First Hidden Electric Motor In Cycling World Championship (cxmagazine.com) 262
An anonymous reader writes with the story that the world championship cyclocross competition this weekend in Zolder (Belgium) was scandalized by the first case of "mechanical doping." European champion Femke Van Den Driessche was caught with a bicycle with a hidden electric motor. From the article: The Union Cycliste Internationale said in a statement âoethat pursuant to the UCIâ(TM)s Regulations on technological fraud a bike has been detained for further investigation following checks at the Womenâ(TM)s Under 23 race of the 2016 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships. This does not concern any of the riders on the podium. Further details will be shared in due course.â
The Belgian media outlet Sporza reported that the Belgian Cycling Federation had confirmed that the detained bike belonged to Van den Driessche. Ironically, Van den Driessche had abandoned the race due to a mechanical issue shortly before the bike was scrutinised. Van den Driesscheâ(TM)s name did not feature in the official results on the UCI website on Saturday evening. Cyclocross Magazine adds some details.
The Belgian media outlet Sporza reported that the Belgian Cycling Federation had confirmed that the detained bike belonged to Van den Driessche. Ironically, Van den Driessche had abandoned the race due to a mechanical issue shortly before the bike was scrutinised. Van den Driesscheâ(TM)s name did not feature in the official results on the UCI website on Saturday evening. Cyclocross Magazine adds some details.
What's the deal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does cycling attract so much cheating?
Is it just more publicized than that in other sports? I mean, you don't hear about cheating nearly as much in other "sports" where they depend upon mechanical equipment... Nascar, F1, MotoGP, etc...
You'd think that Bill Belichick were the coach...
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it's one sport where physical attributes correlates almost 1:1 with performance. Like a wide receiver could dope in order to run faster but if he still can't catch the ball, what good does that do
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I mean, you don't hear about cheating nearly as much in other "sports" where they depend upon mechanical equipment... Nascar
Good thing you quoted it if you will mention nascar. If you can do it with a beer belly and 30kg extra weight around the midriff it is not a sport! The reason you see this in cycling is that it is a sport: your athletic ability is a key determinant of your success.
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Just wondering if you think baseball [thedailybeast.com] is a sport?
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curling is an Olympic sport, and I've seen plenty of guys with 30kg spare tires in the Olympics in that sport. As such, I request proof of your assertion.
Only the skip who's holding the broom, the guys doing the sweeping are generally in pretty good shape, particularly the first two who do the majority of the sweeping.
I've actually played against some top teams, they're not Olympic athletes, but they were fairly big athletic guys.
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Re: What's the deal... (Score:3)
Re:What's the deal... (Score:5, Funny)
Motorized curling, perhaps.
I'd actually get up at 3am to watch curling with jet fuel powered stones.
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nascar has If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin' (Score:4, Insightful)
nascar has a saying If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.
Same things happens in lot's of other sports if you give some one 5 inches they will try to push it to 10 when the ref is not looking.
Re: What's the deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a tiny increase in power makes a huge difference in results. In F1, a 1 HP difference is not noticeable. In cycling, 1 HP makes you faster than a fully dopped Lance Armstrong in his prime.
Re: What's the deal... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Regenerate it on the downhills/flat pedaling. Of course you'd need a more complex motor (you wouldn't want to drain 100W to charge it, you'd want to charge slowly then use it when you most need it, i.e. to accelerate or go uphill).
Re: What's the deal... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Brushless DC motors *are* complex motors. The motor itself isn't that complex (though for high power density you need very expensive magnets), but the controller is. And a bicycle doesn't give you much room to fit some complex electronic circuitry, *especially* if you're trying to hide it from the judges!
Re: What's the deal... (Score:4, Informative)
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Regen on flat pedaling is stupid and goes along the lines of a perpetual motion machine. Much of the energy you pedal into the motor is lost in the form of heat and you won't get out what you put in.
You are thinking solely in terms of mechanics and not biology. Siphoning off a few watts on a flat pedal to recharge when cyclists are normally conserving energy for the next climb anyway and then applying it when needed most can spread out the energy expended to make things more efficient.
Try running a 5k sprinting until you can't run any more, and then walking until you recover and can sprint again vs just running at your maximum steady pace. I guarantee you the latter strategy gets you a better time.
Lo
Re: What's the deal... (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you want it to be undetectable, you need to hide the batteries in the water bottle, or on your body, with
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Aside from being easily caught when people weigh your competition bike and find it weight 3x everyone else's...
On a story a few months back, there was talk about standardized sports equipment, and bicycling came up.
The bikes they use have a minimum weight requirement. Off the shelf bikes of somewhat decent quality (ballpark of $4000) can EASILY weight in at less than the pro weights.
I'm not sure how much you can get away with hiding, but they could definitely shave off a few pounds. If it's engineered well, the batteries and such could even contribute some to the structural integrity. You could easily spread out the
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Of course what we're talking about here are Pro Cat-1 riders on the UCI world tour, literally the creme-de-la-creme of competitive cycling. They've al
Re: What's the deal... (Score:5, Informative)
For those weak at the unit conversion, there's a nice rhyme for remembering it.
In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue,
Divide the year of his voyage by two,
And you get the number of Watts in a horsepower.
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Cyclist racer here. It's because the checks are stricter than any other sport. The doping controls are stricter and less excuses are accepted
Dont fool yourself, the level of cheating is probably worse in just about any other pro sport. It's more cycling after a few dead riders got more serious about catching em.
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Cycling is a bit special as a longer endurance sport. There's more to be gained from marginal benefits. That said, cheating is very wide spread. It's a constant race between athletes and analysts. You often can't detect a new strategy of cheating until someone is physically caught and then you can develop an analytical method to do so. Lance Armstrong was caught not by the technology of the time but by revisiting blood samples which had been stored. Athletes may content themselves with microdoping where t
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There is no more cheating in cycling than any other sport. For example, see the two major Australian football codes, which are using media and promotional ties to effectively sweep endemic drug cheating under the carpet. Or international athletics, of which the tip of the cheating iceberg has recently surfaced. The difference is that cycling is actively trying to eradicate cheating, thus the invasive scrutinising and drug tests.
Re:What's the deal... (Score:5, Funny)
Is it just more publicized than that in other sports?
Yes, it is. As a semi-professional swimmer, I am thankful no one has caught on my methane powered propulsion system yet.
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Why does cycling attract so much cheating?
It's the low barrier to entry.
If I was the manufacturer of such a motor, I'd get in the race myself.
The cost of entry is very low and the potential upside in free publicity (once caught) is super high.
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Why does cycling attract so much cheating?
You'd think that Bill Belichick were the coach...
If Bill were coach, you'd cheat and win though... wouldn't you?
Cheating in other sports is part of the game (Score:4, Interesting)
And the cheating is so institutionalized that it has to be egregious before it becomes a problem.
Most team sports have this thing called a "penalty" or a "foul" where the offending team gets some small penalty or the offended team some small advantage -- fouls in basketball, the yellow flag in football, penalty box in hockey, balk in baseball.
There's just so much attempted cheating they've just made it part of the game -- intentional fouls are part of the late-minute strategy in basketball to stop the clock. In hockey, it's actually against the rules to beat the shit out of an opposing player yet it too is (although less so now) part of the game, down to "the enforcer" each team hires to intimidate members of the other team, up to and including beating the shit out of them once in a while.
In those sports only the most outrageous cheating becomes a scandal, like illegal hits in hockey that put someone in the hospital, hard fouls in basketball that result in an ejection or deflating the football (which, IMHO, couldn't have provided the advantage relative to the BFD it caused).
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Is it just more publicized than that in other sports?
I think it really is more publicized. Consider that doping scandals have hit nearly every professional sport - including golf. Even baseball has had it's share with things like 'cored' bats.
Bicycling is just the one sport where a motor would be both useful and could be implemented in a way that would be 'hard' to spot.
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Why does cycling attract so much cheating?
Is it just more publicized than that in other sports? I mean, you don't hear about cheating nearly as much in other "sports" where they depend upon mechanical equipment... Nascar, F1, MotoGP, etc...
You'd think that Bill Belichick were the coach...
When's the last time you watched a Hockey, Basketball, or Football game (of either kind) without seeing a penalty? Those guys cheat constantly.
The difference is how they cheat. In skill sports gaining a slight athletic edge doesn't help as much so the cheating is done at game time, and because it's detectable and so common the rules are pretty mild.
In track or cycling it's all about fitness, so the only way to cheat is through doping or in this case hidden motors.
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It's a very common dutch name in Flanders.
And in 2002 it was the 6th most used female babyname, coincidentally in that same year a new character named Femke appeared on a popular local tv soap.
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And in 2002 it was the 6th most used female babyname, coincidentally in that same year a new character named Femke appeared on a popular local tv soap.
The name "Teagan" or "Tegan" for girls appeared from nowhere in the 80s when a companion with that name showed up in Dr Who (4th and 5th Doctors). It was a very rare name before the 80s, but suddenly in the late 80s became a minor trend, peaking in 2010 (at 243rd in popularity by the random site I found - and occasionaly used for boys as well). The show didn't invent the name, but it might as well have.
More details... (Score:5, Informative)
http://cyclingtips.com/2015/04... [cyclingtips.com]
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Re:More details... (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the fucking article he linked. It's clearly stated. As for the worth of it, that would depend on the stage. 110W, as referenced in that article, equates to about 0.148 horsepower and would definitely make up for the addition of a bit of extra weight on a stage with a lot of climbing.
Re:More details... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, the benefit is huge.
Cassani stated, after testing a bike kitted out with a motor like that , that even at age 50, he could win a Giro stage with it.
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Unfortunately there's no information (Score:3, Informative)
Let me sum it up for you - here's the sum total of facts, all details included, from the article.
"A motor was found"
That's pretty much it.
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Some more facts were published meanwhile. The bike in which the motor was found was not the bike she used in the race. But they found it in her supply tent. There are claims that a person from her entourage put the bike there after cleaning it, because he thought it was her bike, but in reality it was one of hers that she sold to a friend some time ago.
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Yeah, I'm not sure why anyone even pays attention to that "sport" at this point in time.
Nitpicking (Score:2)
If you are going to quote the original article by cut'n'paste a blurb, FFS make sure you fix the encoded entities. It looks so frigging amateurish when you don't.
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Do you seriously hope to shame the editors with charges of amateurism?
Re:Nitpicking (Score:4, Interesting)
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If you are going to quote the original article by cut'n'paste a blurb, FFS make sure you fix the encoded entities. It looks so frigging amateurish when you don't.
You must be new here. The refusal to support unicode is a sacred tradition at Slashdot. So is looking amateurish.
How much would it help? (Score:2)
How many watts can this thing deliver to the chain/rear wheel and for how long? These bikes are really light. About 15 lbs. The whole battery+motor can't weigh more than 4-5 lbs. If someone had a 20 lbs bike at a race, it would feel like it was made of lead to anyone who piked it up. (trust me on this one) I don't see how you could get meaningful power out of something so light. Plus, bikes are generally made of carbon fiber. You can't weld in mounting brackets or make a lot of changes to the inside
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If you use it to get up the hills, you enjoy a gravity boost from the mass heading back down. Braking and wind resistance is where you actually lose your energy.
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There were reports of Tour de France riders being handed fake water bottles filled with lead at the top of a mountain stage to help them on the descent. When bottles filled with solid materials were banned they switched to mercury.
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If it got them down the mountain a second faster than the other person quite a few of them would drink mercury. Consider the doping and blood transfusions and all the other efforts to gain an edge on the competition while accepting that everyone else are pulling the same tricks in pretty much every sport. Cyclists have died at the roadside from the effects of doping and it didn't even cause a blip in the efforts of the rest of the field to gain that podium place by better chemistry.
At that level winning is
Re:How much would it help? (Score:5, Informative)
This thing can put out 110w over an hour. And it would help over an hour, for sure. The average pro can put out 400-500w over an hour. Add 110w to that? It's HUGE. It could put mediocre pros on the podium.
It's worth reading the article, there's a lot more to it too...her brother was also caught doping EPO. And claims it was her 'friends' bike...that just happened to get brought into the race. All pretty shady stuff.
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An interesting thing in the race: She had a crash in a downhill section, and her comment about it was that she just couldn't stop. So possibly the motor got stuck in the On position
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Those motors allegedly do about 100 watts. The amount of energy a normal bicycle brake can handle to slow you down is easily 1000 W - my bike can stop in a fraction of the distance it takes me to accelerate - and these pro bikers have for sure much better brakes than my city bike.
That she couldn't stop is not likely caused by such a puny motor. It's more likely good old brake failure, or a surface that was more slippery than she anticipated.
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Re:How much would it help? (Score:5, Interesting)
One system mentioned has an effect of about 110W, with either 60 or 90 minute battery, total package weight with 60 minute battery is 1,8kg, with battery and motor all hidden away, wireless activation button etc.And yes, it can be disengaged.
Ironically, it's on the mountain stages it'd really help. 0.148hp for a total of 60 minutes during a stage can help you build a massive lead spread over a few climbs.
Also, look at some suspected motorized cheating like Fabian Cancellara in Roubaix-Flaanderen for example.
Links:
http://cyclingtips.com/2015/04... [cyclingtips.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Longer version: 100 watts for 10 minutes in the context of an hour-long cyclocross race is enough to turn an also-ran into a winner. It would be decisive in most road races other than out-and-out bunch sprints as well.
As far as drag goes, that's negligible by all reports. Avoiding drag when a power source is not providing propulsion is a very well-studied problem.
Simple solution, 100% effective (Score:2)
A simple solution that would be 100% effective at catching cheaters with hidden motors: x-ray the bikes just before the start of the race, and immediately after they pass the finish line.
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That would require trained professionals who could interpret the images, and simply lead to an arms race between cheaters trying to make a concealment look normal and an inspector trying to work out what actually is normal.
A real solution would be stock bikes handed out randomly at the start of a race. You would still need to ensure no collusion in the issuing system, and no ability to tamper between issuing and race start, but it would be easier than the alternatives...
Re:Simple solution, 100% effective (Score:4, Insightful)
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Furthermore, much of the sport's funding comes from equipment manufacturers who would be more than a little peeved if athletes weren't using their expensive gear.
Then have Team Shimano and Team SRAM provide the stock bikes as a condition of sponsoring the event.
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That would require trained professionals who could interpret the images,
I'm not sure you'd need trained professionals, looking at an x-ray image and spotting anomalies isn't exactly rocket science.
But even if you did, so what? As someone else pointed out, it would be very hard to conceal batteries and a motor from an x-ray image.
Seriously, it'd be damn hard to hide components of a battery and a motor so they couldn't be recognized If anything unusual is spotted, the bike is taken apart and examined. I doubt you could build a motor and power supply into a bike such that it coul
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I doubt you could build a motor and power supply into a bike such that it couldn't be found.
That part I agree, but it's not about being unable to be found. It's about getting away with it, and that means making sure it's not visible or at the very least not obvious from the outside. That is a much simpler problem to solve and I can imagine it can be done. No, it's not cheap, but money isn't a big issue in a cycling. There's a lot of it, especially for the winner, so the potential payout is huge.
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That part I agree, but it's not about being unable to be found. It's about getting away with it,
You'd only get away with it until the bike was x-rayed or disassembled. After that, it's all over. No way you can hide a motor and the drive components from being found. And then you lose the race, the sponsorships, and all that goes with it.
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Riders normally have their bikes customised to to suit their preference. Wheels, stem, handlebar, saddle, chainrings and cassette are all set up by team mechanics.
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Kind of like how the NFL checked the pressure of footballs just before the Super Bowl.
No matter what system is used to try to catch cheaters, cheaters will find a weakness in the system and exploit it.
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No matter what system is used to try to catch cheaters, cheaters will find a weakness in the system and exploit it.
Good luck defeating an x-ray, and good luck defeating the process of disassembling a bike into its component parts for examination.
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You are not thinking like a cheater. Of course, it's unlikely to defeat the x-ray itself. So you do what any cheater does: find holes in the process.
For example, it's unlikely that all bikes could be x-rayed at the same time, in the seconds just before the race. The process takes time. That means that bikes will be sitting somewhere--theoretically in a secure area--for some period of time after the x-ray. This leaves open an opportunity to bribe someone, or breach security in some other way, to make th
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That means that bikes will be sitting somewhere--theoretically in a secure area--for some period of time after the x-ray.
Everything you mention is just a matter of logistics. With even rudimentary security this wouldn't be an issue. Bies get confiscated after the race and are locked up, no tampering.
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In any long bike race, it's unlikely that every foot of the course is under the watchful eye of officials, leaving room for a secret exchange.
Actually, every foot of almost every race is filmed both by track cams and chase cars.
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But that does not make the method foolproof.
With a modest effort, it could be made so foolproof as to be virtually unbeatable.
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Or do it like doping tests: random through the field, and the winners. Same for the bikes. Have the winner hand in their bike for inspection after the race, and do random checks before or after the race of the others.
TFA mentions the organisation has equipment to test for this, without going into detail on how. I'm curious how they test these bikes, what this equipment looks for really.
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Same for the bikes. Have the winner hand in their bike for inspection after the race,
Have all the bikes inspected. 2nd place is worth cheating for too, I'm sure.
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In many sports (including cycling) it's already the top-3 or top-something that's tested for doping. Not just the #1. I didn't write it up properly.
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They could supply the cyclists with a standard bicycle. Make everyone ride bikes that's are exactly the same, and weigh exactly the same. Give them 5-15minutes before the start to adjust the bike.
They could do that too, but a simple x-ray would catch them cold, no two ways about it. Even if you managed to build/mold the battery into the composite frame somehow, you still need a motor and the drive mechanism...and those will show up on an x-ray.
If there's any doubt, any doubt at all, take the bike apart and strip it completely down to its component parts. I believe they do this in some motor sports after the race to make sure there haven't been any illegal mods to the engine, so they could certainly
UCIâ(TM)s Womenâ(TM)s Driesscheâ(TM (Score:2)
UCIâ(TM)s Womenâ(TM)s Driesscheâ(TM)s
This is 2016. Why is this happening? We still cannot have a means of presenting text electronically via the Internet without fuckups like this?
Re: News for nerds? (Score:2)
Just because mechanical engineers aren't real scientist doesn't mean they aren't nerds. We got to throw them a bone every once in a while. Clearly mechanical doping is for them.
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Re:News for nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
ItÃ(TM)s a good story to demonstrate SlashdotÃ(TM)s lack of Unicode support. ThatÃ(TM)s a nerdy issue!
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If you want it so badly, you should try appealing to the new /. overlords to turn it on in the code. (Yes, even the ACs know the support exists, but is currently disabled.)
The "New Overlords" already said that it is in the queue. Give it some time.
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I think the market for electric bikes that sacrifice much performance for not looking like an electric bike from the outside is quite small. This thing is only 50-100w whereas you'd want at least 400w for a proper electric bike.
Huh?
But don't let the fact that you are consistently wrong change anything.
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The UCI have confirmed that a motor has been found, while Driessche is saying the bike is identical to her own, but actually owned by a friend who cycled the course before the event, and the bike just accidentally happened to be cleaned and tuned for her own use due to a mix up by a mechanic...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cyc... [bbc.co.uk]
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My client merely found these drugs and was on the police station to turn them in when he was arrested!
We had the Chewbacca Defense. Now we have the Ashley Roachclip Defense!
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The CX Magazine article said it best: [cxmagazine.com]
"As to why someone would bring an obviously illegal bike into the pits, even if not to be used, is inexplicable. It’s not much different than inviting an EPO user to bring vials over to your trailer that you don’t plan to use."
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There is a video on one of the sites linked to from the summery which shows what appears to be someone activating a switch under the weather guard on the left handlebar which spins the rear tire by itself.
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sumdum - summer is a season, articles have summaries.
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Tell that to spell checker. Evidently
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Re:First? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:First? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, a better example of highly suspicious and quite likely to be motor assisted cheating is Fabian Cancellara in Roubaix-Vlaanderen in the second part of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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If it is so simple to go that much faster, why don't the others just switch to a higher gear?
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http://www.fastcoexist.com/303... [fastcoexist.com]
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>I read one of the reports where the rider confessed.
No. You didn't.
>I consider that confirmed.
You're the only one.
E
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Right. She didn't read it.
Keep on trying to ask me to read the article you insist on not reading...
SHE DIDN'T RIDE IT.
SHE DIDN'T APOLOGIZE FOR RIDING IT.
SHE DIDN'T CONFESS.
IT'S NOT CONFIRMED
You made that stuff up in your post. And then you said you believe it.
Good for you.
Sucks, donut?
E
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Because it didn't. Read the article. Don't add extra words you think are missing from her sentences
YOU SAID she confessed.
She did not.
YOU SAID she admitted to riding it
She did not.
Seriously, go detach from reality on your own now. I CAN'T QUOTE A NEGATIVE but you have not at all quoted her agreeing with any of the stuff you made up.
E
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You Flems have dirty mouths.
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http://www.fastcoexist.com/303... [fastcoexist.com]