when they were training And now it's getting much more expensive and more difficult to pay off all those mechanics and staff to keep quiet and there is absolutely no incentive for these people to keep a secret if they leave the team. And these people have family who they will tell because people always do and those family members will talk A wife of a rider blood doping will keep a secret to make sure her husband can stay on a team. A partner of a random mechanic or performance analyst who could get a job at any other team or even industry has far fewer reasons to not tell
Probably all fully legal. I’m sure the top teams are constantly experimenting with a host of (legal) drugs to see how they all work together and can give riders those “marginal gains”
I shall be interested to see if perseverance actually pays off and since they're not owned by the big company anymore I think it's more plausible than there's a chance it might happen
You can’t really dismiss it by saying it’d be too big and complicated to happen after the whole sport had pervasive blood doping for many years at the top levels
This! Plus the "single involved mechanic" is not suspicious per se. Many of the top tier riders have their own "team within the team" (think Sagan and his posse at Bora, just to name one). The most plausible use of motors for me is the Domestiques one. This both explains faster average speeds over the years and faster climbing speed of the GC guys since they have saved all their energy until up to this very last climb and they can go all-in pushing those insane numbers that even beat the times of the most juiced-up monsters from 2-3 decades ago...
...and of course, better tech, nutrition, training, etc. adds to all of this. But I find it very hard to believe today's performances come from these factors alone...
Thank you. They want to laugh it away like it's nonsense. But, the pro cycling scene has always had an omerta and they won't spit in the soup if you will. Even the Tour has a special interest in keeping something like this quiet, because a record breaking performance, like Cavendish's is huge for the sport and/or Tour organizers. It just means more money for everyone.
Well quite - it’s as though team-directed doping never happened. For motor supplier, read drug supplier, for mechanic read doctor or soigneur. If it is happening it’s team organised - there’s clearly the incentive (to win) and they’ve just described the opportunity
Cool episode. To be fair, I think the following are true: Motor doping ... - absolutely has been used, and I believe more so in the past. There is absolutely no reason to swap a perfectly working bike at Flanderen 5x. - is still being used - though I believe is more widespread at second tier events, but not in a very wide-spread way and probably not largely at something like the TdF. Always thought that the motor and battery required, would need to be big and proivde high power output, but that's probably where they're least effective in pro sport and most likely to be found. Never realized until your video that even a tiny battery and a 'modest' amount of power will make a big difference, for example: - To win a sprint. 50 Extra watts for 10min? Bring it on! - Winning a monument. Change bike often (less conspicuous ... well, eh, Cancellara?), unleash the power to get away. You'll still need to be a bloody good cyclist (esp. if you ride long stages), but could it be the difference between coming 10th and first? Totally. The battery for this would only need ~10Wh. That's 1/50th of what current e bikes have; basically three 18650 cells suffice. This is especially compelling because with current tech, it's easy to bring a bike under the weight limit (actually, was easy 15 years ago). Thus, regulations actually set perverse incentives and make the use of a motor-operated bike MORE compelling, so long as battery and motor can be small (see above), since riders no longer have to carry dead weight with them.
Love that Dr. Bridgewood is flexing his IGCSE level French and getting googly eyes from his coworkers regardless of gender. Chapeau Monsignor. Tu est vraiment magnifique.
I remember back in the day being told that Lance Armstrong, Jan Ulrich, Marco Pantani, Bjarne Riis et al just had better training techniques. There is no way Pogacar has improved his power output that much for so long even with new interval training techniques, slightly lighter bike than 20yrs ago and magic tyres 😂 Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
I think equipment improved more than you think in 20 years. There is a documentary about TdF 2004 on youtube, Bobby Jullich from team CSC eats fcking nutella for breakfast lol, that's quite a stretch from weighting every gram of your porridge.. If only Pogacar had beaten the record it could have been sus but even Landa is in the same times as Marco
Pog and the other top riders are smashing records established decades ago by guys so doped that this is a sign that doping is back in force. New bikes, tech, nutrition etc can't explain such improvements.
A few comments: 1. The amount of people involved. Does it have to be more people than were involved in medical doing? They had the UCI running around for a couple of decades. 2. Inspection. Is it given that a motor is hidden in the seat tube? If so, it would take a few minutes to check for a motor with the seat post removed and an inspection camera. 3. To avoid the “doped” bike being detected after a swap - just check the swapped bike rather than the one the rider passes the finish line on. Disclaimer: I don’t believe motor doping is a problem in pro cycling.
Those scans still take couple of minutes per vehicle. No UCI marshall would want to take their time, they want a magic wand to point at the bike and get an instant responce.
@@rc8rider same, it covers a very limited area, so you have to move around a lot. There are full scale truck mounted real time scanners, but even such didn't do a great job preventing Crimea bridge _"accident"_
@@francescomancetti8327 Ha ? How about epo and others drugs ? Why Armstrong and others can cheat without being detected ? What is different with the motor cheat ?
@@abone2pick Yeah but they don't have the technology to scan it properly. Cheating is very possible. They cheat with drugs, they can cheat with motors.
@@chrisdelaplante5515because the riders were training with drugs and the blood was filtered before races and testing. The drugs already did their job by increasing performance which the body still maintains without the drug existing in the blood stream. Motor doping doesn't have that. You can train with a motor but removing it during races becomes pointless. Motors and easily detected. The technology to build a non metallic motor doesn't exist and if it did, it would be used in a lot of other industries than someone limiting its use to professional cycling. There's a big difference between hiding performance enhancing drugs and hiding a motor in a bicycle.
GCN Tech we need a tech comparison to clear up these recent performances vs pantini. Get a rider on a similar gradient to hold Pogačar speed over a shorter distance, measure the watts then hold that power on a pantini era bike and clothing to actually see the difference due to the tech improvements. It would be fascinating to know what level of improvement is down to just the kit/bike
Thats dumb. You forgot more than 20 years of training and nutrition evolvement. You would have to have rider to train and use nutrition for at least a year like they did 20 years ago to have that comparison.
I think you miss my point, take the rider/training out of the equation. Just look at the kit and bike difference. I agree you cant compare rider training etc hence remove that variable. @fangru7294
GCN throw their hat into the ring on this subject. I agree it does need discussing though. At least they provide balance in the discussion. All bikes and wheels used need checking.
An undetectable system has moulded Li-ion pouch cells into a (cold cured) carbon frame tube layup, and constructed a motor inside a retro-engineered 30mm diameter BB axle, with EMF shielding. It's only good for 40-60W for a few minutes, but it's all you'd need . . .
The reason why mechanical doping is much less likely to be occurring is really about the ease of proof, whilst it is hard to detect mechanical doping quickly and without destroying the bike, it is possible to find a motor in 100% of cases by disassembling or cutting open the bike. Many people were implicated in Armstrong and his team’s doping, so large conspiracies can happen, but with drug doping, proof is much harder to obtain. Even though many people said at the time Armstrong was doping they couldn’t prove it because there was no easy test. However, if one credible person identifies a doped bike then it can be disassembled and checked and proof will definitely be obtained. When we couple that with the reduced tolerance for all kinds of doping, the increased penalties for being caught and the much-increased commercial risks it just makes it extremely unlikely that a big team/rider would mechanically dope.
Could you interview a couple of mechanics ? I would like to see the mechanics who maintain the winners bikes get some acknowledgment and glory for the winners rides.
Not sure sponsors would disappear from a team that got caught. Festina carried out for a few years after the 98 tour; Sky doubled down with Froome after the sabutamol positive; even Castrol kept on with Toyota watter the rally team got a ban, and Mclaren didn't lose any sponsors after they were done for receiving photocopies of Ferrari designs.
Alex's Orbea is giving me a serious '70s meets 2024 vibe. Brown bikes were way cool in the late 70s (I once had a bronzy brown French Motobecane from that vintage) Starting a (re)newed trend
It looks like motor doping. Pog has been at this level all year and doesn't even look tired at the end of stage or the end of the tour. With biological doping i think there would still be more of an ebb and flow to his form. The stage where Jonas beat Pog in a sprint, I think his problem wasn't bonking, it was the motor in his bike. If you recall, he was on a different bike the next day.
@@my_dear_friend_ the teams' other bikes. If there are 4 'identical' size large bikes in a line, and one weighs a few hundred grams more than the others....
@@joelnord4699 I wonder where the 'break even' point would be for the advantage the motor would provide, vs the disadvantage of carrying the extra weight?
What I don't understand - won't this be a tradeoff between the weight (especially of the battery) and the power over time the system can provide? And I feel that for the typically long distances (and _especially_ for long climbs) the weight disadvantage will always make motor doping not worth it.
regarding doping not being possible because of too many people knowing about it, US Postal pulled it off for years with riders, coaches, doctors and staff knowing about it.
6,5 watts/kg was the magic number back in the Lance Amstrong Era 1999-2005. Then you could win the Tour de France. The riders back then trained at least as many kilometers as the riders these days. You couldn't keep up with the gruppetto back then, if you didn't juiced up on Epo, Human Growth hormone, Steroids, insuline, blood doping, testosterone etc.
It seems that medicated doping would be easier to pull off than motor doping. Question for you, are the riders subjected to anti doping testing throughout the year? Random off season testing too? World tour/Olympic level kayakers here are subject to random testing
yes, they also have blood passports that holds their values trough the years. So basically you have to start doping from the juniors level to avoid suspicious changes. They also always have to let the anti doping agents know where they are so they can be randomly tested at any moment. Doping is taken quite seriously you could say. But that was the thing with armstrong, he could dope all year round in safety while training in texas, and also a reason he rode so few races.
@@LordVilmore thank you. We had to fill out quarterly location forms to let them know where they could randomly show up to. This was done by the US Anti Doping Agency and on a Olympic level, so I wasn’t sure how that translates to professional athletes
Have an airport scanner at every race. Every bike either used to race or on a team car should go quickly through it before loading. Have bar codes on bikes that can quickly be scanned after. Done, easy.
Weigh all bikes, all frame sets utilised to have GPS trackers….. whatever mechanism is used to check for motor doping traceability needs to be improved. Improved traceability would make any doping mechanism harder to implement.
The secret are in the shoes.Just like a fly wheel in a car,once you get it going it's easy to keep the legs rotating. Pod. rotates the legs just like he is pedaling on the flat's with big chain rings,even so he he is on hills
Infrared cameras show heat. Motors and batteries are warmer than empty tubes when being used in the race. Take pictures of every bike as they pass multiple points on the race course.
Common, someone in the calliper of the jersey winners yet alone the top three, would never do that! The consequences are massive both for the riders and the team! It’s just kind of impossible. But it’s always good to do the due diligence.
I know that the Velominati specify that road bikes in photos should have the chain on the big chainring but, as a mechanic, it makes a lot more sense that the bike be in a gear that someone would actually want to be in when starting out. Ideally, this would be small chainring, middle cog, but if you must be in the big chainring (again, why?), it wouldn't be with the smallest cog. Such a combination requires awkward shifting before mounting the bike. It just seems like so much silly puffery.
Magpie Alex, can you do a review on the shift quality of the Recon cassette? Reports have not been good, so far. Oh and your new Orbea needs brown bar tape to match the saddle.
Away from the grand tours - less checking, more possibilities for tech doping - real beneficiary of an extra 10-20w is the domestique trying to make the cut or provide support
It’s such a shame that because Pog is smashing records everyone thinks he must be cheating and dismiss the possibility that he could just be an incredible athlete. Look at Usain Bolt - smashed the 100m sprint & clean - just a natural phenomenon. I love the sport & love watching Pog fly past the competition on climbs. I refuse to believe he’s cheating!
Good little show guys and chuckled a few times! 😂 motor doping; my thoughts are that some unscrupulous individuals could resort to that despite the potential risks, but as you guys alluded to, there would have to be so many people involved someone could whistleblowe ?! To attempt to stem that you'd have to examine in fine detail EVERY single team bike, no exceptions by x-rays, ultrasound, magnetic detection, electrical signal detection etc etc and maybe tag them in some way to prevent tampering or swaps and to confirm they've been screened! I'm sure bigger brains than mine could come up with some sort of tamper proof tag? Pogs and Vingegards performances have been phenomenal, which leads me to suspect they are either both twins and swapping at "pee stops" with their respective fresher siblings!😂😂😂😂 or, they both have motorised legs, shorts these days cover a lot more leg!!😂😂😂😂😂. And there is of course the massive "elephant in the room" drugs, there's so much money at stake I'm sure that could be a factor increasing performance, other than a few strong coffees!😂😂😂😂 it would be naive to think our sport is totally clean, or other sports!
We talk about doping in racing. I'm a long time NASCAR fan. Teams have been caught "cheating" by skirting around the volumous rules there for decades. There's only one recorded motor doping scandal and that involved a female in cross-country racing. If the current men were using motors, it wouldn't be a problem if EVERYONE was doing it. We comment quite frequently about how certain people appear to do amazing things. They are trained to do them and they don't need additional assistance. Now the average person can't and a motor in the frame helps greatly.
I hear some team cars now have directional magnets (DM) that are used to push their bikes. They also have more DM's at all the feeds. They can push their team bikes or slow the opponents. While this would have been more effective in the past, there is still enough metal for some effective influence.....UCI won't admit this but I saw a magnet there once, and where there is one........
Would some sort of dyno be possible? Even a wheel on trainer kind of thing with a known power output. Or how about weighing the bike at the start of a race and then random checks looking for discrepancies.
If your bike had a motor the results of your FTP would be in contradiction to the power output , you would be only putting out 200 watts in a assent where you would need 400 watts for the same result
Oceans 11. Look at what Lance's team were doing to dope, they were all in on it and knew what was going on. It's not radical to think there are motors being used. It's actually less radical than doing blood transfusions in hotel rooms and having a guy on a motorbike following you around France dropping gear off.
It's radical unless you also believe the UCI are complicit and making efforts to hide it as well. The technology to hide a motor that isn't easily detected doesn't exist. If someone did have that kind of technology they would be multi billionaires in a few years rather than somehow it's hiding only in highest professional cycling races
Professional athletes and teams and countries will do whatever they can get away with to win. It's being talked about and tested for because it's happening. Often tests are done to put the public at ease even though tests are not always about catching people
If someone made the stuff to fit on a bike, there's no reason why they should be told which team, or rider that they are supplying. To me, it's just a matter of the weight of the battery that's go enough energy to make a bike significantly faster for a whole stage.
Lots of bike changes. Even before the racing starts. Also so many mechanicals. I never had a mechanical other than one flat after racing for 10 years. The sport is a circus.
how many watts would you need to dope? if many an infrared scan of the hubs and the crank region should reveal the waste heat. hmm you could of course distribute the heat through the frame to cool it away. smarter people than I will also have thought of this so what is the drawback?
Yes, it 'races'some questions. I've noticed that Visma seem to do quite a large number of bike changes but that probably just because cervelo bikes have poor quality.....?
I am curious if motors have been used in training. I it could allow everyone in peloton to be training for there exact heart rate zones while traveling at the same speed even though there ablities are different. Aka have large range of ablities to be able to train together. May be able to set virtual courses just like inside riding but while your outside. Aka even on flat course add virtual hill in the middle.
Seems more likely that the bike manufacturers see a big market in selling more expensive racing bikes with small motors in them. To make this acceptable they would first normalise the use of motors in the Tours. They would love to be able to charge every amateur rider an extra few thousand per bike for a small motor.
Thanks for the super nice! Tyres I had recommended when I bought the bike originally, can you recommend some 30mm (Alex spec) faster tyres with half decent puncture protection and il get them bought 😂
On the only one mechanic on a bike question... don't some top riders have that? In no way to cast aspersions but didn't Contador have a personal mechanic once he was top teir?
TUEs and substances that have not (yet) made it to the banned list. That's what you should be reporting on! No-one is "cheating" by the regulations, but many are taking any advantage they can get.
What do you make of the motor doping plausibility? 👀
Quick napkin math: 100g of lithium battery could give ~100W for 10min, scale any of the three factors linearly as desired (e.g. 100g battery, 200W, 5min). The basic physics are plausible. Implementation without detection would require good engineering but not impossible. (continued in next reply)
People said the same thing about Lance Armstrong. Literally went on for years, with multiple people involved and he almost got away with it. I have trouble believing that these teams would risk everything to use one.
Some of the many ways you could hide some of the components: battery in bidon, shoes, built into carbon (a little out there but maybe possible). Motor in hub, bottom bracket, etc. In no way am I claiming "motor doping is happening" but as a longtime skeptic I have come around to at least seeing technical plausibility and practicality (i.e. not too heavy for the benefit given).
if it's possible to gain an unfair advantage there is always someone who will do it and i think it is possible.
Froome.
There’s a much easier solution to this: make power recording and sharing with UCI compulsory in races. Power at crank can’t be cheated by a motor, and the discrepancy between power and speed can be flagged very easily if they were sampling the whole of the peloton
I would love to see greater transparency of data like this. i agree
Sorry, but pedal stroke efficiency and cadence speed (RPM) and just pure smooth pedal strokes can produce speed with less power going through the drivetrain. It was a good idea, but, would only work for mechanical not biological. You could take a power lifter with the strength to lift 1000 pounds, have very square uneven pedal strokes and show on a power meter high watts, but speed would not be with him. Add to this the weight of the riders would all have to be identical. Add to this taller riders carry more useless weight in the upper body, so do most sprinters that are shorter. Many variables.
@@WildernessMusic_GentleSerene I see what you mean, but it's all resolved if you record from all riders all: you compare each rider against its own power curve. With enough data you can predict speed and compare with real speed. We build similar data models in the lab routinely :)
@@GCNuser123 video to compare power vs speed with/without internal motor? ;)
@@socopower What about compromised immune systems, fighting a virus and not knowing it. What if the food they ate wasn't giving them energy, what if they didn't sleep good last night. Biological being can't be tracked easily. Take the Stage 18 winner, for the first time in four TDF he was up to the task, everything was working, his power output out front in the breakaway must be 50 to 150 watts over where he is usually sitting in the draft of the peloton. We can't deny him a win can we?
I don’t know if anyone is doping (motor or otherwise), however, a version of every one of these arguments was used during the Armstrong years. If forced to take a bet, I would take the “there has never been a time in professional cycling that didn’t have some kind or another of doping in use” side of the bet.
There are certainly humans who will always try and cheat any system.
After Lance, and after watching Icarus I just immediately assume all super human results are just that. WADA is a joke. UCI is mostly theater. Too much money just creates bad incentives to cheat.
People doing Garmin/Strava etc segments on electric bikes needs tackling,for we mortals sakes.
Dear Ollie and Alex, I would like to thank you and GCN for costing me a small fortune over the last few years from 1st showing me how to save myself some cash and change a BB about 12 years or so ago. I have recently finished my 10th bike build. I finally caved and got a proper road bike (a Ritchey Road Logic) and then thought “hmm? Perhaps Olly and Alex are right? Do I get some 50mm deep carbon wheels for my new steed?”…. Ok so they were over 3 minutes faster on my 13 mile test loop this morning. Looking forward to ever more new content and keep up the good work!
Ollie, brushless motors have magnets. What they do not have are brushes that wear away.
I think what he referenced is that there are brushless motors where the magnetic field that is normally generated by the magnets is generated by coils.
there are brushless induction (magnet-free) motors too though. But yes, he definetely mixed up the terms here.
Let’s remember that while the uci and the tour claim to test and be against doping, most doping scandals involving the big names have broken because of police investigations, intrepid journalism or disgruntled team mates. The money must flow and everyone has a stake in keeping the circus going: sponsors, media, organisers and riders.
I thought it was interesting that Lance spoke about the politics of the peloton and keeping teams happy, it didn’t sound like he was just talking about letting teams contest breakaways, but also not exposing them to extra scrutiny with superhuman performances.
7 w/kg with 23% efficiency and sustaining 90% of vo2max…wouldn’t that require a vo2max of over 100?? At some point you reach a physiological limit and the answer to these questions has to be mechanical assistance.
But of course the circus are now on a campaign to distract. So we get the Eurosport team tasting ketones, constant reminders about tech improvements and even articles saying that really 2x tour winning pog was on an amateur team with schoolboy training and now he’s fulfilling his real potential.
Give me a break!
Can't dismiss motor doping because of the number of people involved, see Lance Armstrong and US Postal. Everyone knew except the sponsors who gave them money (they say) and money talks. Large bags of cash can easily buy silence, plus things like NDA's for employees etc. I'd argue it's way easier than you'd think and it's naive to think no one is cheating.
Did everyone really know? The mechanics didn't need to know.
In any case, look at how that worked out for USPS. A bunch of people ended up talking and it turned into a huge legal battle.
People love to dump on lance, he was just the best doped rider. Not a doped rider cheating others. Every top 10 finisher tested positive as well. The race officials looked the other way and took any reasonable excuse made by riders.
But it did fall apart because of the people involved. There will always be cheating. Personally I think motor doping would involve too many people in the conspiracy.
I disagree. You needed 9 riders who are deeply incentivized to not tell, 1 DS and a soigneur to successfully run a systemic doping program. So basically pay off one person who has few reasons to not tell
With motor doping you need to include all the mechanics and the entire staff who are privy to power data of riders. Which in today's teams could be upward of a dozen people. Because they'd have to know how a rider is going faster at the same power in a race than they were when they were training
And now it's getting much more expensive and more difficult to pay off all those mechanics and staff to keep quiet and there is absolutely no incentive for these people to keep a secret if they leave the team. And these people have family who they will tell because people always do and those family members will talk
A wife of a rider blood doping will keep a secret to make sure her husband can stay on a team. A partner of a random mechanic or performance analyst who could get a job at any other team or even industry has far fewer reasons to not tell
No motor doping just regular doping 😂
Everyone's doping, so they'd need to disqualify everyone.
Exactly my thought
To. The. Gills.
Not a chance
Probably all fully legal. I’m sure the top teams are constantly experimenting with a host of (legal) drugs to see how they all work together and can give riders those “marginal gains”
Week 71 of asking for a "The UCI has no jurisdiction here" t-shirt
sticker would also be nice
Week 71 of supporting this comment.
www.pedalpushersapparel.com/listing/the-uci-has-no-jurisdiction-he?product=373
I shall be interested to see if perseverance actually pays off and since they're not owned by the big company anymore I think it's more plausible than there's a chance it might happen
I can see Olí smirking in the office “haha hold back on those t shirts we’ve had for over a year , he’s asked again and he’s not going to win “
The speed that Poggie climbs should leave him dying for air after the stage. He NEVER looks exhausted!!
I thought the same about Jonas during the tour last year
You mean his coming across the finish line at the last TT singing show tunes is suspicious while everyone else looks gassed?
You can’t really dismiss it by saying it’d be too big and complicated to happen after the whole sport had pervasive blood doping for many years at the top levels
This!
Plus the "single involved mechanic" is not suspicious per se. Many of the top tier riders have their own "team within the team" (think Sagan and his posse at Bora, just to name one). The most plausible use of motors for me is the Domestiques one. This both explains faster average speeds over the years and faster climbing speed of the GC guys since they have saved all their energy until up to this very last climb and they can go all-in pushing those insane numbers that even beat the times of the most juiced-up monsters from 2-3 decades ago...
...and of course, better tech, nutrition, training, etc. adds to all of this. But I find it very hard to believe today's performances come from these factors alone...
Thank you. They want to laugh it away like it's nonsense. But, the pro cycling scene has always had an omerta and they won't spit in the soup if you will. Even the Tour has a special interest in keeping something like this quiet, because a record breaking performance, like Cavendish's is huge for the sport and/or Tour organizers. It just means more money for everyone.
Well quite - it’s as though team-directed doping never happened. For motor supplier, read drug supplier, for mechanic read doctor or soigneur. If it is happening it’s team organised - there’s clearly the incentive (to win) and they’ve just described the opportunity
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is a phrase that needs to be repeated here . . .
I feel that now they are independent, GCN can say what they think a little more, which can only be a good thing!
Still not independent of sponsors. Current and potential
thanks for your support mate!
they're still chills of the bike industry
@@maddoc68 I think you mean ‘shill’ 😂
Cool episode. To be fair, I think the following are true: Motor doping ...
- absolutely has been used, and I believe more so in the past. There is absolutely no reason to swap a perfectly working bike at Flanderen 5x.
- is still being used
- though I believe is more widespread at second tier events, but not in a very wide-spread way and probably not largely at something like the TdF.
Always thought that the motor and battery required, would need to be big and proivde high power output, but that's probably where they're least effective in pro sport and most likely to be found. Never realized until your video that even a tiny battery and a 'modest' amount of power will make a big difference, for example:
- To win a sprint. 50 Extra watts for 10min? Bring it on!
- Winning a monument. Change bike often (less conspicuous ... well, eh, Cancellara?), unleash the power to get away.
You'll still need to be a bloody good cyclist (esp. if you ride long stages), but could it be the difference between coming 10th and first? Totally.
The battery for this would only need ~10Wh. That's 1/50th of what current e bikes have; basically three 18650 cells suffice.
This is especially compelling because with current tech, it's easy to bring a bike under the weight limit (actually, was easy 15 years ago). Thus, regulations actually set perverse incentives and make the use of a motor-operated bike MORE compelling, so long as battery and motor can be small (see above), since riders no longer have to carry dead weight with them.
I'd need a Kawasaki 750 motor to keep up with these guys - would that be detected ;-)
Depends on the muffler
Wear a cycle helmet and you will be fine 😊
We’re gonna need more visuals for all these products you guys are talking about. “We have a super cool cassette to talk about!” No pics. 😢
Love that Dr. Bridgewood is flexing his IGCSE level French and getting googly eyes from his coworkers regardless of gender. Chapeau Monsignor. Tu est vraiment magnifique.
je m'entraine tous les jours!
I remember back in the day being told that Lance Armstrong, Jan Ulrich, Marco Pantani, Bjarne Riis et al just had better training techniques.
There is no way Pogacar has improved his power output that much for so long even with new interval training techniques, slightly lighter bike than 20yrs ago and magic tyres 😂
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
It wasn’t the training nor motors… it was EPO!
I sure hope they're clean....I stopped following racing completely after the Armstrong years, and just recently began following it again.
@@abone2pickI think he was being ironic and not mentioning the elephant in the room. Thanks for doing it 😂
I think equipment improved more than you think in 20 years. There is a documentary about TdF 2004 on youtube, Bobby Jullich from team CSC eats fcking nutella for breakfast lol, that's quite a stretch from weighting every gram of your porridge.. If only Pogacar had beaten the record it could have been sus but even Landa is in the same times as Marco
Pog and the other top riders are smashing records established decades ago by guys so doped that this is a sign that doping is back in force. New bikes, tech, nutrition etc can't explain such improvements.
I really thought this was going to be the promised video where the guy's build their own motor-doped superbike. Hope that's still in the works
@@graysonrichards204 What would be interesting about that?
@@rlm4471 can't help ya, buddy
A few comments:
1. The amount of people involved. Does it have to be more people than were involved in medical doing? They had the UCI running around for a couple of decades.
2. Inspection. Is it given that a motor is hidden in the seat tube? If so, it would take a few minutes to check for a motor with the seat post removed and an inspection camera.
3. To avoid the “doped” bike being detected after a swap - just check the swapped bike rather than the one the rider passes the finish line on.
Disclaimer: I don’t believe motor doping is a problem in pro cycling.
Backscatter has been used by Customs authorities to detect concealments for decades.
Those scans still take couple of minutes per vehicle. No UCI marshall would want to take their time, they want a magic wand to point at the bike and get an instant responce.
@@feedbackzaloop it's a handheld device, and works in real time. I've used it.
@@rc8rider same, it covers a very limited area, so you have to move around a lot.
There are full scale truck mounted real time scanners, but even such didn't do a great job preventing Crimea bridge _"accident"_
400 for a helmet is absolutely bonkers
Sehr interessant, Jungs! Danke, dass ihr so tolle Sendungen macht!
Here in France it's happening a lot and in amateur cycling competition, imagine in the professional circuit !
Bikes get scanned for motors at the end of the race … been a mandatory rule since 2015
That's a bad logic, there are less controls in amateur races, cheating is made easy.
@@francescomancetti8327 Ha ? How about epo and others drugs ? Why Armstrong and others can cheat without being detected ? What is different with the motor cheat ?
@@abone2pick Yeah but they don't have the technology to scan it properly. Cheating is very possible. They cheat with drugs, they can cheat with motors.
@@chrisdelaplante5515because the riders were training with drugs and the blood was filtered before races and testing. The drugs already did their job by increasing performance which the body still maintains without the drug existing in the blood stream.
Motor doping doesn't have that. You can train with a motor but removing it during races becomes pointless. Motors and easily detected. The technology to build a non metallic motor doesn't exist and if it did, it would be used in a lot of other industries than someone limiting its use to professional cycling.
There's a big difference between hiding performance enhancing drugs and hiding a motor in a bicycle.
Thanks for showing my bike, it is a Vielo R+1, new shot coming next week!
no photo of the Raleigh Chopper? no photo of that super cool cassette?
GCN Tech we need a tech comparison to clear up these recent performances vs pantini. Get a rider on a similar gradient to hold Pogačar speed over a shorter distance, measure the watts then hold that power on a pantini era bike and clothing to actually see the difference due to the tech improvements.
It would be fascinating to know what level of improvement is down to just the kit/bike
Thats dumb. You forgot more than 20 years of training and nutrition evolvement. You would have to have rider to train and use nutrition for at least a year like they did 20 years ago to have that comparison.
great shout. Would love to do that.
I think you miss my point, take the rider/training out of the equation. Just look at the kit and bike difference. I agree you cant compare rider training etc hence remove that variable. @fangru7294
The top riders of the world and a few are just better than all the others. Especially one guy even with a slip stream advantage. It’s a circus!
thermal imaging can put this to rest at any time. it's quite cheap now too
25:10 - Can we start a campaign to make biggy-middle the new bike vault standard? It’s visually much nicer on 1x and 2x IMO. 😊
The brown saddle on this Orbea is a lot better than that mid-00s Madone.
Never seen so many bike changes before 🤔
8:30 Motor Doping - lots of people would be involved. Just like Lance in the 2000s, the truth would come out in the end.
Only one jilted guy blew the lid off it...sooooooo 🤷♀️
GCN throw their hat into the ring on this subject. I agree it does need discussing though. At least they provide balance in the discussion. All bikes and wheels used need checking.
An undetectable system has moulded Li-ion pouch cells into a (cold cured) carbon frame tube layup, and constructed a motor inside a retro-engineered 30mm diameter BB axle, with EMF shielding. It's only good for 40-60W for a few minutes, but it's all you'd need . . .
Lance Armstrong's whole team was doping
Super-nicing your own bike, hahahahaha! Alex rules!!!
Hey ! Kai's bike made the show! Super Cool. Thats one of our Vielo R+1 bikes, built exclusively for 1x ... oh and thats a stock paint job gents :P
In Tim Gould's Peugeot days the team's MTBs were made by Chas Roberts. Obvs not Peugeots lol
25:30 - It's a Vielo R+1!
This guy knows
The reason why mechanical doping is much less likely to be occurring is really about the ease of proof, whilst it is hard to detect mechanical doping quickly and without destroying the bike, it is possible to find a motor in 100% of cases by disassembling or cutting open the bike. Many people were implicated in Armstrong and his team’s doping, so large conspiracies can happen, but with drug doping, proof is much harder to obtain. Even though many people said at the time Armstrong was doping they couldn’t prove it because there was no easy test. However, if one credible person identifies a doped bike then it can be disassembled and checked and proof will definitely be obtained. When we couple that with the reduced tolerance for all kinds of doping, the increased penalties for being caught and the much-increased commercial risks it just makes it extremely unlikely that a big team/rider would mechanically dope.
Alex doesn’t speak French he just lets the funky music do the talking
I really wish i had thought of this when we filmed this show!
Could you interview a couple of mechanics ? I would like to see the mechanics who maintain the winners bikes get some acknowledgment and glory for the winners rides.
Not sure sponsors would disappear from a team that got caught. Festina carried out for a few years after the 98 tour; Sky doubled down with Froome after the sabutamol positive; even Castrol kept on with Toyota watter the rally team got a ban, and Mclaren didn't lose any sponsors after they were done for receiving photocopies of Ferrari designs.
Alex's Orbea is giving me a serious '70s meets 2024 vibe. Brown bikes were way cool in the late 70s (I once had a bronzy brown French Motobecane from that vintage) Starting a (re)newed trend
It looks like motor doping. Pog has been at this level all year and doesn't even look tired at the end of stage or the end of the tour. With biological doping i think there would still be more of an ebb and flow to his form. The stage where Jonas beat Pog in a sprint, I think his problem wasn't bonking, it was the motor in his bike. If you recall, he was on a different bike the next day.
Surely weighing the bikes would be a quick way to identify potentially 'doped' frames?
That's a good point, you wouldn't need a very big motor and battery to make a small difference but surely it would at least register 50-100 grams?
Weighing the bikes and compare that weight to what?
@@my_dear_friend_ the teams' other bikes. If there are 4 'identical' size large bikes in a line, and one weighs a few hundred grams more than the others....
@@joelnord4699 I wonder where the 'break even' point would be for the advantage the motor would provide, vs the disadvantage of carrying the extra weight?
I actually think Alex's 50 shades of brown Orbea is super nice as well. We'll done Alex👌
What I don't understand - won't this be a tradeoff between the weight (especially of the battery) and the power over time the system can provide? And I feel that for the typically long distances (and _especially_ for long climbs) the weight disadvantage will always make motor doping not worth it.
regarding doping not being possible because of too many people knowing about it, US Postal pulled it off for years with riders, coaches, doctors and staff knowing about it.
I almost thought Alex had a drawer of that brown saddle. Love the saddle by the way, it's a Selle Italia x Passoni collaboration.
6,5 watts/kg was the magic number back in the Lance Amstrong Era 1999-2005. Then you could win the Tour de France. The riders back then trained at least as many kilometers as the riders these days. You couldn't keep up with the gruppetto back then, if you didn't juiced up on Epo, Human Growth hormone, Steroids, insuline, blood doping, testosterone etc.
Just to put things into perspective, Remco's doing these numbers. So if you do 6.5 today, you get 8mins to the chin.
It seems that medicated doping would be easier to pull off than motor doping. Question for you, are the riders subjected to anti doping testing throughout the year? Random off season testing too? World tour/Olympic level kayakers here are subject to random testing
yes, they also have blood passports that holds their values trough the years. So basically you have to start doping from the juniors level to avoid suspicious changes. They also always have to let the anti doping agents know where they are so they can be randomly tested at any moment. Doping is taken quite seriously you could say.
But that was the thing with armstrong, he could dope all year round in safety while training in texas, and also a reason he rode so few races.
@@LordVilmore thank you. We had to fill out quarterly location forms to let them know where they could randomly show up to. This was done by the US Anti Doping Agency and on a Olympic level, so I wasn’t sure how that translates to professional athletes
Didn't Ollie get drunk last year at the Eurobike while filming? I can understand that he was put in timeout
german's make excellent mineral waters
Have an airport scanner at every race. Every bike either used to race or on a team car should go quickly through it before loading. Have bar codes on bikes that can quickly be scanned after. Done, easy.
Weigh all bikes, all frame sets utilised to have GPS trackers….. whatever mechanism is used to check for motor doping traceability needs to be improved. Improved traceability would make any doping mechanism harder to implement.
The secret are in the shoes.Just like a fly wheel in a car,once you get it going it's easy to keep the legs rotating.
Pod. rotates the legs just like he is pedaling on the flat's with big chain rings,even so he he is on hills
Infrared cameras show heat. Motors and batteries are warmer than empty tubes when being used in the race. Take pictures of every bike as they pass multiple points on the race course.
Common, someone in the calliper of the jersey winners yet alone the top three, would never do that! The consequences are massive both for the riders and the team! It’s just kind of impossible. But it’s always good to do the due diligence.
Pog e-bike. Dude not even sweating a drop at 7w/kg
I know that the Velominati specify that road bikes in photos should have the chain on the big chainring but, as a mechanic, it makes a lot more sense that the bike be in a gear that someone would actually want to be in when starting out. Ideally, this would be small chainring, middle cog, but if you must be in the big chainring (again, why?), it wouldn't be with the smallest cog. Such a combination requires awkward shifting before mounting the bike. It just seems like so much silly puffery.
I purchased some X-ray specs from a magazine in the eighties, they must be using them.
It looks like Pogi is pedaling a little radio flyer tricycle with those cranks.
They are drinking special juice, it's not motor doping, it's another type of doping.
Blue fade bike is a Vielo r1-road-bike
Thats the one!
Why no pic's of the hot tech?
Chopper Hour Record . . . That's a must see . . please
Stacked TI axial flux perm mag motor and extra large DI2 battery, it would just look like a solid BB. 100% possible in engineering terms.
Magpie Alex, can you do a review on the shift quality of the Recon cassette? Reports have not been good, so far. Oh and your new Orbea needs brown bar tape to match the saddle.
Away from the grand tours - less checking, more possibilities for tech doping - real beneficiary of an extra 10-20w is the domestique trying to make the cut or provide support
It’s such a shame that because Pog is smashing records everyone thinks he must be cheating and dismiss the possibility that he could just be an incredible athlete. Look at Usain Bolt - smashed the 100m sprint & clean - just a natural phenomenon. I love the sport & love watching Pog fly past the competition on climbs. I refuse to believe he’s cheating!
I wonder how many of the lead out riders bikes are being checked.
Good little show guys and chuckled a few times! 😂 motor doping; my thoughts are that some unscrupulous individuals could resort to that despite the potential risks, but as you guys alluded to, there would have to be so many people involved someone could whistleblowe
?! To attempt to stem that you'd have to examine in fine detail EVERY single team bike, no exceptions by x-rays, ultrasound, magnetic detection, electrical signal detection etc etc and maybe tag them in some way to prevent tampering or swaps and to confirm they've been screened! I'm sure bigger brains than mine could come up with some sort of tamper proof tag?
Pogs and Vingegards performances have been phenomenal, which leads me to suspect they are either both twins and swapping at "pee stops" with their respective fresher siblings!😂😂😂😂 or, they both have motorised legs, shorts these days cover a lot more leg!!😂😂😂😂😂.
And there is of course the massive "elephant in the room" drugs, there's so much money at stake I'm sure that could be a factor increasing performance, other than a few strong coffees!😂😂😂😂 it would be naive to think our sport is totally clean, or other sports!
Femke bike wasn’t scanned with an iPad it was stripped down in a tent following a tip off up till then no bikes were scanned
The new /small motors are in the rear hubs. thats why you see them always changing the rear wheel.
We talk about doping in racing. I'm a long time NASCAR fan. Teams have been caught "cheating" by skirting around the volumous rules there for decades. There's only one recorded motor doping scandal and that involved a female in cross-country racing. If the current men were using motors, it wouldn't be a problem if EVERYONE was doing it. We comment quite frequently about how certain people appear to do amazing things. They are trained to do them and they don't need additional assistance. Now the average person can't and a motor in the frame helps greatly.
Ollie speaks French again...Manon is swooning somewhere.... 😂
Haha I can just imagine Ollie doing a 10 minute commute on his Dogma F 😅
I hear some team cars now have directional magnets (DM) that are used to push their bikes. They also have more DM's at all the feeds. They can push their team bikes or slow the opponents. While this would have been more effective in the past, there is still enough metal for some effective influence.....UCI won't admit this but I saw a magnet there once, and where there is one........
@slowturn5664 Tractor beams are old hat, been on Star Trek since the 70s
Would some sort of dyno be possible? Even a wheel on trainer kind of thing with a known power output.
Or how about weighing the bike at the start of a race and then random checks looking for discrepancies.
Might of wished podj reeled it in a bit just to stop the doubts, but that ghost keeps spooking me.
"Shadow stand", "Don't go for a ride without it!" 🙂
If your bike had a motor the results of your FTP would be in contradiction to the power output , you would be only putting out 200 watts in a assent where you would need 400 watts for the same result
The waight would be a issue batterys and moters are hevey and would outway the benifits i would think
@Dr Bridgewood, brushless motors have magnets
Oceans 11. Look at what Lance's team were doing to dope, they were all in on it and knew what was going on. It's not radical to think there are motors being used. It's actually less radical than doing blood transfusions in hotel rooms and having a guy on a motorbike following you around France dropping gear off.
It's radical unless you also believe the UCI are complicit and making efforts to hide it as well. The technology to hide a motor that isn't easily detected doesn't exist.
If someone did have that kind of technology they would be multi billionaires in a few years rather than somehow it's hiding only in highest professional cycling races
Brushless motors still use magnets :) I guess ALL motors use magnets - that's the magic - how it works :)
Professional athletes and teams and countries will do whatever they can get away with to win.
It's being talked about and tested for because it's happening.
Often tests are done to put the public at ease even though tests are not always about catching people
If someone made the stuff to fit on a bike, there's no reason why they should be told which team, or rider that they are supplying.
To me, it's just a matter of the weight of the battery that's go enough energy to make a bike significantly faster for a whole stage.
Lots of bike changes. Even before the racing starts. Also so many mechanicals. I never had a mechanical other than one flat after racing for 10 years. The sport is a circus.
how many watts would you need to dope? if many an infrared scan of the hubs and the crank region should reveal the waste heat. hmm you could of course distribute the heat through the frame to cool it away. smarter people than I will also have thought of this so what is the drawback?
To disrupt your point. How many people were involved with usps back in the day and how long did they get away with it?
“Sortie de velo Francais” 😂 my husband (who speaks zero French) just said totally seriously “wow, did not realise Bridgewood speaks fluent French”
Yes, it 'races'some questions. I've noticed that Visma seem to do quite a large number of bike changes but that probably just because cervelo bikes have poor quality.....?
I am curious if motors have been used in training. I it could allow everyone in peloton to be training for there exact heart rate zones while traveling at the same speed even though there ablities are different. Aka have large range of ablities to be able to train together. May be able to set virtual courses just like inside riding but while your outside. Aka even on flat course add virtual hill in the middle.
Seems more likely that the bike manufacturers see a big market in selling more expensive racing bikes with small motors in them. To make this acceptable they would first normalise the use of motors in the Tours. They would love to be able to charge every amateur rider an extra few thousand per bike for a small motor.
Thanks for the super nice! Tyres I had recommended when I bought the bike originally, can you recommend some 30mm (Alex spec) faster tyres with half decent puncture protection and il get them bought 😂
On the only one mechanic on a bike question... don't some top riders have that? In no way to cast aspersions but didn't Contador have a personal mechanic once he was top teir?
they do... but i just can't see how it would work with the other mechanics. You couldnt really hide it from the others. they work very closely
TUEs and substances that have not (yet) made it to the banned list. That's what you should be reporting on!
No-one is "cheating" by the regulations, but many are taking any advantage they can get.
AT THE ELITE LEVEL, EVERYONE IS DOING WHAT THEY CAN TO OPTIMIZE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. GLORY, MONEY AND EGO WILL NEVER CHANGE, RED PILL VS BLUE PILL.
Why don’t the UCI just use a magnet to detect iron of possible electric motor iron in bike frames?