The 2019 Tour de France has been, so far, one of the most exciting Tours in years and also blessedly low on scandal. Few major crashes have ruined the chances of top competitors (aside from yesterday鈥檚 disqualification of Luke Rowe and Tony Martin), no riders have been busted for doping, and no one has been caught with a hidden motor.听
Motors, you might remember, were a fashionable topic of discussion a couple of years ago, thanks to a 60 Minutes investigation that rather Lance Armstrong had used one in the Tour as far back as 1999.听
This year, cycling鈥檚 governing body, the UCI, has seemed to take the threat听seriously. It recently confirmed that听at May鈥檚 Giro d鈥橧talia, it for hidden motors, using a mobile X-ray machine and its tablet-scanner technology. And in June, the UCI promised both an updated version of that tablet scanner and a new, that can supposedly detect hidden motors being used at any point in a race. The UCI says the technology was tested at last year鈥檚 Tour.
And yet, over听several years of testing, the UCI has caught exactly one elite athlete with a motor, cyclocross racer Femke Van den Driessche, in January 2016. (Amateurs are sporadically caught, including in Italy earlier in July.) Despite that, there鈥檚 a persistent and vocal minority in the sport that believes motors have not only been used but continue to be. On forums and social media, this group听dissects听attacks that seem a little too sharp, a rider who , a wheel that continues to spin at a suspiciously fast rate after a rider crashes.
Are professional racers using hidden, banned motors today? I am somewhat skeptical. A motor conspiracy would be more complex than simple pharmaceutical doping, and the penalty if caught鈥攁 six-month ban for the whole team鈥攚ould likely lead to loss of title sponsorship, a death knell for the entire organization. In the 鈥渕aybe鈥 column, most point to Fabian Cancellara鈥檚 win at the 2010 Tour of Flanders, where he broke听away from Tom Boonen for the win. (Last year, Boonen himself said听 about whether Cancellara won fair and square.)
So I think it鈥檚 smart for the UCI to continue to look for motors. But just like and , the has a to it. 鈥淟ook how hard we鈥檙e looking!鈥 it听seems to say. 鈥淏ehold our investment into inscrutable-but-futuristic-seeming detection technologies!鈥
See, that鈥檚 the thing: the technology as it鈥檚 claimed to. A 2017 investigation by France鈥檚 Stade 2 TV (note: you鈥檒l need a VPN to view this video)听showed that the tablets are easily confused by other mechanical elements in a bike, leading to both false positives and negatives. The UCI has never said how the tablets work, and its officials鈥 technique in the past has been so that it has听raised questions about whether they actually can find anything, even if the technology itself is reliable. Relatively few bikes are x-rayed and, in any case, is widely available. The prototype tracker technology is completely unknown and unvetted. It鈥檚 simply too early to say if it鈥檚 effective.
And so听I make this offer. I鈥檒l take over the UCI鈥檚 testing program with a transparent, relatively cheap approach that will definitively prove whether or not a bike has a motor. It鈥檚 simple: we will physically look for motors, with our eyes and stuff.
For this task, I will need a set of hex wrenches, a flashlight, about 4,000 hologram stickers, a calibrated scale, and a spreadsheet.
Where I鈥檒l Check for Motors
There are only three spots to place a motor on a bike: in the rear hub, the rear rim and frame, or the main frame tubes. (Front-wheel motors aren鈥檛 impossible, but听for pro racing, they raise a number of challenges around issues like handling.)
I haven鈥檛 yet seen听or even heard rumors听of听a motor system that can fit inside a standard-size rear bicycle hub, but we鈥檒l allow that they could be hidden in the full carbon-disc wheels used in time trials, or that maybe has come up with something.听听
The fabled rim-based motors are only slightly less fantastical: science-fiction-like听electromagnetic drives, of which 听谤辞耻驳丑濒测听. (Yes, I鈥檓 aware of the various videos of Istvan 鈥淪tefano鈥 Varjas鈥檚 supposed custom electromagnetic wheel system. But various videos only show conventional wheel motors with oversize hubs听or inert rim cutaways that don鈥檛 account for the extensive frame modifications you鈥檇 need.) Still, we鈥檒l humor the idea that electromagnetic听wheel drives could possibly, potentially, maybe exist.
Crank-based motors, of course, are available even to amateur cyclists听and would be relatively easy to incorporate into race bikes. That said, they鈥檙e also the easiest to detect.听
How I鈥檒l Check for Motors
Testing for all three kinds of motors will be听a quick three-step process. At the end of each stage, the top three finishers, overall leader, one rider from the day鈥檚 main breakaway, and five other riders selected at random will be听escorted by official tech chaperones straight from the finish line to bike control, much like how doping control works.听
Step 1: Check for crank-based systems
Any motor driving the crankarm/bottom-bracket assembly has to interface with a gear integrated into the bottom-bracket spindle. That means听when you slide the crankarms out, you鈥檒l see a gear on the bottom-bracket听spindle. If you want to get crazy, pull the seatpost, too, and visually inspect the seat tube and bottom-bracket shell/lower tube area with a flashlight. If there鈥檚 a motor, you鈥檒l see it. This shouldn鈥檛 take long; a competent mechanic can remove a crankset from a bike in a couple of minutes with basic tools.
Step 2: Check for wheel-based systems
Any motor incorporated into a rear wheel鈥攅ither the hub or the rim鈥攚ill add a nontrivial amount of weight. So听in motor control, officials will remove the rear wheel, noting the make and model of the rim and hub (bonus points for serial numbers), the number of spokes, the measured depth and width of the rim, the make and model of the tire with listed and measured width, and the cassette range.
Then听officials will weigh the entire rear-wheel assembly and compare that weight to the total weight of all the components, calculated听from a spreadsheet with manufacturers鈥 listed weights for each item, with a reasonable (say, 5听percent) tolerance to allow for variances in component weight. Any wheel that鈥檚 outside that range will be听confiscated for further testing, namely sawing the damn thing apart to see what鈥檚 inside. Think of the destructive element as a penalty for manufacturers who routinely fudge listed weights for marketing purposes.
The entire process will take perhaps ten听minutes per bike. Yes, team mechanics will have to reassemble them, but a competent one should be able to do this in less than five minutes. It鈥檚 not an onerous task.
鈥淎丑补!鈥听you say. 鈥淚鈥檝e found a flaw in your elegant plan.鈥听In some past alleged instances of motor use in cycling, teams have supposedly relied on a kind of elaborate three-card monte that allows riders to use motorized bikes and then change them out so that听unsuspecting officials only ever scan a 鈥渃lean鈥 bike. So…
Step 3 (technically, this would be听Step 0): Make the whole system verifiable
As each rider goes to sign in at the start of each stage, officials will place a tamper-evident hologram sticker on the frame, the kind widely used in anti-counterfeiting. These stickers are designed to break apart when removed, so they couldn鈥檛 be switched to a different bike midstage. Versions exist with unique QR or bar codes that would prevent falsification; there鈥檚 even that would allow each bike to be registered as it crosses the start and finish lines and key stage points like climb summits and intermediate sprints. Mechanics will remove the stickers each evening. Each morning, riders will get fresh stickers at check-in.
If a rider finishes on a different bike due to a crash or a mechanical problem, officials at the finish will see the stickerless frame (spotters can help identify bike changes during the race from TV footage, as well as with the RFID logs)听and test both the original bike, on the team car, and the finish bike. The absence of the original bike at the finish would count as a missed test, the same protocol used in anti-doping. You get two strikes per team. A third strike counts as a positive test.
No pricey, cumbersome mobile X-ray machines. No feckless wand-waving听with tablets that may or may not actually work. No fancy prototype technology that鈥檚 even more obscure. Just a bunch of sharp-eyed folks, some wrenches, a scale and spreadsheet, and some shiny stickers, like you used to get in kindergarten. The result: low-tech, affordable, visually verifiable, yes/no answers on whether racers are using motors or not.
Come on, UCI, get serious about this. Put an end to the corrosive speculation, or catch some cheats and kill the problem. It鈥檚 simple. If you do it, I鈥檒l even give you a shiny gold star.