carpediemracing 

I think the hubs are harder to find. I was looking for stuff in... wow, it was 2007? so it was a while ago. I resorted to a contact that had basically gone out of business but still had some stock left. I bought two pairs of hubs (couldn't get two of the same so one pair Veloce, one Athena), 4 rims, some other stuff. This was the bottom of the barrel for him.

Would complete wheels be out of the question?

mike868y

totally agree fudgy. since i realized that i've been a lot more content in my life.

re the motor: i see no reason why that shouldn't be an automatic lifetime ban. with doping there's always the "tainted supplement/faulty lab testing/etc" excuse that leaves doubt but if you literally found a motor in the bike there really is no excuse.

also, does this put the dan martin mysteriously spinning wheel video in a new light?

grolby

I think that was Hesjedal, and not to me it doesn't. Wheels spin on their own pretty easily and the way these motors work the crank needs to be turning.

Enthalpic

Let say both the PED doper and the mechanical cheater confess. PEDs can have long-lasting effects so I would say lifetime bans are more justified in those cases. Once you take a motorcyclist off their bike they are clean - physiologically speaking.

Grumpy McTrumpy

Here's a hub-based motor that's pretty much invisible Lightweight Freygeist e-bike looks and lifts more like a regular bike

carpediemracing 

There's local mechanic that installed a motor in a Cervelo TT bike. He cut apart the frame, battery went into down tube, motor into seat tube. Discrete charging port, but I don't remember where it was or how you accessed it, and he took down all the pictures of the actual bike. He left the one of the motor up, with the broad details of where stuff went.

He installed that drive in Sept 2012.

mike868y

from my couch quarterback perspective, lifetime ban for both.

Flatballer

The weird thing about that video isn't the wheel spinning. It's that the bike is spinning as if being moved by the spinning wheel. There shouldn't be enough momentum in the wheel to do that.

I think there's a reasonable explanation, I don't think he was cheating, but it's definitely weird looking.

big john

No, but I'd rather have my guy build them if I can get the hubs for a reasonable price. I've seen Record hubs for $375. Seems like a lot to someone who has used Ultegra for decades. It's only money, right?

big john

Yes, that's much cheaper than any place I've seen.

Doge

I do think PED and mechanical doping are equivalent - as are having tacks dropped on the road, as is cutting across a course and taking a shortcut (no, not the Lance thing). They are all different forms of cheating. A lifetime ban seems a bit much. I see intentional rule breaking in about every race. Sure - the above goes beyond, but nothing for everyday intentional rule breaking then life life for PEDs and motors is not proportional to the crime. I'd like to see UCI just spell it out as clearly as they spell out the number of spokes in a wheel - and the penalties associated with it. As I understand this comes with a $200Kish fine - I might be off a bit. Sounds good to me if that is what they signed up for. I hope Willard and the mechanic have insurance.

mattm

+1 that was the weird thing about that Hejsdal video/incident - did nothing come of that?

Anyway I saw the motorized cx thing on fb too; the saddest part is that she cheat for f-ing cx... I mean if you're gonna cheat at least do it for the hardest cycling discipline.

hack

In the Ryder video, it doesn't look like the cranks spin after he falls. No spinning cranks, no motor ... I hope.

mattm

I would guess it depends on how the motor works. It could just be a boost to the cranks (making them easier to turn), or some motors might even make the wheel turn (skipping the crank).

Anyway that Hejsdal video was weird, it seemed like the wheel was doing more than just spinning fast but who knows. Hopefully someone from UCI gave the bike a look, but it might not be that simple..

wens

Eh, motor in a bike is the same as intentionally cutting the course to me. Provides an advantage for the races you do it, but no lingering advantage after you stop. Penalties should be the same, although I actually don't know off the top of my head what the penalty for cutting the course is, besides relegation.

gsteinb

The thing is, if you're otb or you flat and you cut the course )this happens in park races all the time) and you merely get relegated there's Not much disincentive for the next time the situation arises. Guys crash out, jump back in and lead their teammates out. Or flat and get a wheel and jump back in.

revchuck 

My Garmin 500 died - the buttons stopped working - and I replaced it with a 520. One of the 520's features is that it automatically generates an estimated VO2 max score after a hard 20-minute effort. Anyone know whether this estimate is at least ballpark accurate?

Flatballer

Watching this a few times and reading about it a bit, I think it's just a camera trick. The camera is flattening out what is actually a highly crowned and very steep descent. The bike is just sliding down the crown of the curve as well as downhill of the descent. It's able to do this easier because of the way the front wheel ended up being a caster and holding up the whole front of the bike.

mattm

yeah you're probably right.

grolby

C- trolling. You can do better, matt!

cmh

Belated congrats Mikey!

cmh

I'm wondering if we won't see a rash of motor cheating in amateur racing since it doesn't have health dangers. I suspect some would be cheaters are put off by the needles or other health risks and now they have a route to hollow podium placings without the hassle.

Anyone know what the detection method was?

grolby

Electromagnetic field detector.

I was idly wondering about motorized cheating in amateur racing, too. It's weird, cause it seems so pathetic. Yet, clearly it has happened at the pro level. And people do things like cut courses and what not, so clearly there are people who could basically not pedal a course and feel okay with it. And let's be honest, there are plenty of people in amateur racing with both the cash and expertise to do something like this. Still, I'm not going to worry about it much. I don't really worry about course-cutting, either.

TheKillerPenguin

I think they said they developed some sort of app that can detect radio frequencies associated with the motors. If that's the case it might be as simple as providing said app to officials at races to check bikes.

mike868y

hah this reminds me of when i used to race motocross and people would be accused of having "cheater bikes" (basically bikes with larger engines than allowed for a given category) and the officials would have to tear down the motor to measure it and make sure everything checked out. you'd be surprised how many parents don't care about building their kids bikes with the express intent to cheat at amateur racing.