Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Sunday, January 29, 2017
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2017 Tour de France | 2017 Giro d'Italia
Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. - Thomas Paine
Current Racing:
- January 23 - 29: Vuelta a San Juan
- January 26 - 29: Challenge Illes Balears - Volta Ciclista a Mallorca
Upcoming racing:
- January 29: Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race
- January 29: Grand Prix Cycliste la Marseillaise
Latest completed racing:
- January 15 - 22: People's Choice Classic & Tour Down Under
- January 1-3: Mitchelton Wines Bay Cycling Classic
CBS's 60 Minutes to air segment on motor doping in pro cycling
CBS's web site posted this:
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The Hungarian designer of a secret bike motor tells Bill Whitaker he thinks the motors have been used to cheat in pro cycling as far back as 1998. Istvan Varjas speaks to Whitaker for a 60 Minutes investigation into mechanical cheating in a sport already infamous for its doping scandals. One of the sport’s champions, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, is convinced the motors are being used. He’s also in the 60 Minutes report, to be broadcast Sunday, Jan. 29 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Varjas, a scientist and former cyclist, says he first designed a motor to fit inside a bike’s frame in 1998. He says a friend found an anonymous buyer who offered him nearly $2 million for it. Varjas says he took the money and agreed not to work on such motors, nor sell or speak of them, for 10 years. Asked whether he believes hidden motors like his have been used since then, he answers, “I think. Yes.”
Varjas claims it’s not his fault if pro cyclists ended up with his bike. “If a grandfather came and buy a bike and after it’s go to...his grandson who is racing, it’s not my problem,” he says. Asked whether he would sell a motor to a person who told him he was going to cheat with it, he replies with a little laugh, “If the money is big, why not?”
60 Minutes met Varjas in a Budapest bike shop where he demonstrated his motor designs and completed motorized bicycles that he sells to wealthy clients. He showed 60 Minutes how a secret switch can engage the hidden motors, or, in a more sophisticated model, they can be engaged when a racer’s heart rate peaks. He allowed Whitaker to test ride some of the bikes with hidden motors.
The first time it was publicly suspected a motor was being used in pro cycling was in 2010 when a Swiss rider raced at an unusually high speed. That rider denied using a motor. There have been other suspicious incidents and one rider was caught with a secret motor in 2016. Jean-Pierre Verdy, former testing director of the French Anti-Doping Agency, says the sport has a problem. “It’s been the last three to four years when I was told about the use of the motors,” Verdy tells Whitaker. “There’s a problem. By 2015, everyone was complaining and I said, ‘something’s got to be done.’”
LeMond, an outspoken advocate for drug testing, wants his former sport to do more testing for the motors, too. “This is curable. This is fixable. I don’t trust it until they figure out...how to-- take the motor out. I won’t trust any victories of the Tour de France,” says LeMond.
And speaking of Greg LeMond....
Suits fly as LeMond Composites fires its CEO
This piece came to me from Bicycle Retailer & Industry News:
MINNEAPOLIS (BRAIN) — Greg LeMond's company has fired and is suing Connie Jackson, the CEO of LeMond Composites, which was formed last year to manufacture low-cost carbon fiber primarily for non-bicycle applications.
LeMond Companies LLC alleges that Jackson violated terms of her employment agreement, before and after her termination. Jackson was also a minority shareholder in the company and was co-inventor of the manufacturing process that is at the heart of the company's strategy.
Jackson was fired Dec. 9. She and her husband filed suit against LeMond this month in Tennessee, seeking damages and reimbursements totaling more than $2 million. She also wants the court to nullify her non-compete agreement with the company, which she claims she was fraudulently induced to sign.
Jackson is listed as a co-inventor on the patent application for a carbon fiber manufacturing process developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, where she worked until last spring. LeMond Composites licenses the technology from UT-Battelle, the company that operates ORNL.
LeMond opened the 65,000-square-foot factory with some local fanfare last October, saying it would employ more than 200 people. In an interview with BRAIN last September, LeMond said the manufacturing technology would be ideal for bicycles but that he was initially focusing his resources on the much larger applications in the auto and wind power industries. At the time, LeMond said he was excited to be working with Jackson. "We think alike, I think she is a real innovator,” he said.
In a statement released by his attorney Friday, Greg LeMond indicated that LeMond Composites will move ahead without Jackson.
"The focus of LeMond Companies and its skilled team of engineers — with the full backing and technical assistance of Oak Ridge National Laboratory — is to bring low-cost carbon fiber manufacturing technology to the market as soon as possible," the statement said.
His attorney, Lawrence M. Shapiro of Minneapolis law firm Greene Espel, said, "LeMond Companies is confident it will prevail in the litigation." He said the company would have no other public comments outside of the litigation.
LeMond's suit, filed in Minneapolis, charges that Jackson failed to document and share confidential production techniques that she possessed, as she agreed to when the company was formed. Since her termination, the suit alleges, she has reached out to LeMond investors and tried to hire away at least one of LeMond's engineers for a new company. Both actions are in violation of an employment agreement Jackson signed in October, according to the suit.
LeMond wants the court to issue an injunction preventing her from continuing to violate the agreement. LeMond also is seeking damages of "at least $50,000," which is the most a plaintiff can ask for in a public complaint under Minnesota law.
Jackson could not be reached Friday for a response to LeMond's suit. Her side needs to file a response to the complaint with the court next week.
Jackson's suit was filed this month in Tennessee, with her husband, Jeffrey Jackson, as a co-plaintiff. The defendants are LeMond Companies, LeMond Composites, Greg LeMond, LeMond Composites COO Nicolas Wegener, and LeMond executive Alex Jacome.
The suit charges that Jeffrey Jackson was never paid for $50,000 of work he did last year at the new LeMond Composites factory in Oak Ridge.
It also charges that Greg LeMond misused company funds by, for example, allegedly paying to send LeMond's family to last year's Tour de France. The suit charges that LeMond did not have board approval to sign a contract of more than $60,000 a month with a marketing company. It charges that Jacome secretly recorded a conversation she had with a potential client in November, in violation of the federal Wiretapping Act.
The suit also says she is owed an $80,000 signing bonus and a severance package of a year's salary, $300,000, for being fired without just cause. She is also seeking damages of at least $1 million for breaches of fiduciary duty and of at least $600,000 for wrongful removal and additional damages for the alleged wiretapping.
You can read the entire story here.
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