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by hinkley 711 days ago
I really, really want someone to commercialize the mechanical doping tech they've been using. Get caught and go straight please.

Give me a bike that looks like a normal bike and gives mere mortals like me an extra 5 mph (power law makes that a lot worse for pros).

2 comments

That's basically already a thing. There's a big market for older riders who want a little bit of discreet assistance on their group ride.

https://www.orbea.com/us-en/ebikes/road/gain/

To my eyes, that bike obviously has a battery in the downtube. But I'm not the average person where bikes are concerned so perhaps I should have said, "a bike that would fool other bicyclists."
Assuming the pros are cheating, the professional assistance is unlikely to be of use to a regular human. At the professional level, a 1% gain could be huge, whereas a normal rider could gain far more than that by better techniques/breathing/equipment/whatever.
It’s not 1% it’s 35 watts. Which matters a lot more when you’re a rider who can only put out 200 watts.