UKC

Anyone seen the video from stage 9 or so of the Vuelta?

Movistar car stops, someone jumps out, puts saddle plus seatpost on the road, takes a frame plus rear wheel from the roof, hands it to a waiting helper, and instructs him to hide the bike parts.
Helper takes bike parts, and exits stage left.

Official explanation was that this is done regularly so as not to embarrass the bike sponsor by having a broken bike on top of the car when arriving at the stage finish.

Strange to say the least....

CB

edit: link added

http://as.com/videos/2015/09/06/portada/1441528732_264430.html

In reply to cb294:

Not sure it's that weird. Look at the mechanic cam videos from the big crash at the tour and there's all sorts of swapping of bikes, between riders, between team cars... Teams have multiple vehicles, and I can see the sense in getting rid of a broken bike if only to prevent it accidentally being grabbed and given to a rider needing a new bike. I can't say I look ulout for it, but I don't recall seeing a team car cross the line with a broken bike..I suspect most teams have vans for supplying feed stations and picking up discarded items of clothing and broken bikes following at some point behind the race.

I also don't speak Spanish well enough to know if the translation you give is remotely accurate. This strikes me as a bit like the "look at that wheel moving by itself" arguments made last year.

I'm comfortable that the uci and other riders would spot e doping a mile off, and if it was really a problem we would see the whole peleton or at least the whole of an offending team stopping to change bikes to hide their motors which isn't very conductive to a competitive edge is it?

In reply to cb294:

On a related note are Giant Alpecin head and shoulders above the rest?

In reply to Pedro50:

Yes, very good.

In reply to Mike Highbury:

Thanks I've been saving it up.

In reply to balmybaldwin:


My Spanish is limited, but he appears to say pretty much what the OP said, I can't make it all out but he says something along the lines of "take it to the car" "hide it so that they/one can't see it". Does seem a strange thing to be saying but who knows. If they were doing something secret you'd have thought they'd stop somewhere without a guy filming them.

In reply to cb294:

I would hazard a guess that the bike and component suppliers to the teams don't want any broken bits to remain in public view for too long. Quite often proptotype equipment is being race tested before it goes in to full production, and any equipment failures could have an adverse effect on sales to the buying public.