Hacker News Reader

the long history of cheating at the highest levels of every sport indicates that if there is not mechanical doping in cycling, it's because the mechanical technology is not as good at hiding yet as it needs to be. We are talking about human beings here.

View on HN

I really, really want someone to commercialize the mechanical doping tech they've been using. Get caught and go straight please.

Give me a bike that looks like a normal bike and gives mere mortals like me an extra 5 mph (power law makes that a lot worse for pros).

That's basically already a thing. There's a big market for older riders who want a little bit of discreet assistance on their group ride.

https://www.orbea.com/us-en/ebikes/road/gain/

To my eyes, that bike obviously has a battery in the downtube. But I'm not the average person where bikes are concerned so perhaps I should have said, "a bike that would fool other bicyclists."

Assuming the pros are cheating, the professional assistance is unlikely to be of use to a regular human. At the professional level, a 1% gain could be huge, whereas a normal rider could gain far more than that by better techniques/breathing/equipment/whatever.

It’s not 1% it’s 35 watts. Which matters a lot more when you’re a rider who can only put out 200 watts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com