General | Bike Raising

Racers Injecting Their Bikes, not Bodies!

19th May 2010

I couldn’t believe it when I saw it (it may not be fact, but interesting regardless). Naturally, I have been following the race coverage of the Giro and the Tour of California over the past few days. Today, while I was reading the live coverage on Cycling News, I came across this:

Mopeds in the mountains? There has been some speculation this week that the UCI is looking into motors hidden inside frames. The concept being that riders will use the bikes to conserve energy in the first hours of a race before swapping to a regulation bike for the finale.

Come to think of it, I have seen a lot of bike changes occurring in the past days of racing? hmmm…

Cyclingnews spoke to the UCI about the claims and although it denied any evidence of the mooted technology, it didn’t rule out the development of a test to identify illegal modifications.

Here is some brief excerpts from the article on differing views:

The Giro’s assistant race director Stefano Allocchio also quashed the claims. “There are no souped-up bikes at the Giro,” he told the Italian news agency ANSA.

“According to all the checks that have been done, all the bikes are ok. The chief judge is very attentive – if there was something unusual, he would have seen it straight away.”

However Marco Bognetti, a previous member of the material commissions and consultant to Jean Wauthier, the current head of the materials unit at the UCI, spoke with a little more urgency.

“It’s all true, there’s a suspicion that there are teams and riders who used a ‘pedal-assisted’ bike,” he told L’Avvenire. “We were first told about it last July, during the Tour de France. We first heard about it from the USA and it set alarm bells ringing.”

He elaborated on this to Il Giornale. “We’ve discovered that it could save a rider between 60 and 100 watts, which is an enormous advantage in the finale of a race. Checks are under way, others are planned. Our technicians are working on a special scanner that will discover the hidden motors inside the frames. All the bikes at the major races will soon be checked.”

True or not, unfortunately, now you will wonder next time you see a mid to late race bike swap. Post your comments below. Let us know what you think. Fact or Fiction?

1 comment | Posted in General |Racing by Johnny

Can Your Old Bike Save Lives in Africa?

17th May 2010

A banged-up bike might not seem like a luxury, but for people around the world who can’t afford wheeled transportation, that bike could change their life, shrinking the time they spend walking and allowing them to get more done.
A group of Athens bicycle mechanics are trying to collect 250 used bikes in hopes of getting them to people who need them in Namibia, an African nation on the northern border of South Africa.
“The ultimate goal is to fill up a (shipping) container so they can be shipped to Namibia,” said Lane Seabolt, a mechanic at Georgia Cycle Sport who worked to get most of the other bike shops in Athens to collect donations for the project.
Mechanics at both Sunshine Cycles locations, Ben’s Bikes and The Hub Bicycles plan to ship the bikes to a Bicycles for Humanity organization in Namibia, Seabolt said. There, local people will refurbish the bikes and distribute them to teachers, medical professionals and other people who have to commute from town to town on a regular basis.
Bicycles for Humanity urges people who have an old bike in the garage or the basement — but who don’t want to trash it or sell it at a garage sale — to see the organization’s work as a way to put the old bike to use again.
Few people have donated to the local bike drive so far, but organizers expect the pace will pick up as University of Georgia students graduate or leave for summer vacation and decide not to take their bikes.
“The students will be leaving soon, and a lot of them will leave bikes behind,” Seabolt said. “This is also a big time for people to buy new bikes because the weather is so nice. We’re hoping they’ll donate their old one.”
Bikes can be any size or condition. If they are too beat up to be refurbished, the locals will use them for parts.
The Bicycles for Humanity organization was founded in British Columbia when volunteers collected an entire shipping container full of bikes and transported it to Africa. Last year, with help from Rotary International, the organization sent 16 containers of bikes to Namibia and Uganda.
BikeAthens has organized a bike recycling effort for years, collecting bikes, fixing them and distributing them to local people who need transportation. In order to share Athens’ supply of used bikes for the summer, Bicycles for Humanity will take all of the mountain bikes, and BikeAthens will take the road bikes.
For more information, visit www.bicycles-for-humanity.org or b4hathens.blogspot.com.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Monday, May 03, 2010

Comments (0) | Posted in General |News by Josh

Do you learn by example?

12th May 2010

If you need to see what it could be like if we all decided to commute by bicycle during National Bike Month watch this great example below.

Bicycle Rush Hour Utrecht (Netherlands) I from caguta on Vimeo.

Here in the Netherlands, 33% of ALL trips are made by bicycle. No less than 18,000 bicycles and 2,500 buses pass here every day. This is a time lapse of only 8 minutes!

Comments (0) | Posted in General |Inspiration |News by Johnny