Case closed. The UCI ends its investigation into mechanical doping in cycling for lack of evidence. According to the newspaper The Team, The French Financial Tax Office closed an investigation into the use of bicycle engines in racing that began in 2017 after detecting the first evidence of mechanical doping in the mount of Femke Van den Driessche.
Since then, the UCI has not found any type of mechanical doping, through the installation of a small motor, in any competition bicycle, so it has decided to end the investigation due to the lack of evidence. Much has been speculated in recent years about this possibility, which pointed to the Hungarian Istvan Varjas as the responsible inventor of the hidden engines.
Among the many accusations of the last decade that pointed to the use of engines by top-level cyclists, the one he received stands out. Fabian Cancellara to win the Paris-Roubaix 2010, something that could never be demonstrated and that the Swiss repeatedly denied. Since then, the UCI has carried out thousands of controls to detect the installation of engines on bicycles, through scanners and thermal cameras, without any success, until the aforementioned case of Van den Driessche at the 2016 Cyclocross World Championships.
After investing time and money in improving the detection system, in 2018 he took a step back in the Tour de France as a false positive of mechanical doping was created due to a manufacturing defect in the pedals of some riders, therefore, thermal cameras and X-ray scanners were discontinued. “With 99% certainty, there are no hidden engines in the platoon,” he said. Jean-Christophe Péraud, who was a member of the UCI in the fight against technological fraud in cycling. Case closed…
