Check out Wout at about 1:44 into the video. Anyone have a good explanation for his rear wheel’s behavior?
Not sure how Wout can be coasting in this position, then not pedal and still pass Van der Poel.
Or if you’re tired of this shit, here’s one of a owl going in circles.
Was his bike inspected?
Wow. To answer your question the *only* explanation I could realistically offer (as a completely ignorant layman) is some form of motor; which is, of course, the point of your post.
That looks so blatant it’s unbelievable.
Looks very suspicious.
Considering that he continued to effortlessly gain on the guy in front of him right after recovering from the almost crash.
Thats twice you busted him remember a week before Worlds too! He needs to give his jersey to MVdP!
Is that him again at 1:56 when he runs around the top of the hill? It looks like the tire was spinning, causing it to slide out while he was running.
BRRRAAAAAAAAPP
I have a great idea! Why not check the bikes of the top 10-15 finishers…
I saw that same thing on Saturday night from Eli atomic at the Oakland Supercross.
No way! Bikes don’t do that.
I see nothing suspicious. He’s making a pass and moves from the harder packed dry line into slick mud, and it looks like it even slopes away a bit as the course bends left. Under high power with those conditions, it’s not surprising that the tire would slide out.
I think I’m going to start marketing tin-foil hats. I’d make a killing!
Go through that frame by frame, the physics of that look pretty logical with the bike. He going full gas, moves right into a slick section, the bike slips out, he’s still max effort and tries to recover, counter steers, the rear wheel is now pointing 10 o’clock to the direction of travel (12 o’clock), hits the burned in section and goes airborne for a bit, hits pointed straight ahead and Wout pulls of a nice save.
You people listen to too much late-night radio or something. Nothing amiss here
Right after that he puts his hand on the top tube to put more weight on the rear wheel.
This is kind of like asking, “Was he drug tested?”
We all know those tests are only as effective as officials want them to be. Do you want to suspend the reigning world champion and bring even more dishonor to the sport that already was battered by an American who won seven straight Tour de France titles by cheating the system, too?
Just keep on keeping on, “Here we go again.”
No, Lance Armstrong didn’t use drugs. He couldn’t have – he never tested positive!
No, there’s no motors in those bikes. It’s not possible!
A year or two from now, you’ll be typing, “No way would any cyclist ever agree to genetic doping.”
Looks plausible. He was going faster because, you know, he appeared to be pedaling harder and stuff, like real hard. He then skidded, like when it’s slippery, you know … like mud. Then he hit something hard. There are sometime roots in the ground as well as rocks, or dry ground and stuff. The hard pokey-up thing/sudden traction launched him to the side interrupting the efforting. He then said to the Dutch dude, “Sorry bro for losing control and burning your leg with my tailpipe.”
Maybe we can just use common sense and physics instead of alternative facts? Everyone was so focused on them the missed Bigfoot walking in the woods in the background.
yea rope a dope, cause MVdP IS 100% clean.. lol..
That wheel looks like it is spinning way too fast for the speed he was going when it left the ground.
hahahahha.. I love cycling to stay fit, but these pros are toooooooo much.. that’s 100% cheating with a motor… “slipping in the mud. hitting a hard spot.. attacking”.. lol… this fucking guy cheats like every pro.. maybe this year he chose a motor over all the drugs these cheats take.. I love watching this shit..i love hearing the clowns defending these guys… drugs were given to soldiers 100+ years ago and been in sports the same amount of time.. lol.. this sport is a joke..
Here we go again – I think the issue is that when he starts sliding, he isn’t pedalling from that point on. And when the rear wheel leaves the ground, it appears to speed up. And then when the wheel makes contact with the ground again, he appears to accelerate.
Your explanation is fine, if he is actually pedalling his bike when all this is going on. But he wasn’t.
A few races ago,can’t remember which he got off the bike the rear wheel seemed to speed up similar to Ryder H?? at the giro when he hit the deck
http://road.cc/content/news/216993-motor-or-just-skidding-mechanical-doping-suspicions-raised-against-world-cyclo
I like owls.
I think it’s really a duck. An owl would’ve kept its head steady in the middle.
Oh, and he got all crossed up because of too much throttle.
I have a different take on this. And I do take this stuff VERY SERIOUSLY.
He was accelerating to get past the rider in front, his tire starts to slip, and as it’s slipping out it throws up mud but then hits dry dirt, gets 100% traction and now he goes flying in the air.
He actually looses ground on the rider he was passing.
I also think the UCI is all over this type of doping and would love to catch someone else.
Paranoid weirdo
Two really weird wheel spin-outs in as many weeks.
What do you think about how much attention the riders give to keeping both wheels on terra firma at all times when dismounted? You know how little kids look when they’re hiding something? I get that vibe here.
There is literally nothing suspicious here. He is making a move and he accelerated pass MVdP when MVdP grabs both handfuls of brakes immediately after contact.
Dude, come on. He had a full head of steam, swung left onto sketchy wet off camber to make the pass, lost traction with BOTH wheels, slid sideways until the rear wheel gained traction and popped him back in line. Yes, his wheel was still spinning, it’s called angular momentum, just because he slips sideways for half a second doesn’t mean the wheel stops going. And he didn’t “accelerate” after. He put VDP into the wall and they both coasted it out. Ridiculous accusation. People will believe anything.
He made a poor decision when he chose to pass there, but he obviously has incredible handling abilities and was able to ride it out. Did you even look at how hard he was smashing the pedals leading up to that pass? He was hauling ass.
What looked really odd to me was how he sped at warp ten to pass the riders in front of him at 00:24 to 00:29 like a super hero. How can anyone ride that much faster than everyone else?
Not Wout, someone else.
I love suspicious videos. but I have to say this one does not look irregular to me at all. each time I watched it, I felt the same.
As Mark Legg reports on Steve’s Facebook post, there was no bike testing, nor was there any drug testing.
Look at the way the wheel jumps as he corrects. Can’t be anything but a motor. Also note that the rider that bolts to the lead at the 30 second mark can’t control his rear wheel through the corner. I’d love to see that one up close. I’m guessing nobody complains because they all use a motor from time to time. Why doesn’t Cyclingnews.com or Velonews.com cover this? I’d love to see Zinn look into this. Heck, he’s probably out trying to recreate these as we speak just to test the theories.
My feelings are still hurt from Lance cheating. I don’t want to get hurt again. So, I’ll just assume everyone is cheating with drugs and motors.
I’m with Tom Prehn…I think he made a major effort just before the slip out so that Van der Poel wouldn’t get a gap. He was going a couple miles an hour faster… trying to pass him also… Slips…recovers… Van der Poel gets bumped… AND… if he had battery assist… he would have hit the battery juice again and won the race… The two riders are too evenly matched riders for mechanical dopping to be on his bike… Finally…FELT is his new sponsor… what a way to start a sponsorship…. SORRY STEVE
Each time I watched I felt the same as well. I felt “yep, he’s got a motor on that bike!”
Barney-My question is an explanation of his rear wheel. If anything it should have deaccelerated, not accelerated. It might be an optical illusion. I’ve been racing a while and never recall seeing anything like that.
Clearly a motor. Nothing else could explain it.
I just watched the Crash Compilation from Cyclocross Worlds. Not a single wheel does anything like that or anything like his did in the first event 4 weeks earlier. Of all the crash compilations I’ve watched from road racing, only Ryder’s rear wheel seems to have a mind of it’s own. This is so blatant that the UCI has to be covering this up not to sanction these riders.
I work in video and have some tools that allow me to run the video at 1/10th the normal speed. When I looked at the actual slipping of the rear tire, the tire hop, the rotation of front and rear wheels (relation of) in slow motion, nothing was suspect. (And it was suspect in real time).
But what is hugely suspect is that after the rear wheel hop and while he’s trying to keep the bike up, Wout doesn’t make any pedal strokes in the next 90 frames (appx 3 seconds) but still passes the rider to his left.
Only a motor could make that happen.
That’s the motor. Wout doesn’t pedal and still passes the guy on his left.
At 1:30 he’s not pedaling either up the right-hander from the lake, and his wheel spins. I didn’t buy into the Wout motor talk until this race, but I’ve found at least 10 obvious instances in this broadcast alone, and not a single similar action by any other bike.
Until today I thought this blogs author and readers had pretty good judgement. Not recognizing what is going on there by Steve is dissapointing. No reference to the head injury here.
I’m wondering why all those people so sure the sport is full of motors and drugs are wasting their time following the sport.
The motor would have to be in the hub, where else could it be? Not pedaling means it can not be in the seat tube turning the crank or chain. At 30 sec and 1 minute he is passed by another racer was that guy using a motor too?
I’m with John, there’s no way there is a crank mounted motor causing that. Once he starts to slide he gets his pedals to parallel to get maximum stability and keep eating turf. From that point on, he is coasting as he passes van der Poel. if there was a motor in the seat tube/crank spindle, it wouldn’t be doing anything since the cranks aren’t turning. So unless the motor is in the hub or rim, there is not way a motor caused the rear wheel to speed up in the air.
eggs Ackley what I was going to ask? he is running his bike up and around a hairpin, and his rear wheel beats him around the corner.
busted.
that was BIGFOOT? dang, I DID miss it.
Devil’s advocate here with a bit of potential logic….
First, he did accelerate prior and there was a bit of a decent. Then, the wheel was in a coasting situation since he wasn’t pedaling at the point of slip.
Now, let’s consider the tire’s aggressive mud tread. When the side knobs encounter a perfectly perpendicular force, they grab (just as they’re designed to do). BUT, if said tread encounters traction/force from an angle such as in this situation, it CAN literally increase the wheel’s velocity. Think of it like a sort of spiral helical gear that is driven forward by a sideways force. Think jet turbines even!
Lastly, there was contact that resulted in the other rider almost loosing control and his foot coming out of the pedal. That ALWAYS slows someone down.
I see where people can assume foul play, but it can easily be explained by very simple physics… assuming you’re not locked into being driven by someone successful being involved in a scandal.
completely agree. van aert is accelerating hard, mvdp simply slows down to avoid crashing, van aert never squeezes the brakes. nothing suspicious. makes sense.
Belgium, the heart and soul of corruption from the Govt to the sport that they’ve surpassed everyone in cheating from the beginning–and still you question. They don’t pound US riders because it’s an ingrained sport they’ve done for decades. Buy that BS and the only generational gift is cheating. Watts is watts and I guess young van der Poel promised elder van der Poel, not to race dirty like him–yah right.
The “motor” is his back wheel. It’s the magnetized one. And of course, the things we know are nothing compared to the truth, so he’s got some truly amazing motorized setup there.
I’ve found more than 50 odd wheel-spinning clips from, 13 so far of this season’s races, most involving Wout’s bikes, but also involving bikes from 8 other riders, two I can’t identify.
For anyone here to COMPLETELY dispute this possibility, they seem to forget Femke’s bike.
Bottom line here is that I don’t see ANY of this weirdness in races from 5-10 years ago. But now, you can see all KINDS of coasting/dismounted wheel spins from a lot of riders. And all this hand-on-top tube stuff I don’t recall EVER seeing.
Hey Cycling Fans Super Multi-Time World Cycling Killer Froomey back to say I missed you so much and I know you missed me- but I’m overweight right now and getting ready for another TdF- so I’ve been recharging the ole batteries! But seriously, where’s all the love now that we have PROVEN Wiggins and I are clean. At Team Sky, we did NOT have anything to do with Sir David receiving those drugs during these times and really he was only around back when we had the SUPER DUPER Dope Kustom Team Sky RV. In fact, I think Brailsford went with Richie over to BMC. So now that I’ve distanced myself permanently from the fake news that he was ever even a part of Team Sky- Wiggo and I are totally clean! By the way everyone on here is wrong- there is no motor in Wout’s bike, he is as clean as the driven snow and can be seen not pushing a button to turn on a motor, but rather wearing a magnetized bracelet and matching wheels. That is a perfectly legal magnetized wheel like we use in Team Time Trials. Using magnetic bracelets and rims can center the body’s energy and has no effect other than using the body’s energy to create momentum. I assure you this was approved. While the overall weight of a bike and rider is NEGATIVELY effected, we can even see accidents from unwanted accelerations. I saw Ryder Hejedal receive a nasty strawberry on his inner lower lower leg once- Ouch! The risks are clear. But for TTTs and climbs we can see cadences like Durian rider on meth, I mean, like Durian rider, and other kinds of clear health advantages. I have heard a million people say these magnetized bracelets and magnesium rims that are magnetized and motors, like in our road frames, are fake and a scam! But this is the best science and technology that money can buy at Team Sky! Look Im not obsessed, like say a Greg Lemond is, about motorized bikes, but I’ve gotta be a close second!
It’s still spinning so fast it then whips him into another rider, luckily no one went down. It’s not normal or it maybe coming the new norm.
I completely disagree with every commenter here saying it has to be a motor. Have none of you never slipped a wheel before? They do crazy things in slick mud at speed, and then when the tread regains traction it can jerk the bike like that. None of us can see exactly what his rear wheel is hitting. I believe there is a lot of cheating in cycling still, but I’m not buying the motor thing. And using video like this as ‘evidence’ is pretty weak. They should check the bikes, all of them, to shut this crap up. Good grief.