Probably not, anyway. Three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond — no fan of Armstrong’s — has turned his attention to the rumored scourge of miniature motors being used in competitive cycling. From DC Sports Bog’s Marissa Payne :
“I believe it’s been used in racing, I believe it’s been used sometimes in the Grand Tours,” LeMond told the Associated Press on Wednesday. He did not specify whether he thought any riders in this year’s iteration of the race have been using the technology, but he did accuse the sport’s governing body of “not doing enough” to ensure racers don’t use the technology. He said the International Cycling Union’s (UCI) pre-race equipment checks are “fluff” and “all words.”
UCI President Brian Cookson, however, says his team takes all accusations of cheating seriously, including “mechanical doping” as it’s coming to be known.
“We understand that although this subject sometimes causes amusement and derision we know that the technology is available: we have seen examples of it in laboratory conditions,” Cookson told AFP last week after Cedric Vasseur, a former cyclist-turned-analyst on French television, commented Tour de France leader Chris Froome’s bike looked to be “pedaling itself.”
“We’ve done some testing already for concealed motors,” Cookson said. But the testing has only been done periodically.