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Cycling Officials Combat ‘Mechanical Doping’

Related Topics: Brian Cookson, Cycling

There may be no Olympic sport as dependent on technology as cycling, whose space-age, feather-light carbon fiber bikes can cost more than a car and make the difference between a gold medal and nothing.

That has also made the sport ripe for an entirely new kind of doping: mechanical.

It has long been rumored that riders were finding ways to hide tiny electrical motors in their frames, or were using magnets in their wheels, to produce a couple of extra watts of power. But it was not until a young cyclocross racer was discovered to have a motor hidden in her bike frame last year that it became a prominent issue.