Motorised Madness – the insanity continues

As the Cyclocross U23 mechanical fraud story (we can’t use the word ‘doping’, apparently) unwinds, things are getting properly insane.

Femke Van den Driessche – pic from Kleur Op Maat cycling team’s Facebook page

Femke Van den Driessche is adamant she’s innocent. Riders formerly busted for EPO use have rushed to her defence. The alleged owner of the electric naughtybike (copyright Singletrack) runs a chipshop. And Driessche’s brother and father have been implicated in the theft of a couple of parakeets – honestly, you couldn’t make it up.

6-month old videos of cycling luminaries have re-emerged:

Fabian Cancellara is wisely saying nothing, Bradley Wiggins reckons people have been doing it for years and the whole thing is turning into a complete circus. While it’s likely that unscrupulous types have been experimenting with motors on mountainbikes, can we expect similar levels of farce when they’re eventually rumbled?

Our sister site, Grit, has a much more complete take on the whole thing here…

Sound off in the comments…

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/Gritcx/videos/1687604208160478/” width=”650″ height=”400″ onlyvideo=”0″]

Can’t see the video? Click here

Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

Comments (5)

wooksterwookster February 4, 2016 at 8:40 pm

Madness I l g for the honest days of micro dosing EPO… 🙁

SamSam February 5, 2016 at 7:59 am

Maybe we should set up an EMP device at the centre of the course?

billyboybillyboy February 5, 2016 at 1:51 pm

I can’t say I have overly much interest in this subject but I did enjoy reading that related article. Nice one Barney.

StonerStoner February 5, 2016 at 9:34 pm

Oi, stop tweeting old stuff like there’s new news. I wasted a whole finger tap coming back here.

andrewspinkandrewspink February 7, 2016 at 3:49 pm

Some of the weirdness has got lost in translation. In the related article in Grit, it says that the owner of the bike, ‘…hung his bike on the willows, today he is active in the sport.’. The original Dutch article says ‘…hung his bike on the willows, today he is active in the pigeon racing sport.”

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