Originally Posted by markjenn

This whole thing strikes me as far-fetched conspiracy theory.... much of that going around right now. That such a thing could happen and be widespread just doesn't pass the "reasonableness" test. And 60 Minutes has a checkered history of presenting stories in a way that makes something highly implausible seem plausible. Their treatment of the Audi 5000 during the "sudden acceleration" episode was deplorable. And let's not forget Dateline's rigging of GM pickup trucks with incendiaries to get footage of trucks exploding on fire during their "investigation" of GM's fuel tank placement problem.

Some are saying that on a long stage race with climbing, even if you did have motors, you can't get the math to work out that it is an advantage. You can get a short burst of extra power for 1% of the race, but only at the expense of hauling around a couple lbs of extra weight the remaining 99%. I suppose you could build a bike that is a couple lbs under miniumum weight and then get the motor and battery for free, but at some point the trouble and expense starting getting completely out of hand. In any event, you're back to the conspiracy problem - for this to be widespread you'd have to have literally tens, perhaps hundreds, of people working on it and keeping their mouth shut for decades.

- Mark