Thermal camera footage allegedly shows seven pro cyclists using illegal motors

[Puncture Kid]

Brush up on your French

 

http://fittish.deadspin.com/secret-thermal-camera-footage-allegedly-shows-seven-pro-1771492666

[intern]

One thing you can be sure of, if there is a way to cheat, cyclists are doing it. Our sport's greatest heroes and legends are cheats (Merckx, Kelly, Anquetil, Armstrong, Ulrich, Zulle, etc etc etc etc..and most of them are still very much a part of the sport.

[SeanMort]

I have a fair amount of experience with thermal imaging camera detection, and the camera would pick up heat detection from anything that emits heat, whether it's a living breathing organism, an operational mechanism/motor, a battery under load, or two surfaces creating friction by rubbing against each other (such as perhaps a seatpost inside a tube ??). Thermal detection cannot work through glass (unless it was right up against it) or water. If a motor was hidden inside a frame tube and had not yet been used/activated (ie at the beginning of a race) it's doubtful that I would be picked up with a thermal camera, so therefore a thermal bike check can only fairly be used at the end of a race, or at crucial points in a race, such as at the end of a hill climb (before the mechanism/motor has had time to cool down). I'm excluding magnets and other indirect methods of electronic propulsion from my assumptions here.

[Clinton H]

What's a load of BS , no one can argue if they had concrete proof on the day they would never let it slide . The owner of this super camera would have been a national hero on the day to bring this evidence forward and catch they guys red handed . Why only mouth off afterwards ? Seems more like some journalist looking for attention .

Not fact but just my opinion .

[SwissVan]

So where is the film footage... not going to believe rumours...particularly from French and Italian TV stations

[kosmonooit]

I'm not convinced that FLIR image is conclusive evidence... and why are the soles of the shoes about the same temp?

 

And the Li Ion battery would fill the tube surely and they would be warm although there might be techniques to mask / screen the thermal radiation but then the batteries would surely cook

[Bonus]

Stealth Batteries . . . .

[BeegMig]

One thing you can be sure of, if there is a way to cheat, cyclists are doing it. Our sport's greatest heroes and legends are cheats (Merckx, Kelly, Anquetil, Armstrong, Ulrich, Zulle, etc etc etc etc..and most of them are still very much a part of the sport.

But not Hinault !

He was born angry. Never needed to take something for performance, which, had a aggro side effect.

[EmptyB]

Sounds like a load of bollocks to me....mostly fiction!

[DuncanCT]

For English, turn on subtitles then change to auto translate. 

[Christie]

This further confirms the rumours that have been around for the last 2 years, plus some other things:

Cheating is a way of life for a lot of pro cyclists.

Like with blood doping, the UCI is not trying that hard to catch the cheats, but rather to "protect money in the sport".

As for the journalists who made this story: film some more, name and shame.

[kosmonooit]

The UCI are saying FLIR is not conclusive:

 

http://velonews.competitor.com/2016/05/news/uci-thermal-cameras-unreliable-to-catch-cheats_404318

 

They have some other magnetic field emitter-detector sensor gizmo