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Velonews has an update http://www.velonews.com/2017/09/news/report-ucis-test-hidden-motors-ineffective_447310 [velonews.com] on a topic we covered previously https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/01/31/1618203 [soylentnews.org]

It seems that the present method for checking for hidden motors involves an iPad with an external inductive sensor. This gives frequent false positives and as such the race officials tend to ignore it...

“Doctor Bernd Valeske inspected a bike slowly,” read the article. “Halfway down the seat tube, he stops, the display reads 10 out of 10 intensity. Is the cylindrical battery truly here?

“Valeske continues, and surprise, the tablet shows another alarm, 10 out of 10, at another point in the same tube. Then a third one in the cassette and a fourth in the down tube.”

Valeske put the frame under an X-ray that revealed the prohibited motor was only in the third location. The other alarms were just natural magnetic fields produced by the materials.

The article explained that the UCI’s inspectors will let the bike pass in the case of such false positives because they are in a rush to test so many bicycles at the start of races. At the Tour de France, 22 teams of nine riders each raced. Riders each have one or two spare bikes.

Valeske passed the tablet over an induction magnet wheel that cost 20,000 euros. The display remained at zero as he passed the wheel and indicated it was “clean.” An X-ray machine, however, showed the plates and wires of the high-tech motor.

Such wheels can produce 60 watts. Hidden frame motors may generate 250. The UCI has only caught one cheating cyclist in its reported 42,500 tests over two years. Belgian Femke Van den Driessche, then 19, was caught using a bike with a motor in its tube at the 2016 cyclocross worlds.

Original Submission