Cancellara Motor Doping

[tuscanyswe]

Originally Posted by r_mutt

the gap in question is formed up and over the top of the Muur. Fabs is sitting down and putting an enormous gap on an. on-form Boonen who is standing up and powering at his limit. Once Tom goes over the top, you can see the gap is to Cancellara tremendous- all in about 1 minute. watch the video.

do I believe he had a motor that year? considering that he had at least 2 bike changes for no obvious reason that race, yes I do.

edit: i dont care if he used one or not when i look at those photos as I've done many times i say he certainly could have.. Just saying he did not go 130 or anything close to it.

[bigbill]

Meh, Boonen was all over his bike trying to get every last bit of power out of his blown up legs. Fabs stayed in form and climbed while seated. To me, it looks like a rider with more wattage using it to his advantage for the final part of the climb. Fabs was a great time trial rider and didn't win all those races by crawling all over his bike.

If he had a motor, that would be pretty significant given how many years ago with the technology that existed then.

[r_mutt]

Originally Posted by tuscanyswe

edit: i dont care if he used one or not when i look at those photos as I've done many times i say he certainly could have.. Just saying he did not go 130 or anything close to it.

yes- he was probably closer to 13 rather than 130.

[r_mutt]

Originally Posted by macaroon

The "on-form Boonen" was pedalling squares.

one could say that he was pedaling squares because he was trying to stay with an assisted rider. remember that's a 20% grade that fabian was just non-chalantly sitting down and powering away from one of the best classics riders of all time.

[MattTuck]

Anyone have a record of times up the Kapelmuur over the years?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/canc...r-of-flanders/

That above article lists the following.


2010 Cancellara: 1:47
2011 Cancellara/Chavenel: 1:52
2011 Gilbert: 1:43


Would like to get Boonen's time for 2010 on whatever stretch they are using for comparison.

My biggest issue with looking at video and extrapolating from that it is the poential for frame invariance problems. Clearly the 2010 Roubaix attack was when the rest of the group was either soft pedaling or coasting. And there was virtually no response for a number of seconds. I think Boonen was eating at the back of the main group. Any hard attack under those conditions would look unnatural if you presumed everyone else was riding hard. It is nearly impossible to not look at the videos and make relative comparisons because absolute measurement is very difficult for the brain to do.

[r_mutt]

I think the point made by the conspiracy theorists in his P/R attack is that Cancellera's cadence barely changed while he was 4-5 wheels back but his speed all of a sudden jumped 10 mph. It certainly looks quite odd in the video.


It's hard to judge times up the Muur as well. Who knows what the pace was on the bottom slopes- as a matter of fact, right before the attack on the Muur it looks like they are just going endurance or tempo at best. It's only the last 50-100 meters when we see Cancellera attack.

[MattTuck]

This is what conspiracy theorists do when confronted with actual facts. They discount the facts as being unreliable or imperfect and rely instead on innuendo and supposition.

Yes, I understand it is not a perfect approach to time from bottom to the top of the hill, but it is the best information we've currently got. If you want to go through old races and time a portion of the climb, let's do it. I'd be game to help watch some videos and collect the actual data so we can have a fact based discussion. Let's decide what section of the hill you think is the relevant yardstick, and we'll see what video evidence is up on youtube.

As far as the cadence thing, aren't people alleging he used a motor? To my knowledge, the motors available today (and at the time) acted by spinning the cranks. So absent of shifting, you'd see an increase in cadence if he were using a motor. In the presence of shifting, cadence has no relevance because we know that shifting can either change or maintain a cadence given a change in power.

[r_mutt]

Sorry but none of us have facts until we see power data. That's the only fact that matters. All we have are educated guesses. We don't know what kind of motors existed at time. It has since been suggested that there are motors in the rear wheel although there have been none found.

[fignon's barber]

How you can watch a 2 minute clip from a 260km race and determine a guy is cheating is beyond me. Anyone who has ever done a race knows that it's all about cumulative efforts. As MattTuck says, time up climb was normal. Boonen had a little better vantage point than Gaimon, and didn't seem to doubt Fab's legitimacy. ATMO,it comes down to:
Cancellara= class
Boonen=class
Gaimon= no class

[r_mutt]

in the history of cycling, how many cyclists have actually complained about doping of any kind while still riding in the pro peloton? This is your evidence?

[BobO]

Originally Posted by r_mutt

one could say that he was pedaling squares because he was trying to stay with an assisted rider. remember that's a 20% grade that fabian was just non-chalantly sitting down and powering away from one of the best classics riders of all time.

It should be noted that this is consistent with how he rode his entire career. He was/is a very powerful rider in a seated TT position. That he accelerated while seated isn't significant in and of itself.

[CunegoFan]

Originally Posted by r_mutt

in the history of cycling, how many cyclists have actually complained about doping of any kind while still riding in the pro peloton? This is your evidence?

Wiggins used to complain about it. Then after never having placed in the top 100 of the Tour, he made a huge, unexplained jump in performance, placed fourth, and stopped complaining about doping. Coincided with about the same time his doctor was signing off on his bogus TUEs for roids.

Then there is the example of LeMond, who still refuses to say anything about the doped pros he raced against but found religion about those racing long after he retired.

I guess the point pretty much stands.

[FlashUNC]

Originally Posted by r_mutt

the gap in question is formed up and over the top of the Muur. Fabs is sitting down and putting an enormous gap on an. on-form Boonen who is standing up and powering at his limit. Once Tom goes over the top, you can see the gap is to Cancellara tremendous- all in about 1 minute. watch the video.

do I believe he had a motor that year? considering that he had at least 2 bike changes for no obvious reason that race, yes I do.

To be more accurate, the bulk of that gap is formed when Spartacus rails the downhill on the backside, even though he did open a nice healthy advantage on the hill itself. Arguably the best descender in the peloton could totally open a 200m gap on a guy still trying to crest the hill.

It ain't as if the muur opens up to a pancake flat plateau. Faboo is going downhill.

[choke]

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands." - Douglas Adams

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by r_mutt

Sorry but none of us have facts until we see power data. That's the only fact that matters. All we have are educated guesses. We don't know what kind of motors existed at time. It has since been suggested that there are motors in the rear wheel although there have been none found.

Stepping aside from the current debate for a second, I can't tell if you're actually interested in using an unbiased process to arrive at a conclusion. Asking for more data is out of the conspiracy theorist handbook. And when FC's data is provided, it will not be enough (even if it doesn't show anything suspicious). Because then people will want to see Boonen's data for comparison sake. Or the rest of the group in the case of Roubaix. And when that is not enough, they will say that the data was doctored. It is honestly out of the same playbook used by people who rely on logical fallacies to win an argument.

Is there an actual hypothesis you'd like to check against the power data? Do you have an analysis that, given a power data file, would unequivocally prove or disprove the cheating allegation? Or do you simply view the lack of data as a signal of dishonesty and that leads you to conclude that it was more likely than not that cheating occurred?

Typically it is incumbent upon the accuser to produce evidence of guilt. What actual evidence do we have here other than a sense that an acceleration was too fast? Look, cycling doesn't have the best track record, so I'd even get on board with an investigation that looked a little deeper (maybe at the power data ) if we had some objective measure that something fishy was going on (therefore my offer to help watch videos and try to generate a list of 'normal' times on that section of the Kapelmuur with which to compare FC's 2010 time).

Unwillingness to pass even that basic and easy burden of proof, dismissing it before we even have a finding (for OR against) is a huge red flag to me... It says that no matter the outcome, it wouldn't have any effect on your belief about this. If you've already ruled out changing your mind, even in the face of (exculpatory) evidence, why should we think you'd change your mind after seeing normal power data?

And to be clear, I'm not an FC apologist. I enjoyed watching him race, he most certainly doped during some/all of his career, but the so called evidence against him related to a motor in his bike (that I've seen) is so flimsy and circumstantial, I can't believe the UCI even responded on this topic again.

PS. Time is a fact. Over a known distance, time gives us speed. Not sure why you think that is somehow less compelling than a power file.