Former pro cyclist accuses Jumbo-Visma of motor doping, questions Sepp Kuss' Tourmalet performance

Innocent or guilty, shooting the messenger happens a lot in all walks of life.

Uhm,  a person's not a messenger if all they're delivering is accusations and a decided lack of any evidence whatsoever. Spewing BS does not a person a messenger.  And when a person does that, they deserve everything they get in return.

Jimmy Ray Will wrote:

I think this is all very improbable. Someone would have blabbed by now.

In his excellent book Snake Oil the late John Diamond described this as the James Bond paradox, the villain has maybe 200,000 people working for year to knock them up their underground lair in the retractable lake under the volcano and not one of them goes back home and when someone down the local says, "Alright Fred, where you been then?" says "You won't believe this but..."

You're thinking too big.

A pro doesn't need an electric motorbike for it to be useful. A Di2 battery weighs 52g and can hold 3.7Wh of energy, that's a little over 100W of assistance for just over 2 minutes. Plenty to assist in a sprint finish or to make a break away. Brushless motors are silent and can be extremely small or large (make the entire back wheel the rotor with fixed magnets). 250g worth of batteries and 250g worth of motor.

Considering that pro cyclists are often still weight weenies I struggle to think that riders would want 500g of dead weight for 140km and 5 hours of racing just to have a 100w advantage for only 2 minutes at the end. Look at how UAE are using those Carbon Ti brake rotors for about 20g extra weight savings, at no other performance gain.

Then you have to fit these systems aftermarket into wild contorted bike frames. The S5 aero bike seat tube is contorted round the rear wheel so fitting a shaft drive motor would be difficult. You would need a way to secure everything in place on these frame tube shapes which for the motor would need to be properly thought out and engineered, and not just a duct tape DIY job as it may come loose.

As proven at the TdF, cheating scrutiny is higher than ever, the chances of getting away with it are ever slimmer. TJV are known for using any legal method even if it is morally questionable (they make no secret of giving their riders ketones) for any advantage they can get.

Following the Lance Armstrong revelations, and that Lemond still believes he used motors as well, I doubt the UCI would leave any stone unturned to keep the sport as clean as possible.

There are always going to be riders who try to get away with breaking the rules, and we have seen a few get caught even in the last two years. Doping control is and always will be a predominantly reactive measure to try and keep the sport clean so you can never guarantee a fair result until after an event. But as long as all measures are robust and widespread then at least 99% of all results once classified will be clean.

500g would give you 5x 2.1 minutes at 100w (50g x 5)so about 11 minutes at 100w or 1000w for a minute. The frames used by pros are custom made, so it's even easier to integrate than off the shelf.

I'm postulating using off the shelf weights, custom battery setups and motors could be made significantly lighter. I'm not actually agreeing that it happened recently, just that it could. I'm not sure that I agree with your assumption that it isn't worth the weight penalty.

Besides, it's not just blue sky thinking it's actually happened in real life during 2016 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships. If they caught one, then others will have done it and got away with it.

It's very rare for pro frames to be custom made any more with the price of moulds. Most teams just get a raw frame (or wax/clear coated) for special races rather than anything being changed in the layup

Whether or not motor doping exists in the pro peleton, I very much imagine stage winners' bikes are top of the pile when it comes to testing, and it sounds very much like the testing technology available would easily detect a battery and/or motor within the frame cavity, no matter how well concealed to the naked eye. 

Matthew Acton-Varian wrote:

Considering that pro cyclists are often still weight weenies I struggle to think that riders would want 500g of dead weight for 140km and 5 hours of racing

I think it's highly unlikely that motor use is going on in the World Tour, but the weight needn't necessarily be an objection as a rider could simply fake a mechanical just before the point at which they would need the most assistance and get their motorised bike off the car. If that point was somewhere in the middle of the stage they could have another mechanical and swap again to come home with a "clean" bike; I wonder whether the UCI testers check all the bikes a winner has used during a stage or only the one they came home on? Is there any scrutiny to stop mechanics from surreptitiously removing batteries et cetera from a bike that has been returned to the car? As I said, I don't actually believe it's going on, but it's easy to think of tactics that could be used to avoid the scrutineers.