As many have already suggested in previous posts, a serious consideration of one’s racing history should be given a great deal of weight when ZP is defining an athlete’s appropriate category. USA Cycling’s five category system looks at a 12 month span of race results, all based on points awarded for final placing within each mass start event. The top 11 places can only score points in their mass start races. To essentially move out of their Novice category (equivalent to Zwift’s D cat) a racer who scores a minimum of 12 points in a 12 month time period is mandated to upgrade to a category four racer! However, that same novice racer has the freedom to race as cat 4 racer if they feel they are ready to move up before they might achieve those ten points. I am reading that many Zwift racers still want that freedom to upgrade voluntarily - I say “go for it!” However, I believe that once you are officially a C level racer in Zwift, that you should only upgrade to a B level racer if you collect a specific amount of points reflective of your race results in a 12 month span. I believe if you earn those points fairly, physically you are probably ready and fit for that level of racing. USA Cycling requires Cat 4 racers to obtain a minimum of 20 points in 36 months before asking for an upgrade to Cat 3. USA Cycling will automatically upgrade a cat 4 racer to a cat 3 if they achieve 30 points in 12 months. With a similar policy in place for ZP, if racers cheat to win in Zwift, they will quickly move up the ranks, leaving the rest of us realistically competing by the rules with fair game play in categories more in line with our own ambitions levels of fitness. Downgrading in USA Cycling is not automatic and requires a “special request,” with the racer also having the burden to prove why they believe their current race category is inappropriate for their level of ability/fitness.
The dynamic speed-based categories seem to inherit some problems from the existing category system. Riders that currently underperform during the race and blast the competition in the sprint(s) will have course times that do not reflect their max capacity. Their speed-based category will be calculated based on this data, and they will continue to win against the folks they race in their current A-D category.
There will be/is an “elite” at the top of each category of underperformers. Without an upgrade to the next category, based on results, the categories will be haunted by these underperformers that will occupy the top positions and make racing less exciting for the rest.
That is what we see in the Zwift Classics races. Racers, that should have been exposed to tougher competition, are competing against racers that have about the same course times but are at a very different level when it comes to the ability to decide a race.
I am not sure giving a heavy weight on race results alone is going to be a simple solution here. Take me for instance: I’ve racked up a few wins in the last couple months in Cat C, specializing in anti-sandbagging crit races. These races suit my style really well, because I am not really an endurance rider. Although I am a strong C-racer, I don’t think I can hang on with Bs yet. If you toss me into B races because of my wins in a very specific course, it won’t be fun for me. I will probably group with other C-power racers in the back and won’t really end up pushing myself to the limit to improve myself.
But this was race one. We don’t know if they will add a time bonus to the top 10 to nudge them to the next category.
No, that is true. We can just hope this will be addressed. We don’t know if there is a concept of a “rider category” in the Zwift Classics at all or if it is just one-off dynamic categories.
Let’s hope they already had the same concerns and have a plan.
It is good that we have these concerns and ideas.
I suspect that the current AutoCat may not be quite up to catorizing people for long hilly races like Harrogate.
Hard to tell though as there are very few races on that venue, few that have many people in them, and I couldn’t find another at that length with more than a handful of finishers.
This is just pie in the sky thinking and unhelpful as you are offering it as a solution with no information to back this up…
As Zwift \ WTRL currently refuse to provide any content on how the cats system works its all guesswork at this point.
You would hope there would be a form of communication that lets people know how they were categorised but until that comes making statements on ‘belief’, ‘thought’ or ‘assumption’ isnt helpful to the discussion…
I suspect they’ve purposefully chosen different courses for the classics - hillier, flatter, and even a couple of summit finishes - so they can see how the new system works across different courses, and where tweaks need to be made. It’s still early days yet.
The reason IRL racing requires qualifying for promotion is safety and the literal physical constraints of the world. Zwift shares neither concern until and if in the former case collisions, or in the latter significant steerability/movement blocking/braking are implemented. I.e., at the moment there is zero harm in a newbie jumping into a pro-am race.
Broadly, I’m still seeing zero benefit from this system over using race ranking. I’m still not saying there are no benefits, just that nobody’s actually been able to articulate what those might be. And crucially how they affect series, stage races, and team events/series instead of one-off races.
Racers are allocated a [hopefully appropriate] category instead of being able to choose one. That’s the only known benefit to date, but it’s very early days. We need to give this some time to see how it plays out.
USA Cycling also implements a points system as well for automatic grades because some racers will enter racing IRL with unbelievable gifts of talent. With or without crashing, team tactics and/or other natural world influences, the organization recognizes these racers need to compete in realistic categories, thus they will use their race results to place them in an appropriate class of racers.
True, but
A) the logic behind the category placement should be transparent
B) the path to improving your category should be known
Neither of them impact the trial or how it is run, but as end users we understand how it impacts us & our experience.
I’m excited about this new Classics Race series. The group it placed me in for the first race suited me well (I finished middle of the 130 or so riders). As a lower B (3.3 to 3.5 w/kg), I’m normally unable to survive the start of B races and end up alone. Indeed, only better B’s seem to enter these events and B’s at my level stay away from them. No doubt he same happens in other categories too. This new series may be the solution so please, Zwift, keep up the good work.
Zwiftpower has yet to post my results from Tuesday’s C4 race with all of the breakdowns in power, ranking etc. amongst the racers! At the present moment, and for argument sake, if another Classics race reg were to open today and I was “placed in another C4 race,” there wouldn’t be data available for me to gain even the slightest understanding of why.
they said they are testing multiple systems. see this
WTRL and Zwift is still working on the system. Give it time, we only had one race, I would expect this to take many races to get this dialed in.
WTRL have people looking and analyzing all the data.
They are working on this see: Autocategorization Test Events & FAQ - #247?
To me, there is absolutely little use in that statement as provides little relevant information
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Without rehashing the posts from a few days back, there is no clarity on race speed (group dynamics/blob effect, no. of racers impacting speed of race etc), then no information on progression or regression through groups etc…
Probably because it is constantly changing during the testing phase. Once it is a permanent Zwift feature I would expect it to be well documented. But for now we are just happily testing a new system that we have been asking for for many years.
Probably… So again more guesswork as a statement… Please try to keep things factual.
‘Expect’ as above
As far as I remember, people asked for cat enforcement as the priority - there was little talk about using speed as a category enforcement - Winning & placing maybe, never speed as far I as remember.