Lance Armstrong accused of riding a motorized bike in TDF win

Someone must've watched a lot of old TdF footage to find 3 clips of Lance scratching his butt.

Lance would never cheat!

One of the best videos (and oldest) you can watch on this

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

The clips of Cancellara are pretty incredible. The first one, the guys are riding at maybe 50km/h and he, while never leaving the saddle, just rides away from them as if they were complete hacks. It appears like he can change up to his highest gear without altering his cadence at all and that means a crazy burst of effortless speed.

But the best one is the climb on the cobbles vs Boonen in Vlaanderen (5:36). Boonen was a superb climber on sh$t surfaces like this because that's what he grew up riding on and Cancellera who wasn't a climber but a great flat rider, just effortlessly rides away from him sitting down in the saddle on the steepest part of the climb. All of this happens moments after he does something with his right hand near his shifter. He absolutely destroys Boonen - it's comical.

I liked the point someone made earlier and agree with it with respect to all cyclists - at some point if it could help you and you could get away with it, nothing was off the table. And also remember that the inspection of bikes immediately after crossing the line in stages/races has only just come practice in the last 5 or so years - before then who would know?

What does surprise me is how resistant people are to believing this (mech doping) could be a thing. Almost like the crew of people that truly believed PED doping was a stretch and not common place, transferred their odd optimism to this concept. The whole "people would have known and hence come forwards...." argument is such conjecture because unless you were in a pro team with a guy like Lance, you would know the details of the hierarchy etc and ultimately if you just have to hide it from 6-8 people is it really that crazy? With respect to Lance if he, Johan and his personal bike mechanic knew then this could easily be kept secret.

Let me repeat I'm not saying the allegations are true - no opinion on that specifically, but there is no way I would dismiss them and the concept that others were doing the same things (as evidenced in the Cancellara video above).

This is really interesting, thanks. Looks pretty bad there for FC for sure.

wow, very interesting

I mean the OP made me laugh with the link, but apart from that, there's no way someone like him would ever cheat. I've just read an article about disc wheels cause I've been interested in trying them out for a few years now and I finally have the financial ability to do so. What I'm trying to say is imagine what people thought about Francesco Moser when he destroyed the world record for speed. Pretty sure it was full of rumors that he cheated, but now years later we all know about disc wheels. Of course, it's not the exact same scenario, but it just reminded me of that. I can leave the link to the article that I've read about all of this in https://sportcoaching.co.nz/disc-wheel-aerodynamics/

Interesting words from Boonen after many years:

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

What does surprise me is how resistant people are to believing this (mech doping) could be a thing. Almost like the crew of people that truly believed PED doping was a stretch and not common place, transferred their odd optimism to this concept. The whole "people would have known and hence come forwards...." argument is such conjecture because unless you were in a pro team with a guy like Lance, you would know the details of the hierarchy etc and ultimately if you just have to hide it from 6-8 people is it really that crazy? With respect to Lance if he, Johan and his personal bike mechanic knew then this could easily be kept secret.

LeMond is pushing the theory, but it's just a bit surprising that none of the former USPS riders who previously provided testimony against Lance et al have mentioned mechanical doping. If only two or three people on USPS were aware, sure it could be kept secret with enough payouts. However, that does not seem feasible that only a few people knew, or at least strongly suspected it.

Well, if we can have shoes with carbon plates that propel the runner forward I don’t see anything wrong with motorized bike. Same thing in my opinion. I mean, after all, technology! Right?