this MUST be the answer

[barrycoll]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/tour-de-france/11712225/Tour-de-France-2015-Cycling-fears-cheats-have-a-new-weapon-mechanical-doping.html

not sure about the 1.8 kgs though..........must be for the kit

 

[flecc]

This story keeps cropping up each time the Tour is on, but it's a nonsense.

All the "hidden" systems are too noisy to be concealed from the thousands standing right alongside the bikes as they climb. In any case the battery capacity of the downtube system wouldn't add enough over the longer climb stages to offset the added weight of the total system. And physical detection is so childishly simple that no-one would dare try to cheat in this way.
.

 

[KTM Bike Industries UK]

What you're reading there, is basically an advert that someone at the Telegraph has been duped into thinking its a news story!

 

[Ferdinand]

Tis the Telegraph in Guardian Comment is Free mode - ie publishing brain dead hyperbolic gibberish. Somewhere a PR girl is hugging herself.

"...climbing like a turbo-charged Chris Froome"

"The technology is the brainchild of an “eccentric” Eastern European inventor whose name Gibbings is unwilling to disclose, a former amateur rider with a long client order list."



Personally I think it may be practical, since there's nothing whatsoever in it that is novel, but I don't see it in the TDF yet.

£8500 ... and I thought a Vivax was pricey.

There's a more mass market there for a Vivax under say 2500 Euro or £1500 imo, and perhaps someone could deliver on *that* market by taking it out of cottage industry status.

Ferdinand