The UCI Expands Controls for Mechanical Doping at Tour de France
An image generated by the UCI's mobile x-ray cabinet. Photo: UCI
The UCI has announced its new strategy to address the threat of "technological fraud," or the use of any hidden propulsion devices at the upcoming Tour de France, which starts tomorrow, July 1.
Using magnetic tablets - introduced in 2016 - with new software, officials will examine every bike being ridden in that day's stage at the start of each day. After each stage, officials will also check the bikes ridden by the stage winner, any rider wearing one of the yellow, green, polka dot, or white leaders' jerseys, three or four random riders, and any rider who raises suspicion, for whatever reason, according to a press release yesterday. The post-race examinations will use a mobile x-ray cabinet, introduced in 2018, which can generate a high-quality image of a complete bike in five minutes, as well as newly-introduced handheld devices that use backscatter technology and instantaneously generate images that can be transmitted to the UCI Commissaires for further analysis.
It's clear that the UCI takes the threat of mechanical doping quite seriously. "Our range of tools to fight against any form of such cheating enables us to carry out checks that are rapid and effective," said the UCI's Head of Road and Innovation, Michael Rogers. "This is essential to be sure that cycling competitions are fair and to protect the integrity of the sport and its athletes."
At last year's Tour de France, the UCI conducted 1,008 bike checks and detected no cases of technological fraud, the organization said. While allegations of mechanical doping have been tossed around since at least 2010, the only confirmed use of a bike with a hidden motor in elite competition happened in 2016 at the UCI Cyclocross World Championships, when U23 favorite Femke Van den Driessche of Belgium was banned from the sport for six years and fined 20,000 CHF.
An image generated by a handheld backscatter device. Photo: UCI
Checks have become commonplace at all UCI WorldTour events, the UCI Road World Championships, UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships, UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup, UCI Women’s WorldTour events, the Olympic Games, the UCI Track World Championships, and the UCI Cyclocross World Cup. In mountain biking, mechanical doping controls are only carried out at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.
In the context of the UCI's clear concern about technological fraud, it will be interesting to see whether mountain biking follows suit. In Pinkbike's 2021 State of the Sport Survey, we polled 198 professional riders on their opinions on a wide range of topics within the sport, we discovered that most mountain bike racers feel fairly unconcerned toward the threat of mechanical doping.
When given the prompt "'Mechanical doping,' using a hidden electric motor, is a problem in XC racing," 52.8% of cross country racers responded "Neutral," while 36.1% answered "Disagree" or "Strongly Disagree," and just 11.1% chose "Agree" or "Strongly Agree." For the same prompt applied to enduro racing, a strong majority of 75.4% disagreed, even though there's arguably the most to gain from using a motor in enduro racing, compared to cross country or downhill. 20.3% were neutral, and 4.3% agreed. Downhill racers appear the least concerned, with 85.6% disagreeing that mechanical doping is a problem in downhill racing. 8.4% answered neutrally, and 6% agreed.
No cases of technological fraud have been discovered in mountain biking, but it will likely remain a focal point as bike motor technology becomes more sophisticated.
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LOL, yes, that might work quite well for me, considering my experience(s) with TSA...
I frequently catch TSA’s attention for myriad reasons...the worst experience being spotted from 30 feet away and pulled out of line for an “enhanced” (read, “in-hands”) security check. If I can give you one word of advice from that experience, it is to not wear semi-skinny French jeans when going through TSA security...they were utterly mystified by their initial pat-down, subsequently interrogating me about “why it is to the side.” I tried to explain “they’re skinny jeans, and it’s called ‘side pipe’ man, that’s part of my body.” They claimed they were unconvinced and then proceeded to take turns running the backs of their hands back and forth and back and forth on me...then also thinking that “side pipe” referred to some sort of incendiary device or something...so much for American slang. 15 minutes of fondling later, they opened the door to the private screening room, as they then appeared to finally be “satisfied”...at which point I was still in the room and started writing down those two Filipino-American TSA agents names — but their last names on their badges were about 12 letters long and mostly vowels, so I was struggling to type the name into my phone. The TSA guy then asked what I was doing, and I told him I was writing down his name so I could file a complaint because they hadn’t followed protocol in about 5 ways, which I rattled off. He then grabbed an official-looking paper form and told me it was a police report form and that he’d file a police report stating that I was uncooperative, if I didn’t erase his name (all while covering his badge, while standing in my way of leaving the room). I considered just blasting my way through him to get out of the room (and size wise, I easily could have steam-rolled over him), but I erased his last name (which I couldn’t pronounce nor remember), as I had to catch up to my work colleagues for our flight. I was “off” in numerous ways for about 3 days after that — with some symptoms and manifestations being similar to when two different gal-friends I know were sexually assaulted. My work colleagues noticed it too...super withdrawn and distant, lack of joy and engagement, distracted, dazed, agitated at times, not hungry, couldn’t sleep well, etc. Plus, I then repeatedly replayed it in my head — considering all the ways I could have grabbed his head and bashed it with my knee, thrown the other guy into the wall, then escaped the room and reported them. After returning from our work trip to Europe, I talked to a friend of the family who I learned is a manager in TSA at that airport — and he said they don’t have police report forms and that the TSA agent was bluffing, and that what those TSA agents had done was illegal in several ways...and that there was no way to identify them, as there were many Filipino-American men who work in their TSA department, of similar description and long last name.
And unfortunately about a year after that, I was put on a TSA watch list, after being flagged for another enhanced (“in-hands”) security screening and then subjected to about 30 minutes of interrogation by their in-house high-level TSA chemical security specialist who they had to call down from his upstairs office — apparently my shoes had trace amounts of incendiary chemicals from a concert I had gone to a few days prior, I had walked across my recently-fertilized lawn when getting into the car to drive to the airport (also a chemical of concern), and the Crest White Strips in my bag had hydrogen peroxide in them (used as rocket fuel, among other things of concern)...but they and I didn’t know that at the time...TSA just saw I had traces of 3 chemicals of concern on my clothing and bag. I wish I’d realized what had caused those things at the time, as I could’ve explained where they came from...but the exact same thing happened at London Gatwick on a subsequent leg of the trip. It took Gatwick’s team of 3 high-level security specialists talking extensively with me to figure it out...fortunately, just before they were going to put me on the UK / EU watch list!
But for real aren't they kinda microwaving your carbon frame? I'm assuming it's at really low levels, but seems like that wouldn't be the best thing for glues and resins over time?? But IDK...
Well if anything they would be x raying it not microwaving, but anyway as far as I know frames don’t get cancer so you should be ok
Respectfully, you might take a look in the mirror and assess how you have conditioned to have such an excessive reaction to a story like this, then make an effort chill out a bit.
So they have severe punishments for this kind of doping, because like every other sport they will never get on top of the other kind (and at least cycling has tried much harder that any other sport to stop it).
DH racers: “Dope? We talking flower or vape?”
When I was racing cars, one race shop told me "your job is to cheat, our job is to do the work so you don't get caught." Same ethos seems to underlie just about every major competitive sport.
It's way harder to cheat in NASCAR now, but they still do every race. Just in fractions.
Metal pellets hidden in the lower frame rails was always the secret sauce rumor. A thin plug to keep them in place during the first few laps of the race that would break at speed and drizzle pellets out the bottom and the car would get faster.
Uncle says it was a crazy dangerous tactic for safety reasons but never was officially proven.
motors, pah. rookie stuff.
Then there were the people who used the hollow roll cage tubes as fluid storage, either more engine coolant, or oil, or fuel. Or my personal favourite, the gas tank was limited to a certain capacity by the rules, but they hadn't thought to specify the fuel line diameter, so one team used the biggest lines they could make and started the race with several gallons extra in their fuel system. This meant they could push their first pitstop to refill further. There was also a limit on the size of the fuel filler neck for the gas tank, which was supposed to limit how quickly the car could be filled. Now at the time the teams were using these portable fuel bottles, that looked like the cans used to deliver milk to homes in the mid-century. Nothing in the rules at the time that the tank couldn't be 10 feet in the air above the pit and flexible hose used to reach the gas tank door on the cars. Gravity does wonders to accelerate the falling liquid and increase its flow rate. There's a famous example in the movie Ford vs Ferrari, when the Ford team built the entire brake system as a sub assembly for each wheel that could be quickly disconnected and reconnected in a matter of seconds instead of the time consuming process all the other teams were using at LeMans at the time.
I'd call the respective phenomena: "mechanical cheating" and "medical cheating" (or perhaps "drug cheating"). Stop with the obfuscation.
Vendors, stop with the fancy valve caps. What I really want is a subtle cheater device I can add to my existing bike.
A sport with a "Blackbox" programme amongst others specialist, secret programmes where sponsors develop a new technology to try and mechanically give their athletes an advantage that is not available to other athletes using their products.
Maybe 100% of riders should have answered that there is mechanical doping in MTB, its just so in your face and the norm that you don't see it! Its not a motor in a hub to give you an assist for the legs, but how important would that be in Dh (apart from the first stroke of the line)
Their are plenty of untested bike races that you can technically take whatever drugs you want without cheating already.
If you had something with e.g. an electric motor rigged up to a hydraulic pump that could actively pull the wheels up and out of the way of small bumps, or extend on the takeoff of a jump to give you extra air or something like that, that would enter into a different category. Idk if it's technically against the rules now but if anyone did it I imagine they would make a rule against it very quickly. It might not even work very well with the relatively low sprung:unsprung mass ratio of a bike but it would be hilarious to see someone try.
"It's a little light bulb that blinks!" Woody, Toy Story.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgJ_Uhwfno
.
If people are doping in (relatively) lower level competitions, the money and resources required to have even a chance at catching some of them can be hard to find. Not saying we shouldn't try - we should try, of course - but you've gotta be realistic. If you charged everyone a thousand euro to enter the race in order to afford Olympic level doping controls, you'd have a lot fewer competitors and some of them would still get away with doping anyway.
A motor and battery are comparatively a lot easier to spot.
The article is announcing that the scale and nature of those checks is expanding.
He made an unexplainable bike swap right before the final and later on left Tom Boonen (one of the best one-day racers at the moment) looking like an amateur on the Muur van Geraardsbergen. One week later, pulled a similar number on him at Paris - Roubaix, a race that Tom Boonen won 4 times.
Cancellara never repeated similar feats later on in his career. He won races afterwards, but never as dominant as that year.
Seems sensible to begin checking bikes for compact components that add watts, especially in formats where the results are largely the result of minute differences in watts/kg ratios.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femke_Van_den_Driessche
www.youtube.com/watch?v=52xv2Hg2fkI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEFqL0mbazw
So the bike with the cheaty parts was IDENTICAL to - i.e.,100% the same as - the bike she was supposed to ride... which would therefore also have cheaty parts. Nice try.
If you want to be needlessly fussy, you could fault me for saying that the motor itself is converting the stored potential energy in a battery directly to power. To be reductive, the battery is a chemical storage medium for potential energy (this is why voltage that feeds the battery can also be described as "electrical potential"), with an ability to discharge (or convert) that chemically-stored potential energy when needed. This electrical energy is then applied via a circuit, through the motor, and results in an output of power so long as the motor is operating within time or applying force at a velocity (which is a function of time).
So sure. As long as the motor is not functioning across time, its output could be described as "energy", but that is a useless way to look at things because we operate and ride bikes in time. Hence, a motor is described by its function, or power. This is why motors are classified by their wattage or horsepower capacity, and not their E/t.
UCI = universal clown institute
Seems to it’s be easier to game the system if you were to become transgendered
On top of that they can switch bikes mid race…fake a mechanical at the right time, etc. Doubt it’s actually happening, but the potential is certainly there when just a handful of watts can be the difference between 1st and 10th.