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.