Mechanical doping. Wow.

No_Ta_Doctor

Above The Cows wrote:

With a UK, central London phone number?

+44 207 015 9370

No, that's the abuse contact for the registrar company, Ascio. They just handle the domain registration.

RichN95.

So this Varjas character says you couldn't find the mechanism if you cut the bike into a 1000 pieces, but this is his battery. It's ten times the size of a Di2 battery and weighs 900g.


Which incidentally is just a photoshopped and flipped verson of this picture:


I'd love it if Aaron Brown is behind this.

above_the_cows

No tA Doctor wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

With a UK, central London phone number?

+44 207 015 9370

No, that's the abuse contact for the registrar company, Ascio. They just handle the domain registration.

I see.

adr82

Joelsim wrote:

Why would someone say that the UCI could cut a bike into a 1,000 pieces and still not find it Pross?

Because, and I want you to pay very close attention to this part, it is complete bullsh*t. There are so many things wrong with the whole story I don't know why anyone would take it seriously. The simple fact is that if he had developed an engine and battery combination with the sustained high power output and tiny size and complete lack of noise he claims, it would be a massive advance on the current state of the art and would have almost endless industrial applications. Yet instead of making his developments public 15 years ago and raking in the acclaim of the world (and tens of billions of pounds), he instead decides the only viable application for it is secretly helping cyclists cheat, at 150K a pop? It makes no sense at all. Oh and also despite many people owning up to doping over the years, nobody has ever admitted to using one of these magic bikes for some reason? Rubbish.

RichN95 wrote:

So this Varjas character says you couldn't find the mechanism if you cut the bike into a 1000 pieces, but this is his battery. It's ten times the size of a Di2 battery and weighs 900g.

It's so small I almost can't see it!

DeVlaeminck

Pross wrote:

I don't blame the UcI for looking at it but I assume when you say the technology is there you mean a motor that can power a bike without being obvious at a glance rather than some form of undetectable nano technology that can power a bike?

The problem with the concept is that any sensibly sized motor would just be too easy to discover by a fairly basic post race check or if the bike was damaged in a crash.

Yes I mean it's possible for a battery and motor that would fit inside a down tube to provide enough power to make a difference at the decisive part of a race and quiet enough that the sound of crowds, helicopters and bikes clanking over cobbles at the end of Flanders or Roubaix would mask it. If the UCI didn't do some checks eventually the tech would be good enough that someone would risk it - not saying it has happened but sooner or later why wouldn't someone give it a go if they thought there was little chance of getting caught. If nothing else the checks prevent another story like the one that followed Cancellera's double the other year.

Macaloon

RichN95 wrote:

I'd love it if Aaron Brown is behind this.

It would take a little joy away from the discovery that it's a deliberate wind-up. But then I thought about how Inspector Digger and crew would feel after a second Overlord reaming

RichN95.

Macaloon wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

I'd love it if Aaron Brown is behind this.

It would take a little joy away from the discovery that it's a deliberate wind-up. But then I thought about how Inspector Digger and crew would feel after a second Overlord reaming

I'm pretty convinced that 'Istvan Varjas' is a deliberate wind-up.

iainf72

RichN95 wrote:

I'm pretty convinced that 'Istvan Varjas' is a deliberate wind-up.

Yeah, trying to figure out what it could be though.

joelsim

It has obviously been a wind up for 5 years then

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... as%20motor

iainf72

Joelsim wrote:

It has obviously been a wind up for 5 years then

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... as%20motor

Funny that, it all appeared when Cancellara was accused of having a motor for P-R. In 2010.

No_Ta_Doctor

iainf72 wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

I'm pretty convinced that 'Istvan Varjas' is a deliberate wind-up.

Yeah, trying to figure out what it could be though.

Not sure about that:

https://translate.google.dk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbikemag.hu%2Fcimke%2Fvarjas-istvan&edit-text=&act=url

adr82

Joelsim wrote:

It has obviously been a wind up for 5 years then

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... as%20motor

Varjas, who was tracked down to the southwestern Hungarian town of Pecs, told the Swiss weekly his motor could weigh up to one kilogramme, generate peak power of 600 watts and last 30 to 60 minutes on each battery charge.

So at what point exactly in the last 5 years did it go from weighing around 1kg to being "completely undetectable"? Apparently in the last 6 months, judging by this article from September 2014 which still shows rather bulky, heavy and trivially detectable engines. You could probably simply pop the seatpost out and shine a torch into the tube to find one of those. To suddenly go from that to something you can't find even if you chopped the bike into tiny pieces but which still preserves the same levels of performance is obvious crap.

iainf72

Is he one of these fine gentlemen?

RichN95.

No tA Doctor wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

I'm pretty convinced that 'Istvan Varjas' is a deliberate wind-up.

Yeah, trying to figure out what it could be though.

Not sure about that:

https://translate.google.dk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbikemag.hu%2Fcimke%2Fvarjas-istvan&edit-text=&act=url

But who is this guy? No-one seems to have met him. There are no photos. There is no mention of him outside these electronic bikes. He makes claims about undetectable technology supplied to pros, but there are no details. He has a website for a company with no address or phone number which uses other peoples YouTube videos and photo shopped pictures.

Here's some of Di Luca's CIRC testimony about it:
Who is Istvan Varjas? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear L'Equipe tell it, anybody could have ridden for Varjas. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the UCI the motor didn't exist. And like that, poof. It's gone.


(The forum filter lets me write 'poof'. I'm not sure I approve of that)

above_the_cows

Has anyone played a around with the letters in Istvan Varjas to see if it spells anything else?

Apparently varjas means hid in Estonian.

RichN95.

Above The Cows wrote:

Has anyone played a around with the letters in Istvan Varjas to see if it spells anything else?

Apparently varjas means hid in Estonian.

No. As Iain points out with his picture, it is the name of a genuine obscure Hungarian pro from the mid 2000s.

RichN95.

Double post

adr82

RichN95 wrote:

Here's some of Di Luca's CIRC testimony about it:
Who is Istvan Varjas? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear L'Equipe tell it, anybody could have ridden for Varjas. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the UCI the motor didn't exist. And like that, poof. It's gone.

iainf72

I looked up the address on google streetview. Just an oldish looking residential building.

Translates as "Bicycle Rigged" in Italian.

I really really hope this is Aaron. The best situation would be if the usual suspects started a fund so they could buy one of the bikes and expose this activity.

No_Ta_Doctor

iainf72 wrote:

I looked up the address on google streetview. Just an oldish looking residential building.

Translates as "Bicycle Rigged" in Italian.

I really really hope this is Aaron. The best situation would be if the usual suspects started a fund so they could buy one of the bikes and expose this activity.

Evidence against it being Aaron is that if you try to check out to PayPal it comes up with an error. And whatever his faults, not being able to work PayPal wasn't one of them.

above_the_cows

RichN95 wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

Has anyone played a around with the letters in Istvan Varjas to see if it spells anything else?

Apparently varjas means hid in Estonian.

No. As Iain points out with his picture, it is the name of a genuine obscure Hungarian pro from the mid 2000s.

Ah, I missed the picture.

ocdupalais

I accuse Joelsim of "Thread Doping" - trying to perk up the performance of a donkey thread with words like "Wow"...

Ashbeck

Above The Cows wrote:

Ashbeck wrote:

I go on holiday for a week and you lot have all been at the blue Smarties.....

Wait until July if you think this is bad...

Can't wait!

stagehopper

Think his correct name is Dr István Varjasi and appears to have worked/still working at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

This course curriculum for the 2009-10 academic year lists him as teaching the Electronics 2 module

http://www.kth.bme.hu/document/823/original/electrical

page 117 - the module description is quite interesting in the light of the claims.

Here's one of his research papers from 2008;

http://waset.org/publications/7391/dc-l ... converters

Here are a few more of his papers going back to 2002 where he appears to be in the Automation and Applied Informatics Department of the same University:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searc ... earch=true

---

and this is from late 2014;

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 1614001231

Could of course be someone nefarious nicking his name ...

tailwindhome

The brilliance of this is that Equipe haven't either named a rider or a race were one of these bike was used.

stagehopper

andyp wrote:

Have we had this yet?

http://bicitruccata.com

Had a look at the website code and it appears website was built by this Hungarian website company:

https://plus.google.com/107235358939780863265/about

http://www.tibro1977.hu/

joelsim

OCDuPalais wrote:

I accuse Joelsim of "Thread Doping" - trying to perk up the performance of a donkey thread with words like "Wow"...

F*cking belly laughs. Thanks for that, cheered me up. Seriously I have just spat my wine.



Bring on Flanders! Joyful joy.

rick_chasey

Who's Aaron?

Son of lazy parents?

RichN95.

Rick Chasey wrote:

Who's Aaron?

Son of lazy parents?

Aaron Brown aka UCI_Overlord who used to write wind-up articles on Cyclismas before he ran off with the money from the Paul Kimmage defence fund.

A wind up like this might be a little too sophisticated for him though.

As for lazy parents - my brother's called Alistair. It was basically the first name on an alphabetic list that neither of my parents objected to.

joelsim

RichN95 wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Who's Aaron?

Son of lazy parents?

Aaron Brown aka UCI_Overlord who used to write wind-up articles on Cyclismas before he ran off with the money from the Paul Kimmage defence fund.

A wind up like this might be a little too sophisticated for him though.

As for lazy parents - my brother's called Alistair. It was basically the first name on an alphabetic list that neither of my parents objected to.

Jesus. I'd have objected to you much earlier than R. Te he