A little engine-uity will power you to success

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

With the benefit of hindsight, cycling cheats had no need for dodgy chemists after all – they didn’t need to buy the blood of small children, pumping themselves with testosterone or bottle air from altitude for their sleeping tents.

They just needed an engine on their bicycle.

Because even the drugs that brought the Chinese runners from a standing start to Olympic glory couldn’t hold a candle to a little motor discretely hidden under your saddle.

Which is why the young Belgian rider Femke van den Driessche – banned for six years recently for using a hidden motor at the cyclo-cross world championships – should instead be the new poster girl for common sense.

The story here wasn’t that a 19 year old cyclist was caught with a motor in her bike – it was that the rest of them never thought of this before.

After all, Femke didn’t do any permanent damage to her heart – assuming, that is, she didn’t put in an engine with the power of an outboard motor and frighten herself half to death coming down a steep mountain at the speed of light.

She wasn’t blood doping or injecting herself or consuming the contents of a small pharmacy; she was just giving herself a little rest and letting the bike do the work.

Unfortunately the UCI, the international cycling union whose previous form on catching cheats could only be compared to Irish Water’s ability to provide clean water, didn’t see it quite so compassionately.

Femke has been banned from cycling until October 2021, a move that is somewhat irrelevant in that – on learning of her punishment – she immediately retired from the sport anyway.

The 19 year old was also stripped of her European under-23 title and fined 20,000 Swiss francs, but she has decided not to appeal and will find something else to do with her time instead.

Presumably, motorbike racing is a fairly obvious choice, where she will be allowed to have a far bigger engine under her bottom than the little motor the authorities found ‘concealed along with a battery in the seat-tube’.

The motor “was controlled by a Bluetooth switch installed underneath the handlebar tape” – all of which suggested a level of ingenuity that deserved to be applauded rather than punished.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.