An interview with Greg LeMond by Shane Stokes appeared in Cycling Tips this week.
Here are some of the key points:
Apparently Greg has been speaking out about mechanical doping for some time but was not being heard. He had to build his own bike frame with a motor in it, which he showed at last year’s Tour de France to prove it.
“I knew you kind of had to catch somebody for people to believe it…It is like doping – you hear it, and you know it is true. Everybody wanted to deny it exists because they didn’t want to face reality and disappointment…It is actually still an omerta-type deal, a case of ‘let’s not talk about it, let’s pretend it doesn’t exit.’ Even though, deep down, people know it is true.”
He was convinced in 2013 when he looked more closely at cycling, which he hadn’t been watching as much until then. It was the Cancellara “affair” that made him wonder what was going on.
He’s come up with six suggestions to help stop the problem.
1. Take It Seriously. Too many people don’t want to believe it. And those who do know, aren’t doing anything about it. He believes the UCI has known about it for years but have not acted. More bikes could be tested at races by an independent group, not the races themselves.
2. He wants to ban bike changes. When he raced, bikes were changed only in worst case scenarios. Now they are changed often and thinks that’s suspicious. There should be rules on when, where and how often.
3. Bikes should be tagged and sequestered after the finish. In Formula One, the cars are monitored and punishments are in place for violations. The UCI currently just does random checks. Last year’s Tour only did a very small amount of checks. He’d like to see every single bike examined.
“They need to tag the bikes. And any bike that is changed during the race needs to go straight to inspection. And every rider when they cross the finish line needs to go in and have their bike sequestered. They cannot leave the finish line with their bikes.”
4. Specialized Scanners and Equipment should be used.
When these examinations were firstdone, the UCI used tiny cameras inserted into the bottom bracket and seat tube areas to visually check for motors. This was both cumbersome and slow. Magnetic resistance tests are currently in use but LeMond thinks they need to do more. He believes they should use thermal imaginng guns to pick up the heat from the motors. And also use an x-ray scanner. There’s a portable machine that costs $1.5 million that’s like the airport scanner-just pass each bike through it and it will find everything hidden inside. The annual doping budget for the UCI is much higher than the cost of the machine.
5. Mechanical Fraud should test everything including wheels.
6. Penalties: These need to be strict and direct and well known. The financial penalties also need to be specific and more than what they currently are.
“What I would like to see is a bond posted by every team for doping, a bond that equates to the damage they do to the sport. Let’s say a team has a 30 million dollar budget. They need to post a bond that will pay out very large sums to the UCI or to the sport if they have riders involved in mechanical doping or positive tests.
“Teams want part of the TV revenue, they want to be part of the revenue stream. They have got to ensure that no more scandals are going to happen. They shouldn’t be just handed a financial penalty, they should be paying actual damages to the sport. And there should be automatic lifetime ban. Teams out, boom.”
