You can’t unwittingly have a motor in your bike.
'Course you can. You have a family friend who is attending the same race and has the exact same model and size of bike. You probably talk before the race. Bikes get left leaning somewhere together and you walk off with the wrong one. It’s a completely creditable defense. I’m not sure how she explained activating the motor during the race, probably the button is easily pressed by accident at the bottom of a climb.
You can’t unwittingly have a motor in your bike.
'Course you can. You have a family friend who is attending the same race and has the exact same model and size of bike. You probably talk before the race. Bikes get left leaning somewhere together and you walk off with the wrong one. It’s a completely creditable defense. I’m not sure how she explained activating the motor during the race, probably the button is easily pressed by accident at the bottom of a climb.
You got me there!
Or it would be like Sammy Sosa’s corked bat. “Oops, that was my trainer and I accidentally brought it into the game.”
Too bad. Gone for life.
With how widespread PED use in triathlons, are you seriously questioning the widespread use of hidden motors?
Yup.
Define “widespread”, please. Don’t use other vague words like “rampant” to do it, either.
It’s of Lance Armstrong levels. I think that is a pretty accurate descriptor.
So - a LOT of triathetes are much faster than you, so therefore they must be taking PEDs and/or mechanical doping?
that checks out.
/pink.
You can’t unwittingly have a motor in your bike.
'Course you can. You have a family friend who is attending the same race and has the exact same model and size of bike. You probably talk before the race. Bikes get left leaning somewhere together and you walk off with the wrong one. It’s a completely creditable defense. I’m not sure how she explained activating the motor during the race, probably the button is easily pressed by accident at the bottom of a climb.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/...world-championships/
You got me there!
Or it would be like Sammy Sosa’s corked bat. “Oops, that was my trainer and I accidentally brought it into the game.”
Too bad. Gone for life.
Well, the difference is the corked bat does not involve pressing an additional button to activate. The “virtually spring loaded bike” (as in the motor having pre loaded energy stored in electrical form to be converted to mechanical), you have to press a button to activate the '“virtual springs” to unleash all that stored potential energy.
PS. Whenever there is something messed up in the world, a quick google search on looney tunes and you pretty well get a graphic that covers the scenario. Those guys were brilliant.
So - a LOT of triathetes are much faster than you, so therefore they must be taking PEDs and/or mechanical doping?
that checks out.
/pink.
Pink?
Come on, that’s lame. At least man up.
On some group rides I attended, people used motors. And had no problem admitting to it.
Given the sales demographic of electrically enhanced bikes I hear from an e-bike retailer (hint: it is not the old ladies who need the extra push to shop for groceries), I have no doubt that the same guys look for disguised enhancement to show off.
Same as pimping STRAVA, claiming to have ridden mountainous 20 miles in one hour, but not able to produce the data from their GPS if you ask nicely.
Well, Type A’s are mostly holes.
I would be surprised if cheating is as rampant as you believe it is, so each to their own.
With how widespread PED use in triathlons, are you seriously questioning the widespread use of hidden motors? Someone using PEDs would have no problems cheating with a hidden motor.
I don’t think they are widespread because a) I think they are pretty expensive b) I can’t image anyone using one of these really thinks they have accomplished anything. At least the dopers still have to train. You might as well call an Uber and get off a couple miles early. Much easier and cheaper.
I would be surprised if cheating is as rampant as you believe it is, so each to their own.
With how widespread PED use in triathlons, are you seriously questioning the widespread use of hidden motors? Someone using PEDs would have no problems cheating with a hidden motor.
I don’t think they are widespread because a) I think they are pretty expensive b) I can’t image anyone using one of these really thinks they have accomplished anything. At least the dopers still have to train. You might as well call an Uber and get off a couple miles early. Much easier and cheaper.
You are so wrong on b) it is not even funny.
Looks like a bicycle…so it is a bicycle…just happens that I have The Best (it even has an expensive motor)!
Same ‘customers’ who buy $10K bikes.
thermal camera’s are getting pretty cheap, in fact the latest CAT phone has a themal camera,
in terms of it being to hard to check… why not just check the top grouping riders, say the top 10 in each group, or if thats too many people then the podium finishers for each group. compulsary inspection for the bike ridden.
same should be done for meds.
The vast majority of people are, obviously, going to be against mechanical doping. But I don’t see it being practical to test or inspect all bikes. Afaik someone checks my helmet strap isn’t too loose and that is it. Heat cameras are expensive things let alone the people needed to do it. Surely that level of inspection is only really needed if someone is getting something out of the race - say a top three or a qualification for something. They could also do some random testing given more time and resources.
Thermal cameras are not expensive. You can even get a FLIR thermal camera add on for your phone for only a couple hundred dollars. There is no excuse for any tri to not have at least 1 or more thermal cameras, the cost is so low.
http://www.flir.com/store/
I can’t /haven’t watched the video right now so apologies if this is explained there, but, how is thermal imaging used to detect the presence of a motor in a bike?
The motor/battery will only differ significantly from ambient temperatures during or for a time after charging/discharging the battery and/or running the motor. While riding there is significant forced convective cooling over the seat-tube or any other frame tube that might be carrying these components so they will cool fairly quickly. On a 70.3 or long distance triathlon bike leg it would be quite feasible to use a motor to cheat out on the course and stop using it early enough to let the bike cool before entering transition. Perhaps the idea is to photograph or film all competitiors with infra red cameras throughout the race?
It seems to me that there are many ways a cheat could reduce the likelihood of detection too. For example heat sinks connecting the motor/battery to external heat conductive components like a chain catcher or guard, BB cups and the front derailleur hanger. It wouldn’t be too difficult to hide a water cooling system to allow the rider to empty a water bottle into the frame to cool the motor/battery before draining back out again. Done well this would be difficult to detect without a very careful inspection of the bike.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to hide a water cooling system to allow the rider to empty a water bottle into the frame to cool the motor/battery before draining back out again.Who is going to make/sell this?
Motors in bikes have legit uses, and can be easily produced/sold. Doping products have legit uses, and are made for that, then some are diverted to doping.
How is that - the production/marketing going to work for a cooling system to hide motors?
It wouldn’t be too difficult to hide a water cooling system to allow the rider to empty a water bottle into the frame to cool the motor/battery before draining back out again.Who is going to make/sell this?
Motors in bikes have legit uses, and can be easily produced/sold. Doping products have legit uses, and are made for that, then some are diverted to doping.
How is that - the production/marketing going to work for a cooling system to hide motors?
I didn’t say anything about it being a commercial product. I could make one quite easily if I was so inclined.
Let’s see…My Felt IA has a “Calpac” bento box. I could drill a small hole in the corner of that right down the bottom, pour water into the storage area and it would act as a funnel. Water would exit the hole into the down tube. You could attach a small tube to the hole to bring the water to a cooling jacket on the motor and battery or you could make it less obvious by just letting the water trickle into the downtube and then gather it lower down with another funnel to guide it into the cooling jacket. The configuration of the Felt IA perhaps makes it particularly easy, but most if not all bikes could have small modifications or additions made to allow something similar to be done. For example any bike with top tube mounting bosses could employ the holes or the bolts themselves as a water injection point. Any ETap bike with unused cable ports could use them to inject water, etc.
There’s nothing terribly complex about this that someone with a little technical ability couldn’t put together in a few evenings of tinkering. Are most triathletes so obsessed with buying stuff that they think it’s impossible to do things for yourself?
I didn’t say anything about it being a commercial product. I could make one quite easily if I was so inclined.
Let’s see…My Felt IA has a “Calpac” bento box. I could drill a small hole in the corner of that right down the bottom, pour water into the storage area and it would act as a funnel. Water would exit the hole into the down tube. You could attach a small tube to the hole to bring the water to a cooling jacket on the motor and battery or you could make it less obvious by just letting the water trickle into the downtube and then gather it lower down with another funnel to guide it into the cooling jacket. The configuration of the Felt IA perhaps makes it particularly easy, but most if not all bikes could have small modifications or additions made to allow something similar to be done. For example any bike with top tube mounting bosses could employ the holes or the bolts themselves as a water injection point. Any ETap bike with unused cable ports could use them to inject water, etc. That’s easy?
There’s nothing terribly complex about this that someone with a little technical ability couldn’t put together in a few evenings of tinkering. Are most triathletes so obsessed with buying stuff that they think it’s impossible to do things for yourself?Nice straw man: easy vs impossible.
Yes, easy.
Of course it’s all relative and depends on your background.
It might take a little time, as in several hours, but for many people it would not be difficult at all.
What strawman am I creating? You honestly have me puzzled.
I just did IMLP. I saw zero fat guys flying up the hills. I saw an awful lot of absolutely jacked 50+ men AND women. I don’t think motors are the biggest doping problem in tri, they certainly aren’t going to help you run. That being said, they have the bikes a day ahead of time, so they should look for motors if the technology exists to do so.
even a cheap thermal camera has the kind of sensitivity that you are going to be able to see a motor and batterys easily, forget about cooling them, they will pick up the tem diferencial of the water in the frame,
i’ll post a pic up in a bit, but literally they will show heat on somthing that you have held in your hand for a few seconds.
cheap hand held drill, i would immagine this is goijng to be somwhere in the ball park of the wattage of a doping motor, this is after about a minuites use, apart from the heat from the motor, note the heat in the hand grip from body temp, and the heat showing from the batterys.
and this is just a pic from the Cat smart phone…
http://www.catphones.com/en-gb/phones/s60-smartphone
I just did IMLP. I saw zero fat guys flying up the hills. I saw an awful lot of absolutely jacked 50+ men AND women. I don’t think motors are the biggest doping problem in tri, they certainly aren’t going to help you run. That being said, they have the bikes a day ahead of time, so they should look for motors if the technology exists to do so.
This is why I would call for lifetime bans for motors.
“We have your bikes one day in advance. We will use the best available technology to look for motors. We are only handling a maximum of 3,000 bikes. We can search randomly, search them all or target test; we won’t tell you which we are doing. If we find a motor, the bike owner is out for life.”
What kind of moron would turn over a bike with a motor? I would take my chances with doping long before I would turn in a motorized bike.
You can get a handheld non contact infra red thermometer at Harbor Freight for $27 that is sensitive enough to find a warm/hot spot in a bike frame from an electric motor that has been recently used. My guess is there is a decent chance that was as sophisticated as the “thermal imaging” used got. And even that is not the easiest way to find bike motors. iPhones/iPads actually have built in magnetic field detectors (why i don’t know) and the UCI just uses an app that “sees” the magnets in the motor.
even a cheap thermal camera has the kind of sensitivity that you are going to be able to see a motor and batterys easily, forget about cooling them, they will pick up the tem diferencial of the water in the frame,
i’ll post a pic up in a bit, but literally they will show heat on somthing that you have held in your hand for a few seconds.
Yes, it’s true you can easily detect small differences in temperature. But, as I said earlier, a motor or battery will only have a significantly different temperature if they have been charged/discharged or run recently. When idle and exposed to airflow this heat will dissipate. Photographing the bike in transition in steady state temperatures will not tell you anything. My query was whether the idea was to photograph/film people’s bikes out on the course.
You say thermal cameras can show heat on something you held in your hand for a few seconds, and that’s true. What about 20mins later?
So when you say “you are going to be able to see a motor and batterys easily”, what is it that you are going to see and when will you see it? Where will the temperature difference come from?
You could perhaps heat or cool the frame and look for areas of higher thermal mass (by looking for areas that are slower to respond with a temperature change) but I don’t think that’s a practical way to test without excessive time and logistical costs and would probably not yield a definitive answer anyway.
So, to clarify: I am not debating the ability of infra red cameras to detect temperature differences. I’m asking when and where the cameras will be used and whether there will be a temperature difference to see. On course and in use, in transition before, in transition after…?
It’s of Lance Armstrong levels. I think that is a pretty accurate descriptor.
OK. Thanks for playing.
Well, the amount of drafting in triathlon certainly allows us to say that cheating is rampant…