Zolder, Belgium - The head of cycling's governing body, the UCI, confirmed yesterday that a concealed motor had been detected on a competitor's bike at the World Cyclo-cross Championships on Saturday, in what is an unprecedented and deeply troubling first case for the sport.
Brian Cookson told a press conference in Zolder, Belgium, that it was “absolutely clear that there was technological fraud. There was a concealed motor.”
The practice, known as “motorised doping” has been the subject of many rumours for the past six years, but no cases have ever been discovered - until the weekend. It is widely known that the addition of a small electric motor hidden in a bike could save a rider up to 100 watts of energy while pedalling, significantly boosting performance.
Saturday's “doped” bike belonged to young Belgian cyclist Femke van den Driessche, one of the favourites in the women's Under-23 category race. In the event, Van den Driessche was forced to abandon because of a mechanical incident.
The inaugural Under-23 women's cyclo-cross race itself was won by Britain's Evie Richards.
TIP OF THE ICEBERG?
Van den Driessche, 19, insisted later she was innocent and claimed that the bike, which was her spare and not used in the race, belonged to a friend. But fears that this discovery could be the tip of an iceberg are already spreading.
The fundamental issue is that if a low-profile rider in their teens from a cycling discipline with a relatively small international fan base can gain access to this kind of material, motorised doping may already be better established in other, richer, parts of the sport. There is the additional worry that motorised doping is arguably much harder to organise without a team's knowledge than a rider who opts, on his or her own account, to take banned drugs.
Last May, retired three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond warned to specialist website Cyclingnews that: “These motors exist, I've ridden a bike with one and I've met the inventor and talked about it. If people think they don't exist, they're fooling themselves, so I think it's a justified suspicion.” To try and curb those doubts, he called for riders' changes of bike during races - as is currently permitted - to be banned.
In France, L'Equipe has already claimed the bombshell discovery has distant echoes of the Festina doping affair of 1998. When news broke of the seemingly unimportant arrest of a Festina team worker on the Franco-Belgian border a few days before the Tour 18 years ago, it seemed fairly inconsequential but the affair snowballed into one of sport's biggest ever doping scandals.
One crucial difference, though, is that much of the Festina 1998 scandal hinged on the widespread use in the peloton of a banned drug, the blood-booster EPO, which was undetectable. A test is already in place for catching motorised doping cheats and it has been used in all major races, including the Tour de France last year.
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES
Furthermore, for the weekend's World Cyclo-cross Championships which was the first major cycling event of the year, the UCI had incorporated new technological advances into its testing for motorised doping. The penalties for motorised doping, officially termed “technological fraud” are certainly severe, with any rider found guilty given a minimum suspension of six months and a fine of anything between 20,000 and 200,000 Swiss Francs (£13,800- £138,000).
Cookson issued a stern warning to anyone considering using a motor in the future: “To all the people who want to cheat, yesterday we sent a clear message: we will catch you and we will punish you because our technology to detect such cheating works.”