Motor doping may have happened at UCI WorldTour competitions before 2014: official

Mark Barfield, the UCI's technical manager, admitted to Australian journalists that mechanical doping may have been a problem at the global level in past years.

Todd Aalgaard December 14, 2015

Cyclists from Ryder Hesjedal to Chris Froome (pictured) have had their bikes scrutinized for motorized devices. UCI officials say 2016 will include yet more stringent checks.

From reports, 2015 has been marked by the disclosure of all kinds of doping. First, there were the scandals dominating cycling headlines within the last few months, with Katusha athletes implicated. Now, there’s what Mark Barfield, technical manager for the UCI, recently told Australian journalists.

“Motor doping”—also known as mechanical doping—may have happened at top-level UCI races, he admitted.

Speaking to Cycling Tips, an Australia-based website, Barfield dropped the bomb that mechanical doping may have indeed been a problem at past WorldTour competitions, before stringent checks for illicit motors were implemented in 2014. “I’ve done a lot of work in the past 10 months on this,” Barfield said. “I’ve spoken to a lot of engineers. I’ve tested 75 bikes for motors.” Still, though he admitted motor doping may have happened in the tours of previous years, he doesn’t think it’s currently a concern.

“I don’t believe any current WorldTour rider or team would be currently cheating on a product like this,” he said.

That it hasn’t happened since 2014, he suggested, is a testament to the efficacy of mandatory, random checks for motorized devices, a microscope many Elite riders’ bikes have fallen under. That improved testing is the reason why motor doping isn’t currently a problem, he says, with cyclists from Hesjedal to Froome seeing their rides shaken down. Such testing procedures aren’t going away anytime soon, either. On the contrary: in 2016, the UCI will roll out a new, improved method that allows officials to check more bikes across more disciplines.

Of the details, however, Barfield isn’t giving away much. “All I can tell you is it’s based on magnetic resistance,” he offered. “There is a lot of work to be done. We’ve done our first trial and we have more trials in February. Its first outing, fingers crossed, will be the World cyclocross championships. The testing we will have will be so easy to use that every commissaire will be able to use it.”

“[Testing],” he said, “will be able to go on far beyond the WorldTour races.”