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news
Motor hidden in bike frame (Stade 2 video image, April 2016).JPGUCI warns it is "impossible" to get away with hidden motors, all 997 Tour de France tests negative
The UCI has today warned the peloton that the extensive testing for motors at the Tour de France makes it "impossible" to mechanically dope without being caught, and revealed that all 997 tests at this year's race came back negative.
Of the near 1,000 tests, an average of 48 per stage, 837 (or an average of 40 per stage) were undertaken at the beginning of the day before racing was underway, while 160 (or an average of eight per stage) were undertaken at the conclusion of the stage.
> A brief history of motor doping in cycling, from the pro peloton to amateur hill climbs
A UCI Technical Commissaire patrolled the team paddock to test bikes using magnetic tablets before the stage, with post-stage backscatter or transmission X-ray tests also carried out on the stage winner's bikes, the yellow jersey rider, as well as the six other riders required to go for an anti-doping test, "selected at random or who might give rise to suspicion".
UCI Director General Amina Lanaya said the message to riders was "very clear" — they would not get away with using a hidden motor to cheat.
"The large number of tests carried out at the 2023 Tour de France as part of our technological fraud detection programme sends a very clear message to riders and the public: it is impossible to use a propulsion system hidden in a bike without being exposed," she said.
"To ensure the fairness of cycling competitions and protect the integrity of the sport and its athletes, we will continue to implement our detection programme and to develop it further."
> Mechanical doping: All you need to know about concealed motors
The UCI carries out bike tests at all WorldTour events, a calendar which includes all the Monuments, Grand Tours, the biggest one-day events and week-long stage races.
UCI events such as the UCI Road World Championships, the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships, the UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup, the UCI Women's WorldTour and the Olympic Games are also subject to bike checks, while away from the road, the world championships for track, mountain bike and cyclo-cross athletes, as well as the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup also have tests.
Former Belgian cyclocross rider Femke Van den Driessche remains the biggest name, and only top-tier professional, to be caught mechanically doping. In 2016, the UCI banned her for six years and handed out a 20,000 Swiss Francs fine following the discovery of a concealed motor in a bike prepared for her at the World Championships in Zolder.
However, riders at lower levels of the sport have also been caught. In France, in 2018, a Cat-3 racer was slapped with a five-year ban after being found to have a hidden motor at the Grand Prix de Saint-Michel-de-Double. Over the border, in Italy a year later, two amateur riders fled a gran fondo before Carabinieri officers arrived. They had been accused by other participants and refused to have their bikes checked by event officials.
More recently, in September, a 73-year-old cycling club president put in a storming ride during a 10-kilometre-long hill climb event in the Ardèche to finish sixteenth, just three minutes down on the much younger winner – only to be almost immediately found guilty of mechanical doping by race organisers.
The pensioner had used a small motor, hidden in the hub of his rear wheel, on health grounds – he had suffered a cardiac arrest the year before – and insisted that the extra assistance ensured that he simply "made the most of the practice of cycling".
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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16 comments
I thought about my invisible rubber band idea, and the everlasting battery, and behold!
ERB
Elastomer Regenerative Braking. A clutch on the bottom bracket axle that winds up elastic bands (in the down tube and seat tube) when braking. Return the energy when you need a little extra boost.
The sprinter's version allows you to wind it up independently of braking so before the lead out you can fully 'charge' the system.
100% UCI compliant*, as it uses only the rider's power, no external source.
Right, I'm off to Kickstarter now.
*might not be 100% compliant
The chances of any professional team trying it are remote in the extreme. But "motor doping" keeps resurfacing because it is just so appealing to large sections of the audience of the news outlets that keep pushing the story. They'd love it if it were discovered that people don't actually ride thousands of kilometres around France, up and down mountains, and instead it was all done with motors. They want it to all be a scam, as this outlier to what they consider makes sense in their world would finally be explained away. The real doping that has gone on, and to some degree likely continues, doesn't satisfy them, because they couldn't conceive of achieving the same physical feats, even if they were pumped full of every performance-enhancing substance known to man. But they reckon they could do it with a sufficiently powerful motor and some kind of magic, everlasting battery.
I don't believe mechanical doping is a thing at this level, for the reasons Fenix has stated, but I'm genuinely curious as to how strict the scrutineering is, or rather the post-scrutineering protocols. Once the bikes have been weighed and some tested for engines, does a scrutineer stand by to ensure they're all loaded onto the car with no extras or substitutions? I'm just wondering if a non-conforming bike could be slipped onto the roof, rider fakes a mechanical just before a big climb, grabs lighter/motored bike, whoops, has another mechanical before the finish and gets back on a conforming bike. Do they scrutinise bikes off the roof at the end as well as the ones the riders actually finish on?
I can't see any pro tour team even thinking about trying it.
It would need full team buy in. The mechanics and managers and riders all fully aware. There's no way you could blame a rogue rider.
And weight is so carefully monitored now too. If the bike had a battery and motor it would show up.
I'm sure it could happen in amateur or single rider pro racing. They should look there if they want results.
I'm struggling to see how this could be done? Do any of the frames ridden in the tour this year have space for a motor. Plus the power; batteries are still pretty big. Lastly, I can't imagine any of the sponsors that supply bikes, i.e all of them would be too thrilled to be associated with having a motor found in their bikes.
Re: size, there are (or at least were) systems like the Vivax motor which can fit in a seat tube. These were found in a couple of mechanical doping cases, e.g. https://road.cc/content/news/238687-mechanical-doping-criminal-conviction-french-amateur-cyclist-found-using-hidden Of course that doesn't get around the detection now being used. I don't imagine many sponsors were thrilled at being associated with drugs scandals in the past either, but the teams still did it. (Not expressing a view on whether anyone is currently doping, motor or otherwise).
Batteries are that size so they last for a long time. You can make a much smaller battery if you only need it for a short amount of time (say a short mountain climb on a longer ride). Perfectly possible to make one that would fit into the tubes of most modern road bikes.
Plus you could make it out of pouches rather than cells. Which are smaller, lighter and can be made in a variety of shapes.
Bear in mind in racing its all marginal gains. Even in lower category racing adding a consistent 25-30w over time or a 75w spike up a hill would be enough to change a result. You dont need a huge battery or powerful motor.
Only the UCI could conclude that having run 1000 tests and caught no-one that its definitely the case that it's impossible to get away with it and so nobody could possibly have been doing it.
The obvious alternative situation is that your testing methods don't catch the modern technology and you have now broadcasted loud and clear to anyone minded to cheat that you don't have a clue how to catch someone doing this so its a free for all (much like EPO was).
I'm not saying which is which but this sounds like a really stupid claim and if you aren't catching anyone, it seems only reasonable to ask yourself whether your tests work rather than simply proclaiming victory!
What technology do you propose that is invisible to X-rays and creates no magnetic field? I suppose you could wind an elastic band around the bottom bracket, but anything that has an electric motor will create a field. You could imagine a plastic internal combustion engine but it would have quite a heat signature!
Completely different area, but theyve developed guns to bypass metal detectors 😮
It's probably easier to make stealth guns as they don't specifically need metal to operate, but they do need to be strong. I think most of the 3d-printed guns don't last more than a shot or two.
With motors, there's a need for conductive and magnetic materials, so it's trickier to find alternatives to metal.
If you'd asked in the early 90s - what performance enhancing substances can you put into your body that are indistinguishable from natural variants, the UCI didn't come back with the answer recombinant EPO but we all saw how that worked out.
The idea that us, as non-experts, without the incentive to cheat, can't come up with something. For example carbon compounds don't show up particularly strongly if at all on x-ray and can transmit electricity. Given the amount of carbon already around a bike, I would imagine its almost 100% possible possible to to stash something primarily carbon based in there. Now, there remains the issue of needing something magnetic (and realistic it would have to be something only magnetic when it carries a charge) that is also non-metallic, but given the scope of people making clever advanced materials is pretty extensive, it is at least not beyond the realms of imagination that someone infinitely smarter than me and well incentivised my develop something if they haven't already.
One problem with trying to use carbon as windings in electric motors is that they have significantly more resistance than copper and so the efficiency would be terrible.
Also, there's the problem of the power source as I guess that lithium cells would be easy to detect.
The UCI should offer a generous prize to anyone who submits to them a bike with mechanical 'doping' which they can't detect. This will reveal, if mechanical doping exists, how it's being done.
You make a good point but miss on the evidence part.
You dont need a magic technology when concealment and slight of hand will do. Like Rendels comment up thread. A syncronised set of bike swaps would be a far craftier route.
For example why motor dope the leader when you can motor dope the domestiques giving him an aero tow?
Hence if you dont test a huge chunk of the bikes you'll never know statistically speaking whether you have a good chance of catching process based cheaters.