I’ve dropped off racing too as I cant help but get frustrated. Today I jumped on the new Crit course - Zwiftpower was showing an A grader and 4 B graders in C grade - putting that aside, I had a good race but had to laugh when one of the the B graders (who raced C) congratulated his fellow B grader for winning C grade in the Companion App …
I had a “Strava chat” a few weeks back with someone who was in D grade sitting on 5.0w/kg for pretty much the whole race - he said he didnt know what to do about grades so thought D was best to keep out of peoples way. So if Zwift aren’t going to educate people, automating a rudimentary system based on FTP or some other metric of recorded form would likely be helpful for novices too.
As for the A grader that entered C grade today though … grrrrr
When there is a race (as opposed to a group ride) you should only be able to compete if you have completed an ftp test in-game. Any time you complete a new ftp test or zwift assesses based on performance that you have a new ftp, you would be re-allocated to a race category.
This would resolve almost all of the race issues with categories, which basically destroys the experience for cat C / D and sometimes even cat B.
Of course someone could just do an ftp test at low effort, but zwift would quickly realise after one race and reassess the ftp anyway. It wouldn’t be worth it for cheaters to keep doing 20 min tests.
Yes this is a big issue in the C / D races, racing is just a mess, if you are not in the top of C of D then it is just a group ride. There is no incentive to push hard because the top 10 racers is not in the correct category so they just blow the race apart.
It is easy to ignore the issue if you are a A rider because you are already in the top so no one just jumping in and spoiling the fun.
But a big portion of zwift riders is in the C / D groups they want to experience the thrill of racing but they get denied the opportunity by people entering the wrong racing category.
Zwift power has an awesome system but having cat enforcement after the fact does not help the racing experience.
C is so bad because there are so many B grade riders who drop down to C because they have no chance in B. B is supposed to be 3.2 w/kg to 3.9 w/kg but if you’re in that 3.2 to 3.5 range then you are never going to win a B race. Most times you aren’t even going to finish with the front group.
So those bottom B riders drop down to C and then the top 10 places in C cat go to people doing 3.4+ w/kg. Then the people at the bottom of C (2.5 w/kg) realise they will never win a C race (or even finish with the front group) so they drop down to D. The poor people at the bottom of D have nowhere to go so they quit racing.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that 4 categories aren’t enough. The gaps between the top and bottom riders in categories (especially B) are insurmountable and that leads to people dropping down to a lower cat which just perpetuates the problem.
Zwift needs to add at least 1 (splitting B into 2), maybe 2 or even 3 new categories so that riders of equal ability are able to compete against each other without having to abuse the system. Keep in mind that US cycling has 6 categories (Pro then 1 to 5) while Zwift has only 4.
I don’t agree that anyone should have to complete an FTP test as a prerequisite for racing.
However, I do think there should be a behind the scenes number that determines categorisation for racing.
Zwift have all the data. They know what your best 20 minute power is from all the Zwift events you’ve ever ridden. They could use that like “Skill Ranking” (SR) in a game like Overwatch (OW).
In OW, as you play games the system calculates a value for you. That is your SR and it’s used by the matchmaker when assigning people to games. If you have a low SR, you’re placed in Bronze or Silver. If you have a high SR, you’re in Platinum or Diamond. If you’re very good, you play in Masters or Grandmasters.
As you win or lose, your SR is adjusted up or down. A bit like Elo in chess. There’s no way to manually change your SR, other than by deliberately losing many games in a row.
Zwift could implement something like this. Calculate a background “racer grade” number and use that to determine which category a rider is in. No more actively choosing A, B, C or D. Riders would just say “I want to race in this race” and the system says “Fine, you’re in category B.”
And it probably has to be a system-generated number, not FTP. People can edit their FTP value for legitimate reasons, so basing race categories on that just means people can do the same as “weight doping” and it solves nothing much. The only workaround might be to publicly display someone’s FTP trend line. It wouldn’t have to show numbers, but something like this would make it obvious if someone has adjusted their FTP for a race:
This is exactly what we need. We had something like this when I was racing IRL. You had a ranking number, if it was a big race there would be 20 starting groups and in small races only 4 or 5.
Zwift could have weekly open races where it is one mass start and those that never raced can try it and get a starting score.
I sort of agree. It’s fun to race and fun to have a chance of winning, even if you are a C or B rider. If you don’t think you can ever win then you will not race.
Why not have a ranking/ categorization system based on # races you have competed in and placement. This should be enforced so good rides can’t drop down. Points could be assigned ina number of ways but some thoughts.
Points based on placement in races
Racing is more than just power output, and so categories should be based on points, not w/kg. And once you are in a category that’s your category.
Every placement in a race gets some points, not just top 10. This means every placement is competitive
Points for a race dependent on number of participants. Winning something with 5k participants is way more impressive than winning something with only 5. This could follow a curve or be a straight line.
Points for a race also sum of the points of who is in the race. Again, beating Chris Froome is more impressive than Joe Schmoe and should be rewarded.
Lots more categories.
Main point is that you start at the bottom and work your way up by racing and winning/ placing in races and as you get into a category, that’s your category - you don’t get to choose (though you could also have to earn a number of points per year to stay in a category).
Agree with the idea of a natural decay, this could be achieved by earning a certain number of points within some timeframe. Annual, quarterly, or something else.
In other words, if you don’t race your ranking will deteriorate and eventually you will be downgraded.
Although depending on how that actually works, someone could still be training every week but not racing. So their race rank gets downgraded to Cat C and BOOM! They decide to race and smash the field to bits. Maybe that’s still better than what we have now though.
How about zwift track your training as well. The system can pick up increased 20min 5min 1 min ect power numbers so it should know you are still in the same ballpark.
Here’s a crazy idea. If Zwift can’t guess a cat for you you go into the best zwift can guess but you are invisible to all riders they can’t draft you you can draft them but on your screen everything look normal.
I said it is crazy.
Zwift can also have rider self select races with mass start so if zwift does not have a group for you you need to do 3 self select races.
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at further up. Zwift already know everyone’s best 20 minute and 1 hour power (as long as it’s done in Zwift of course). They have all the numbers. They could even work out that someone’s a C on the flat but a B in the mountains, and potentially put people in different categories depending on the parcours.
I posted this Reply in Race-Forums also but this appears to be the correct place.
Love the “Red-Grid”/“Red-Banner” upfront at GroupRides - this really solved the problems with Flyers.
This could be incorperated to races as well ( with an invisible banner)
Exeeding the Category with 0.2-0.4 watts over an average of 20 minutes will individually ban you from the race… „Race Hard and Fair“ - or get kicked…
It‘s soo annoying with Sandbaggers…
I think this is just putting a band-aid on the fundamental problem: racing is a distinct area of Zwift that people opt to take part in. It’s a unique feature of the platform (as a massive multi-user “game”). Why are we re-inventing the wheel of race categories, particularly on a metric that is so one-dimensional and actually not really reflective of anything to do with racing (other than perhaps the singular discipline of an individual time trial)?
We’re talking about an online platform that already has the information necessary to come up with the rankings. It would be trivial to calculate them: they’d just need to decide the algorithm to base them on (eg. is it purely podium finishes, or does it depend on the race (some more difficult than others?), who else is participating in the race (and their rankings), etc)
But honestly, even the most complex approach (depends on the race and who else is participating and the rankings and finishing place of all those other riders relative to yourself) is basically just PageRank, which Google demonstrated was effective at internet scale (Zwift data is what, 0.0000000000000000001% of that size?), and this was ~20 years ago.
Only remaining question then would be how do people start, given that everyone who hasn’t raced would start with no points (and thus no ranking). The real world solves that with the lowest category of racing: it’s open to all (that haven’t qualified-out, though if you go the PageRank approach above even if people have qualified out it’s actually better that they’re in your race even if they beat you as you’ll get more points competing against them) and those that stick with it and have some skill will quickly qualify out to higher categories.
In every land, in every country, the entire universe is auto assign racers based on strength/FTP/places/Wins whatever only one little micro cosmos is not - Zwift.
You will get to post that comment so many times. There is almost no feedback from Zwift which is a real failing. Even when they send a survey we never get to learn any more.
Everybody who wants to cheat will find a way, I don’t care.
Made 2.7W/kg in a race last week, won the race in D category @ Zwiftpower. I changed immeaditely to C, was 75th in the next race.
Is OK for me.
Racing on zwift has totally lost its appeal for me. Cheating is prevalent across all categories. makes it completely ridiculous. Amazing that people are so insecure they want a hollow victory by cheating to win. I used to race a lot but these days i just use them as a hard workout every now and again. Zwift want to take esports to the Olympics…with the current rate of cheating they may achieve this in like the ear 3020 at their current trajectory to solving this issue. UCI World Championship…what a joke
