Mechanical Doping

A bike, exactly to match hers

Is the 'it's not my bike, m8' excuse as ridiculous as it sounds? Could a punter get their non-sanctioned bike in to the pits at a world champs?

Basically looking forward to seeing some photos of this thing.

I'm trying to work out in my head if mech doping is worse than pharma... I reckon it probably is. At least with the drugs you can argue that the rider is still putting themselves through hellish pain to win. A motor kinda just lets you whizz away for the same effort. But then maybe you could argue the EPO is a biological motor, I dunno. Whatever, for a motor to be in the bike you'd have to have several members of the team complicit in the cheating. Drugs you can plausibly do in isolation.

Cheating is cheating.

And that cow has te same surname as mine... ;-)

Totally applying for the job to be part of the bike-police at the next UCI/etc event, hanging out with the mechanics and chatting while they strip and rebuild all the pro bikes in front of me and the rider.

Euro and Belgian Champion in what is basically Belgium's national sport isn't 'unknown'.

Mech vs. bio doping - if you mechanically dope and manage to get the bike out of the venue untested then that's you sorted, they can't study your piss 10 years down the line and spot the BB motor and battery pack, and equally my heart won't rupture as I sit on the bog due in my 40's due to all the mechanical doping I did in my youth.

Chemical doping plus mechanical doping is a step away from the Hells Angels.

This. People generally aren't going to die because of it.

At least with the drugs you can argue that the rider is still putting themselves through hellish pain

But with EPO, the blood is able to carry more oxygen, delaying the pain of lactic acid in the muscles. Pharma doping definitely reduces pain.

I visited the pits at Milton Keynes during the World Cup race to get an idea of the lay of the land ahead of the National Trophy race the following day where I was on duty for Mrs. TSK. There wasn't really a lot of control of who was going in and with what. I certainly wasn't challenged. Quite often wrist bands will be handed out at prestige events but they aren't enforced to rigourously. Unless the pits are getting really busy, commissaires will just let people get on with it. So yes, a punter could get their non-sanctioned into the pits. But I find that hard to imagine.

Pits aren't a place you casually wonder into with your bike. They're chaotic, mucky, swampy places that are rarely easy to get into from the outside of the course. I doubt a team mate who needs a motor to keep up is going to have been out on the course during the practice sessions. I'm fairly certain the UCI have rules against non competitors on international courses. Even if they did, the team DS isn't going to want the extra risk out there. Accidents in practice have ended races before they start and if a non-competitor did that to a competitor then there would and should be hell to pay. This is the least plausible of any "plausible" explanations.

That leaves us with two realistic alternatives. Either FvdD knew about the bike, or she didn't. On a hard, trudgy, mucky course, you could hand up a slightly heavier bike to a competitor and it would be hard for them to spot the difference in the heat of racing, particularly if they aren't feeling any slower because of it. So either could be equally plausible, it wouldn't be the first time a DS has tried to give their rider a bump without telling them about it.

However, the rider pointing the finger at a "team mate" who happens to own a motorised bike makes it very likely that she did know. If you didn't know about the bike, you wouldn't make up something to excuse it because you would have nothing to hide. I could construct scenarios that explain the not knowing and the finger pointing, but the increasing convolution of those scenarios contradicts Occam's Razor.

As usual, I refuse to condemn someone without first seeing evidence of a proper investigation so I await further information. However, the balance of probabilities suggest that optimism won't be rewarded this time.

In the interview with her in Sporza, she doesn't blame a team mate - she says it belongs to a friend who had bought it off her at the end of the last season, that said friend was riding with her brother, the bikes were stored in the same truck and the team mechanics, presumably when they were picking up her bike, thought it was one of hers and cleaned it up for the race.

I mean, I still don't know if I believe her, but that's what she seems to me to be saying.

The friend who would appear to be totally silent and hasn't come forward to clear up this silly misunderstanding?

Seems legit

Hah. Yeah, her 'friend' is not very forthcoming. I'm only flagging up what she seems to be saying to avoid people going down this line of conjecture about how a bike could be smuggled in. Her story is that it was an honest mistake. We'll see if that's true or not - am trying not to prejudge, but yes it's all looking very damning.

On that, I just watched some clips of the interview with her on Sporza. I don't speak Dutch, but the poor girl looks terrified. Meanwhile her team coach is making noises like he thinks her parents bullied her into cheating.

De Bie: "made Abuse of Children"
Even the day after the hoopla surrounding Femke Van den Driessche could coach Rudy De Bie not hide his disappointment. "This case also with the knowledge of the parents have happened," said the coach.

"Deanna is very young and naïve. She is the victim of the whole thing. Here is real abuse of children, the most horrible thing there is."

Heavy words, who could count on understanding with analyst Paul Herygers. "It's tough, but it's true. You can not tell me that the parents have not been aware of."

Only UCI environment I've experienced is track but I imagine the track is a much cleaner and manageable environment than a cross race and I could see swapping in a doped bike for a rider in trouble then making it vanish after the race being pretty achievable there.

At non UCI events I've seen junior/youth riders change wheels for one with a smaller cog on pretty much under the noses of the comms and it be either unnoticed or just ignored.

“It’s not Femke’s bike,” he claimed to De Staandard. “The bike was in the pit but it is [belonging to] someone from her entourage, who sometimes trains with her. But it was never the intention that it would be raced.>

This seems to be as believable as Contador and the tainted beef debacle.

Team mate possibly a bit misleading in my post. There have been various interpretations of who that person was depending on which news outlet is rehashing the interview in Sporza. Alas, as I can't read Belgian, I can't comment on which translation is most accurate. Team mate was implying a non-competitor working for or associated with the team.

Actually if this friend does exist, I wouldn't expect them to now be running around claiming responsibility. I would expect the team to be keeping them under wraps until the UCI investigation has spoken to them so as not to be appearing to try and poison the waters. If I were in charge of communications for a team that had allowed a colossal fuck up of that nature to happen, it's exactly what I would do.

The Google translation of what she said to Sporza is pretty intelligible. Her dad seems to have been telling a slightly different story, which of course makes the whole thing reek to high heaven.

This seems to be as believable as Contador and the tainted beef debacle.

I think it has more a case of a vanishing twin of her real bike, except that the twin actually suddenly turns up to a cyclo-cross race and hasn't vanished, after all, and, erm ...

.

All the videos I have seen of motorised bikes drops them into two categories: solo bodge which she seems to be suggesting her 'friend' did; and professionally installed hidden. Since it was clearly the latter, (because the UCI had to search for it) there must be quite a few people who know the truth, and are being very quiet. At 19 I doubt the poor girl is the ring leader. That doesn't make it ok, but the Belgian team should be have thought something was up when a 19 year old was performing so well at senior level.

Here's some footage of her on the Koppenberg, where those splits come from showing her 10 seconds up on the climb, 5 seconds down on the flat then 17 down on the descent. Go to 3 minutes for the climb, she's no. 10 on the right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AlvQJqkfpk&feature=youtu.be&t=3m10s

Gruber Assist

Belgian team should be have thought something was up when a 19 year old was performing so well at senior level.

Mathieu Van Der Poel was World Champion at 20. Her results haven't been exceptional, her only podium this season was at Koppenberg cross as seen above.