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Comment by VeejayRampay | Hacker News Reader

What about Ryder Hesjedal's bike spinning on itself a few years back?

Are we addressing that as well? It feels like the UCI is only going after easy pickings to prove a point and not doing its best to actually to fight mechanical cheating in fear of yet another scandal.

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That's already been demonstrated to be a side effect of a still-spinning rear wheel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak7xP8eghog

It should also be noted that "incident" occurred on a fast downhill section while Hesjedal wasn't pedaling so even if there were a motor it is exceedingly unlikely it would still be engaged at the time of the crash.

With a plausible physical explanation and no way to go back in time to check the bike for a motor, there's not much for the UCI to go after even if it felt the need to.

I'm not convinced. Compare:

https://youtu.be/ynLMfzLTc8M?t=8

and

https://youtu.be/Ak7xP8eghog?t=13

That was the best run in that video. The wheel spun less than 180 degrees after being carefully placed on the ground. In the original video the wheel was in contact with the ground for seconds before it got free to spin. It then spun for more than 180 degrees and seemed to be accelerating.

I know such motors are supposed to stop when you stop pedaling, but it could be a different one. There's still enough evidence to look damning.

It was also on a pretty steep downhill slope, which by itself could have been enough to cause this. You put a wheel on a slope and it's going to try to move downhill. It'd be suspicious if the bike had moved uphill, but the video clearly shows it moving downhill.

I'm willing to believe the explanation for this particular case, but I find the Cancellara video to be much more damning, and a pretty strong hint that mechanical doping has found its way into the highest levels of the sport:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nd13ARuvVE

The way he just smokes everyone around him without changing his cadence, standing out of the saddle, or even changing the expression on his face seems at least a little suspicious.

Except it's not plausible. Come on.

These motors work by directly coupling to the pedal shaft in the bottom bracket. It's hard to tell but it seems pretty clear to me that the pedals on Hesjedal's bike are not turning when it lands. The angular momentum is just from the back wheel which is still spinning.

Probably a different type of motor. If you watch the video the back wheel slides along sideways for a while. This would stop all usual motion of the wheel and there is no way that it would maintain sufficient power to move the bike as it does even if there was some residual rotation.

What kind of motor then? Wheel hub motors are sufficiently large that you could recognize one from meters away. There are only so many places to put a motor on a bicycle and at some point you have to come up with an explanation for what happened that doesn't involve a motor.

I'm not saying that's what he did, but they have very clever (and expensive!) electromagnetic wheel motors that can provide ~50W of power for extended periods that likely wouldn't impact the pedals.

http://cyclingtips.com/2016/02/electromagnetic-wheel-motors-...

These "motors" aren't expensive, they're completely theoretical. There's no proof anyone has built a frame-rim reluctance motor anywhere ever. The linked article literally says "So, is an electromagnetic wheel possible? Yes, in theory" and has no concrete examples of one ever having been built.

For some additional context / evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLMfzLTc8M

Appears at least in some models that if the pedals stop turning that the motor stops and the wheel spins normally; meaning to me, if true for most motors like this, seems like it's very hard to say that video is proof.

Ride any bike, let it fall off - it will do exactly same thing. The video that was posted doesn't prove anything.

Some people just loooove conspiracy theories...

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