{"id":456182,"date":"2026-03-04T00:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/456182\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T00:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:42:08","slug":"the-perfect-cheats-racing-bicycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/456182\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Cheat\u2019s Racing Bicycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the ongoing rumors and scandals in professional cycle sport concerns \u201cmotor doping\u201d \u2014 the practice of concealing an electric motor in a bicycle to provide the rider with an unfair advantage. It\u2019s investigated in a video from [Global Cycling Network], in which they talk about the background and then prove its possible by creating a motor doped racing bike<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To do this they\u2019ve recruited a couple of recent graduate engineers, who get to work in a way most of us would be familiar with: prototyping with a set of 18650 cells, some electronics, and electromagnets. It uses what they call a \u201cMagic wheel\u201d<\/a>, which features magnets embedded in its rim that engage with hidden electromagnets. It gives somewhere just under 20 W boost, which doesn\u2019t sound much, but could deliver those crucial extra seconds in a race.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most interesting part is the section which looks at the history of motor doping with some notable cases<\/a> mentioned, and the steps taken by cycling competition authorities to detect it. They use infra-red cameras, magnetometers, backscatter detectors, and even X-ray machines, but even these haven\u2019t killed persistent rumors in the sport. It\u2019s a fascinating video we\u2019ve placed below the break, and we thank [Seb] for the tip. Meanwhile the two lads who made the bike are looking for a job, so if any Hackaday readers are hiring, drop them a line.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the ongoing rumors and scandals in professional cycle sport concerns \u201cmotor doping\u201d \u2014 the practice of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-456182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}