The UCI has conceded pro teams may have used tiny motors undetected in their riders' bikes to give them an unfair advantage.
WorldTour teams may have used motorised bikes in the past and gotten away with it but new testing for motors will rule out any repeat of that form of cheating, according to the UCI’s technical manager Mark Barfield.
Currently at the forefront of trying to ensure motors are not fitted to bikes to give additional power for key periods during races, Barfield said it was possible WorldTour teams had cheated in this way before the UCI introduced bike dope tests last year.
However, he insisted a new improved method of testing was being developed and was near completion.
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“I’ve done a lot of work in the past 10 month on this,” he told Australian-based site CyclingTips.
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“I’ve spoken to a lot of engineers. I’ve tested 75 bikes this year for motors.
“I don’t believe any current WorldTour rider or team would be currently cheating on a product like this.”
"I think it may have gone on in the past, but the fact that we test and will be testing in a more rigorous way from next year is encouraging.
"I personally think it’s more a problem at Gran Fondos and that level of racing. The testing we will have will be so easy to use that every commissaire will be able to use it."
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And while Barfield was tight lipped when asked about how the new testing system for doped bikes would work, he said the tests would enable commissaires check more bikes across the disciplines of cycling much more quickly than the current physical inspections.
In some cases bikes are stripped to check for motors at major professional events.
“All I can tell you is it’s based on magnetic resistance,” he said of the new tests currently in development.
“There is a lot of work to be done. We’ve done our first trial and we have more trials in February. Its first outing, fingers crossed, will be the World Cyclocross Championships.
“We’ll probably do our first test in women’s racing next year because we need to extend. We now have the ability to test more bikes more often.”
The concept of bike doping may sound far-fetched to some, but the UCI became sufficiently concerned by 2014 to introduce tests.
And against the corruption around drug taking in the sport, the suggestion riders would cheat with their bikes rather than their bodies is perhaps not hard to believe.
A number of riders have been at the centre of persistent rumours over the past five or six years, though no evidence of bike doping has been found to date.
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