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Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

> Motordoping does not exist.

It does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femke_Van_den_Driessche

Aside from allegations about Cancellara (basically that his seated attack was too strong, plus he 'moved his hand suspiciously' just before) I always struggled to find an alternate explanantion for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideiS-6gBAc

> There has not been a single case at top professional level even though they have looked for the motors for over a decade.

Or, no-one has been caught as they stopped before the checks were brought in, as it's impossible to hide without a much broader conspiracy?

> But journalists, bloggers, and youtubers love to bring it up as a exciting story they don't need to do any work to write.

Agreed. WaPo is about a decade too late on this one.

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> Or, no-one has been caught as they stopped before the checks were brought in, as it's impossible to hide without a much broader conspiracy?

In which case you'd expect a performance drop when they stopped (like what happened with EPO), which hasn't happened at all.

(While I'm not arguing that motor doping was widespread) I don't think that's how it would be used.

Firstly, in 2025 (let alone a decade ago) LiPo batteries are pretty heavy for a meaningful amount of power. Even if you could hide them in a frame, there would be a disadvantage to pulling a lot of weight around for hours. (Try riding a ebike with the engine turned off.) It's therefore most likely that their power capacity would be relatively small - a lot less than today's consumer ebikes.

Secondly, a top pro rider can output an average of ~350-380 watts for 4-6 hours. [0] The limited capacity of a small battery is likely dwarfed in comparison. It's therefore most likely that (per the Cancellara example) they'd keep the battery power for a limited number of short attacks at a crucial moment which might help them drop an opponent and then allow them to ride clear for a win.

If this logic is correct, then the impact on overall times would be negligible as they're not using it for a significant proportion of a race, but the impact on a rider's liklihood to win might make it worthwhile.

[0] https://www.cyclistshub.com/mathieu-van-der-poel-statistics/

For classics maybe, but for TdF, a “crucial attack” isn't going to do much if you aren't able to ride faster than your opponents in average on the whole climb, and doing that is going to have an impact of the timings (each “col” has its own record table).

Drafting’s a factor on many climbs at the crazy speeds they achieve, and it can be enough of a benefit for a slightly slower rider to keep up with a slightly faster one. That’s why it’s rare that people ride away from others on a climb without an attack to break the draft.

A few hundred extra watts for a few seconds could be the difference between a failed attack and a stellar attack, then allowing the attacking rider to ride away.

(Of course, the weight of the batteries and motor would have to be considered as it would slightly impair the climbing performance.)

You're forgetting all the unsuccessful attacks where the attacker is simply swallowed back by a faster pace of the racers left behind by the attack.

I can see situation advantage for a very strong, title contending, competitor, but honestly that sounds too niche to be really useful.

Also:

> That’s why it’s rare that people ride away from others on a climb without an attack to break the draft.

Did you watch Tour de France the past few years? Even without attacking, Pogacar was simply too fast to follow in the mountains for everyone but Vingegaard, so there's only one guy who could have gained something and it's two times champion Vingegaard. Talk about a niche.

Pog's a special case. :)

I'm thinking more of a breakaway situation - a group of roughly equivalent riders, all knackered after a hard day in the breakaway, all vying for the stage win. If someone gets a gap, 90% of the time 'group two mentality' takes over and they don't organise a successful chase. Giving one of those riders an extra boost of watts for a few seconds for that attack could make all of the difference.

You're right that it won't always work, but these things are a numbers game - most of the time, breakaways are swallowed up, and even when a breakaway rider wins, (obvs) the rest of them don't win. And yet people still join the breakaway, to try to realise that tiny% chance of winning. Going from 5% to 10% win probability isn't much overall, but it's still doubling your chance.

This is the thing that's always brought up. That female junior cyclocross racer (its a different sport bub) and one attack that fans didn't like.

People like you keep going with these two, even though they mean nothing. And then the conspiracy shit. The motodoping topic is closer related to pizzagate than it is road racing.

What does Istvan Varjas do for a living?

Now that I found out about him, and saw an [interview](https://index.hu/video/2018/07/23/rejtett_motoros_kerekpar_b...) he gave years ago, an old thought of mine came up.

I was always thinking this was a really underserved market. Ebikes have been really in demand for a long while, but most of the offer was based on very heavy city bikes. I was always thinking that a much sportier, more efficient race ebikes would be a huge hit. I saw some prototypes on kickstarter but nothing that sticked.

I wonder why. If I had the energy and resources I think I would try going into that product space. Seems like ripe for disruption.

I ride ebikes a lot, and I used to ride race bikes a lot as well, years ago. For a long time I thought that a heavy city ebike is similar to a very efficient race bike that in terms of effort required. After I started to ride them simultaneously (more or less), maybe an ebike is in fact more helpful over longer periods, but a light race bike isn't far away. So a product that captures best of both worlds would do great IMO.

LE. Apparently I'm late by around 5 years. When I last had this thought there was literally just a kickstarter project. Now I see most big brands have electric road bike offerings. Still, at 4-5k EUR price points, there's still a lot of value to capture.

Specialized has their SL lines that sound like what you're looking for. But what you're asking for is beyond the current technology. Motors to produce both enough wattage and torque are heavy, and so are the batteries that supply them, and they're big. Modern road bikes are lighter and thinner than ever before

I have no stake or set opinion in this debate.

But your parent poster posted an interesting-looking video, and you responded with "it means nothing" without any explanation. Care to explain?

Sure. People move their hands on bikes all the time, to get more comfortable to address a balance issue or to keep the positions moving.

Seated attacks are becoming more and more popular. Pogi uses them almost exclusively these days. "A little too strong" is nonsense.

Plus, bikes are xrayed.

I makes no sense to carry around the weight of a motor in the off chance you might use it for a single attack. These people care about grams. They're not going to waste it on a motor that may or may not be used to give them a tiny boost.

Not only that but any motor linked to the drive train is going to add resistance and cost the more net watts over the ride than a tiny motor with a tiny battery that may or may not get used, could ever provide. It just makes no sense tradeoff wise.

There's way more reasonable explanations than a conspiracy theory.

This all reeks of nonsense like that cis gendered athlete that got hounded by the nutters about being trans

I think the interesting part of the video is that it looks like the wheel keeps spinning with force while the bike is on the ground, or did I misunderstand why it was highlighted?

I appreciate the point about dead weight though.

Spinning objects sink a non intuitive about of force. Adam Savage's Tested has a video about it. Even small wheels can hold kilojoules

Cyclocross is a marginally different sport, bub. You not noticed that there are a couple of crossers doing good things on the roads?

And if a (comparatively) little-known mid-level U23 crosser (therefore with comparatively little money behind her) was doing it, you really think it's limited to just her?

Lastly, the video I posted wasn't Cancellara.

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