Sure it was a “friend’s” bike

Stuff reports:

Cycling was being forced to confront a new controversy on Sunday after the sport’s head confirmed the first top-level case of “technological fraud” with a hidden motor being found on a Belgian cyclist’s bike.

You have to admire the ingenuity of the cheats, if not their ethics.

Yet the 19-year-old Van den Driessche denied suggestions she had deliberately used a motorised bike in the women’s under-23 race and was in tears as she told Belgian TV channel Sporza: “The bike was not mine. I would never cheat.”

Not yours, but you rode it in a competition.

Van den Driessche said the bike looked identical to her own but belonged to her friend and that a team mechanic had given it her by mistake before the race.

Most cyclists know their bikes as well as themselves. What is the chance of a genuine mistake? Around the same as the chance that there just happened to be a bike around that was identical to her bike in looks, but had a secret motor inside.

Why would anyone but a professional cyclist have a secret motor in a bike?

“It wasn’t my bike, it was my friend’s and was identical to mine,” Van den Driessche told Belgian TV channel Sporza.

“This friend went around the course Saturday before dropping off the bike in the truck. A mechanic, thinking it was my bike, cleaned it and prepared it for my race.”

Can she name the friend? And again the only reasons you have a secret motor in a bike is to cheat. There is no real innocent reason for one.