The Stade 2 television programme has revealed further details and expressed fresh doubts about the effectiveness of the UCI’s tablet device for detecting mechanical doping, revealing that the tablet works on simple ferromagnetic principals, which can often lead to false positives caused by other metallic components of a bicycle, and yet fails to detect the latest form of electro-magnetic mechanical doping hidden in wheels.
Stade 2, working with German television channel ARD and the Italian journalist Marco Bonarrigo, who writes for Il Corriere della Sera, discovered that the tablet device used by the UCI was created by a start-up company based in Britain called Endoscope-i, which was created on the back of iPhone app that works as an endoscope. The company has no experience in cycling.
In the latest investigation, the team of journalists managed to procure one of the UCI tablet devices and had it x-rayed and studied by the Fraunhofer Institute for Non-destructive Testing in Saarbrucken, Germany.
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They suggested it is simply an iPad mini with a tiny magnet attached to the blue casing to create a magnetic field. They were surprised to discover that the tablet can only discover ferromagnetic materials, with wheel axles flashing up with the same intensity as a hidden motor in a seat tube. One engineer from the Fraunhofer Institute showed how a simple iPhone app can also detect ferromagnetic materials behind a layer of carbon fibre. The UCI apparently charge national federations several thousand Euro for the tablet device and expert training.
Hungarian engineer Stefano Varjas was again involved in the Stade 2 investigation. He showed off the latest version of his so called ‘magic wheel’, which does not depend on a hidden motor in the down tube but has a hidden battery in the hub, with the wheel turned by an electro-magnetic booster.
It has been suggested by La Gazzetta dello Sport and others that similar kind of wheels – which cost at least 20,000 Euro – may be have been used in professional races, giving riders a boost in power that can make a significant difference during key moments of races.
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