You’d certainly notice the fit was wrong, unless she had the same fit which is quite possible but unlikely, I doubt she’d notice any difference in weight though. Cyclists like to think they are weight sensitive and I’m sure that over the course of a race the tiny percentages all add up but I doubt any cyclist would know straight away that their bike was a few hundred grams heavier. Particularly given that this was a cyclocross event and any difference in bike weight would be swamped by variations in surface conditions. Cyclocross is essentially cross-country mountain biking ridden on a modified road bike.
Edit: But then, she pulled out of the race due to a mechanical problem didn’t she? Maybe that was it, she’d noticed something wrong with the bike.
An elite U-23 woman will have a threshold power of around 4.5 W kg-1 (someone like Froome or Contador would be around 6+). They’re pretty light as a rule in women’s cyclocross, so you’re looking at 250 W ballpark for their threshold - the power they can sustain for one hour. It will oscillate well above and a bit below with the changing effort of the race, which also lasts for one hour.
So if the motor can deliver 250 W to the wheels for 30 mins (can it really do as much as that?) then that is a crushingly huge amount, in the context of a cyclocross race. Too much, actually, as it would be impossible to hide the fact you’d be basically soft-pedalling whilst everyone else is burying themselves to stay on your wheel. Even 20W from a motor would make a difference at that level.
It does look like the power numbers are just for the final climb, based solely on work against gravity. But you’re not going to be going all that fast when climbing steeply, so there’s not much wind resistance during a climb. [Which, combined with fact that wind resistance goes up as square of the speed, is why riders like to try and attack on a climb: more energy is going to speeding them up than to overcoming the extra wind resistance]. Perhaps a better criticism of those power numbers is that since this is the final climb, the tour leaders may well be in ‘cruise to victory’ mode, rather than peak power mode.
The cost of the motor system is north of $3000, making it highly implausible that she bought a bike that “just happens” to have include a hidden motor, that adds a bunch of weight, that she never was told about.
And when she bought the bike, she’d immediately do things like adjust the seat, check the tension in the cables, and so on, during the course of which it’d be impossible to miss at least the on switch.
No shit. My wife is an IronMan. I’m her Sherpa. While I don’t ride her bike, it is so customized that there is no way I would mistake it for an ‘identical’ bike. The rider would know immediately that it wasn’t their bike. Bullshit excuse.
Yeah that’s getting up there. A couple of bottles of water. I can’t feel the difference between having water bottles on the bike and not but maybe she should have been able to.
Would she? She’s a world class cyclist who apparently has a very involved father and a team with dedicated mechanics. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t touch the bike other than to ride it. Heck even among recreational cyclists there are a subset whose solution to a rubbing brake is to leave it at the bike shop for repair. Still you’d think she’d notice something different about it. I see that the supposed owner of the bike has come forward, I wonder how much he’s been paid.
Another article says she was just handed the wrong bike by a trainer, which looked identical to her bike, but was actually owned by a friend. Either she’s trying to cover her derrière or she has the worst luck EVER. I’m leaning to the former.
A pro cycling expert on a local NPR piece today said that you will always notice that the motor is there based on how it’s coupled to the drive train. Either you feel a drag if it’s off or you feel a boost if it’s on. Perhaps someone in the thread can support/refute this expert’s claim? I was surprised by it since it doesn’t seem like it should be hard to engineer it to be fairly loss-free when turned off or disengaged.
Not only would it have to be an exact same model that fit her. It would need the same -
[ul]
[li]Hydration set up[/li][li]Nutrition[/li][li]Computer[/li][li]Seat[/li][li]Peddles (might not notice a difference there)[/li][li]Handle bars[/li][li]Wheels[/li][/ul]
And any other things that riders customize.
Since the owner of the cheating bike has supposedly come forward. I would really like to see these two machines compared.
Now, I suppose it is also possible that she actually owns both bikes, and they really are identical (except for the motor)
I’ve ridden a bike with an electric motor assist. Not a hidden one, this was an “e-bike” that was designed specifically for this purpose. At least with that bike there was no way you could not know it wasn’t powered, it felt very different. Actually it was really cool, the only way I could describe it was that it made you feel more “powerful”.
I’m just a very occasional bike rider, a pro should be able to tell much more easily. Then again, I don’t know what her particular bike was like, maybe it was far more subtle.
If these are team bikes they are quite likely identical. Wheels, handle bars, computer, seat, and water bottle holders all possibly provided by team sponsors. Nutrition isn’t something you’d normally have on your bike, that’d go in your pockets.
