I’ve been searching through the race category posts but haven’t seen this variation of the racer category idea:
What about auto promoting/demoting a racer to their correct category after they cross the finish line and as their results are displayed?
WHAT
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Racers can still self-select what category they want to race in. Or Zwift can suggest it based on their past racing history (see below).
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When a racer crosses the line Zwift looks at their w/kg and places them in the appropriate category’s ranking regardless of the category they entered.
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Racers still keep their time regardless of what category they finally get placed in.
PROS
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Because racers keep their finish times, they can still tell where they placed in the full peloton.
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New racers who honestly don’t know what their correct category is get moved up or down so they are compared against the appropriate level racer.
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Sand baggers or people who just happen to have an awesome day (they happen once in a while) get promoted in the results and are also ranked against racers of an appropriate level. Someone who put out 4.9 w/kg is not shown at the top of the Cat Ds.
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If someone has a really off day, they get moved down to the appropriate level just for that race.
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If a Cat A racer wants to top the Cat D leaderboard, he’d have to carefully throttle himself. It’s possible, but more work than it’s worth, and even if they do it and “win,” they won’t blow the Cat Ds out of the water by 20 minutes like they sometimes do today.
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It’s similar to what many of the leagues already do.
CONS
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It doesn’t fix weight or height doping.
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There are those who, when having a really bad day, would still rather be placed at the bottom of their “normal” category than have a higher ranking in a lower category. Props to them for being hardcore. For these people they can just look at the category above where they placed and put themselves at the end of that list.
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Not sure how this would work for those races that have modified categories. Example: some of the beginner races have Cat A topping out at 2.5 w/kg
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This might unfairly penalize a racer who is at the lower end of a category and happens to be really good at drafting. If they’re entered in Cat B but draft well enough to only put out 3.1 w/kg, they’d get pushed into the top C tier instead of the bottom of the B tier. Is this a bad thing?
OTHER
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This could be combined with some of the other ideas about auto entry i.e. Zwift looks at the average w/kg of the last three RACES (not workouts or group rides) and auto enters you (or at least suggests where you should be) in that category. If there is insufficient history, it’s ok because Zwift will put the racer in the right category as they cross the finish line.
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It could also be combined with ideas for quickly identifying racers without HR monitors or on ZPower. Maybe everyone gets a race number “pinned” to their jerseys. People who meet standard ZwiftPower requirements get a white dossard and ZPower/non-HR monitors get a red one. Perhaps this is incorporated into their name plaque somehow to identify riders who are way up the road. (The missing lightning bolt indicating ZPower is tiny and it does nothing for missing HR monitors, plus names are always jumping around in the rider list.) And yes, #13 would have to be upside down
