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…
True, except we’re talking PED usage and hidden motors. Drafting hasn’t been mentioned, and it’s a whole other kettle of fish that gets flogged on here on a regular basis. Even with drafting, it’s not “Lance Armstrong” levels anyways.
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.
THIS. question is though, if they turn the motor off before rolling into T2, can you still see it light up?
I agree that it’s not LA level, but if I recall the post you were answering to, it was referring to rampant cheating.
My guess is that many triathletes could easily get the same time gains out of blatant drafting as they would using EPO.
I’m referring to these races where you see large groups, hanging out together like it’s a weekend group ride.
Edit: you actually did say “I would be surprised if cheating is as rampant…” 
so, yes, obviously it is that rampant.
[quote FrancoisEdit: you actually did say “I would be surprised if cheating is as rampant…”
so, yes, obviously it is that rampant.
Yes, but you missed the posts before it too that provide context.
And still…no. It’s not as rampant as the Lance Armstrong era. That’s a time when essentially everyone was cheating. Certainly the top 1% of professional racers were all (as history has shown) taking PEDs. Probably more.
Do you think all of the top 1% of tri pros are taking PED’s? They aren’t. Are some? I suppose, they get caught occasionally. But in the Lance era they all were.
So…even if you add drafting (which again from the context wasn’t the case) it’s still not as rampant.
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.
THIS. question is though, if they turn the motor off before rolling into T2, can you still see it light up?
I would lay money on it, you can practically see down to a fraction of a degree, I would say somthing would stay noticable for a fair while, especially as you can prety much see " thorogh" somthing to the core temp so wind would only cool the outer frame and the centre would still show as hot.
The ITU does do mechanical fraud tests. There were sections added to the rulebook around the process and procedures for it, and they have been training and equipping a number of officials to do the testing (and this is likely to continue to grow). I’m not sue the number of tests that have been completed, and whether they’re all elite, or a combo of Elite and Age Group. But I would suspect that if you’re doing an ITU worlds event (Penticton or Rotterdam) there will be some testing of bikes.
It’s actually a lot easier to control in Tri vs. Cycling, with athletes having to check their bikes in, often the day before, there’s ample opportunity for testing, and there’s no ambiguity of it being a “spare training bike” since bike changes are illegal…
And I agree that there should be lifetime bans for mechanical fraud (I also think there should be lifetime bans for doping (if it can’t be proven to be accidental) as well).
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.
It helps you run if it lets you ride, physically, at a lower percentage of your FTP for a shorter period of time.
Let’s say you have an FTP of 300 watts and you somehow sneak a 150 watt motor into your bike and a big enough battery pack to last for two hours. Let’s just say you’d normally ride at 70% of your FTP and have a bike split of 2:30. You could ratchet that down to 50% of your FTP and with the motor on your bike split would be almost fourteen minutes faster. So you’d be on the bike for about 10% less time at an exertion that is almost 30% lower. I can guarantee you’ll run faster.
I agree with you though that EPO, HGH, and T are much bigger issues for the sport. Frankly I think this is one more argument for the category system as it would allow race organizations to focus their efforts.
Here is an article on the various ways you can detect a motor in a bike. Looking for heat works but the main way testing is done is scanning bikes before or after the race with an iPhone or iPad. There are several off the shelf commercial apps that will detect the magnetic field generated by an electric motor (even if it is off) just by waving the phone within a couple inches of the frame.
https://www.wired.com/2016/02/clever-ways-to-catch-a-pro-cyclist-cheating-with-a-hidden-motor
Frankly, it is so easy and cheap (basically free) to “test” for motors that unless the get way more sophisticated, it is never going to be a big deal in high level cycling and it should not be in low level cycling either. It is akin to testing human doping if you could do it by just by waiving an iPhone in someone’s face at registration.
The real danger of electric motors, and I have already seen this, is someone on an e-Bike with 15 mph handling skills trying to mix it with the local group ride at 25 mph.
On the other hand, I may just power up in about 10 years when I can no long mix it up with the boys on the coffee shop rides on my own power 
I’d let everyone know and use my new “powers” only for good (e.g taking long hard pulls for the guys at key moments) and obviously never in a race but little motors on bikes hold a lot of promise too.
You keep telling us how great these cameras are (which no-one has debated) and yet you haven’t yet answered my questions about how they are used to detect motors or batteries. So, again, when are/should they to be used in order to ensure the motor or battery are at a different temperature to the rest of the bike and therefore detectable?
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.
THIS. question is though, if they turn the motor off before rolling into T2, can you still see it light up?
I would lay money on it, you can practically see down to a fraction of a degree, I would say somthing would stay noticable for a fair while, especially as you can prety much see " thorogh" somthing to the core temp so wind would only cool the outer frame and the centre would still show as hot.
No you cannot see through something. The camera is detecting light reflected from the surface of the object you’re photographing or filming. The only difference between this and a normal camera is the wavelength of the light involved. The camera is observing infra red rather than visible spectrum light and then translating it to visible spectrum wavelengths to display it so that we can see it.
It would take some time for heat to dissipate after you stopped running a motor. The time required for a thermal camera to become difficult or useless would depend on a number of factors. Primarily, power usage, motor efficiency, battery impedance, speed controller efficiency, thermal mass of components, means of cooling (you could use heat sinks, thermal adhesives, water cooling, etc to accelerate cooling), ambient temperature, solar gain, frame colour and reflectivity, wind speed and direction, cycling speed, humidity, camera sensitivity, frame uniformity…I’m sure there’s a few more.
Have you ever taken an infra red photo of a bike straight after a ride? I haven’t, but I’m curious how uniform the frame temperature would be, especially how it would differ from bike to bike and with changes in weather or course profile. While a camera can certainly detect differences of fractions of a degree, looking for differences at a very small scale means there will be a lot more noise in the signal and it may be far less obvious what you’re seeing. My guess is a long course racer could use a motor mid bike leg and leave the motor and battery to cool for an hour or more before T2, dribble some sweat and water on the frame and it may not be detectable at all. That’s without even getting into any fancy cooling systems or heat camouflage paint schemes.
ok seing though stuff is misleading, what I actually mean is the heat has to exit somehere so you will see it on the camera,
as this is thermal camera’s iotis not light being reflected, it is the actual heat radiation from the object, in this case the motor.
in terms of where how they can be used, basically anywhere, it will probably be an issue to get an image of somone cycling past on a cheaper thermal cam, but if you were along side in a car it would be simple enough, certainly people coming into transition would be easy enough to check as you would not have ambient air cooling the frame so the heat being dumped from the core would show better.
that said the apps available for ipads etc that work of the compass would also be a fast easy check, prbably better than a themal cam for stationary checks, hell you could probably check reliably with one of those compases you get out of a christmas cracker,
I havent taken pic of a bike, but there are plenty on the net.
ok seing though stuff is misleading, what I actually mean is the heat has to exit somehere so you will see it on the camera,
as this is thermal camera’s iotis not light being reflected, it is the actual heat radiation from the object, in this case the motor.
You misunderstand. It IS light.
Most of the thermal radiation emitted by objects in the temperature range we’re talking about is emitted as infrared. Incidentally, light is radiation. Infrared radiation is just a name for light that has a wavelength in a range just above that visible to the typical human eye. i.e. IR is a colour of light we aren’t able to see, but it IS light. These cameras detect infrared radiation in the same way as a normal camera detects light visibile to humans. There is nothing magical about them. They are just cameras that detect a different wavelength range and that display the image with a shift in wavelength so that we can see it.
…in terms of where how they can be used, basically anywhere, it will probably be an issue to get an image of somone cycling past on a cheaper thermal cam, but if you were along side in a car it would be simple enough, certainly people coming into transition would be easy enough to check as you would not have ambient air cooling the frame so the heat being dumped from the core would show better…
So back to my original query. How can IR cameras be used to easily detect motors?
They are not much use unless the motor is in use or has recently been in use or the battery has recently been charged. So there is not an obvious way that they can be used in transition. You could try and use them out on the course but that would be a PITA to implement and you wouldn’t be guaranteed to catch all offenders unless you did multiple checks throughout the bike leg for every competitor. You’d also need people checking the images during the race and inspecting suspect bikes by other means before they’re taken from transition after the race for confirmation. Is this the proposal?
This was my query. I never said it couldn’t be done. I queried the assertions that this was easy and cameras are cheap. There’s a bit more to it than that!
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.
How expensive are PEDs compared to $15,000 bikes? Not that expensive at all after all… of course I can’t afford either, so I don’t have to worry about that moral dilemma. The dentists on the other hand…
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.
this I like.
The only problem is that your serial cheaters have the mentality of “it won’t happen to me”.
The rest of us don’t cheat because we either believe in Fair competition, which I think is a minority, or, they’re afraid of getting caught.
This is all much ado about nothing. He didn’t have a motor and his recent jump to the podium is because he fixed some problems with his back:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/italian-amateur-denies-using-mechanical-doping/
So it’s all just a misunderstanding. He couldn’t submit his bike to a technical inspection because he had a wedding to go to. Makes total sense to me. /s
Although to be fair, after racing in the morning I wouldn’t mind going to an Italian wedding in the afternoon/evening. Sounds like a good day.
A full drug screen for PEDs costs money and takes special personnel and a pretty serious commitment to a very specific sampling and testing protocol. That is why so few athletes get tested. And in many cases PEDs “work” by improving training and can thus still be beneficial even if not “used” on race day so you have to get into out of competition testing to be truly effective.
Looking for motors is several universes away from that. They must be present at the race to be of any use and it is infinitely easier and cheaper to “test.” You are literally talking just a free, or nearly free, iPhone app that anyone can be trained to use in about 8 seconds and requires no certification, etc to be a “tester.” Get as many people as you want scanning bikes at the start or finish and for the ones that register a “positive” your confirming test involves an allen wrench, pulling the seat post and taking a look. It takes way longer to do a junior gear rollout which gets done, on every junior at every bike race, than it does to test for a motor. You can test such a high percentage of the field that cheaters will be deterred (or caught) if the organizers care enough to “test.” This is fundamentally different than human doping. Motors will never be a big problem.
The way these people double down with denials and excuses is what really irritates me. For a second, I had thought, well…at least he admitted it. Nope…wishful thinking.
I get why people cheat, but once caught, to call everyone an idiot while making yourself look like one is just beyond me. I feel sorry for the family members and friends (maybe former?) of these type of people once their story, and their denial are made public…and go viral.
The real danger of electric motors, and I have already seen this, is someone on an e-Bike with 15 mph handling skills trying to mix it with the local group ride at 25 mph.
Reminds me of what road racers have said about triathletes on group rides.
On the other hand, I may just power up in about 10 years when I can no long mix it up with the boys on the coffee shop rides on my own power I’d let everyone know and use my new “powers” only for good (e.g taking long hard pulls for the guys at key moments) and obviously never in a race but little motors on bikes hold a lot of promise too.Yeah, I seriously see the usefulness for older people or people with other problems being able to keep up with friends, on groups rides etc. Seems like a good thing to me.
Why use thermal imaging?
The conversation should be as easy as, “please remove your seat post, our mechanic will help you reinstall it.” “okay now I am going to use this $30 camera and my iphone to look in your frame…”
I’d be absolutely flattered if a race official asked to inspect by bike for a motor!