Why is there no decent climbing races anymore. I used to love the 3 sisters event on the weekend. It literally doesn’t exist anymore. I can understand that flat races may be more popular but there must be room for some races using the big watopia climbs. Your lucky if you can find a trip up the volcano now days.
I guess it’s possible they weren’t as popular and got squeezed out by a packed calendar? How many used to take part?
The people who organised them might have stopped wanting to.
Or maybe they’re too long. I dunno.
I guess your right. I just find it so strange that there isnt more call for it. Long climbs are such a massive part of road cycling.
I remember when the alp was added to zwift. I thought this is going to be brilliant, we’re going to have some proper grand tour esque battles. I’ve only ever found 1 race on it ever.
It wasn’t that long after the Alp opened that all the climbing races started to disappear.
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There do still seem to be some climbing races. Just looking at ZwiftPower now, I see this one for example:
Team ZWC Hill Climb Battle - Distance: 17.6 km Elevation Gain: 1047 m. That’s Road to Sky, so straight up Alpe du Zwift.
And this:
3R Achterbahn Climbing Race - Distance: 47.7 km Elevation Gain: 987 m
Whether they are at times that suit you is another matter of course. If you get a few people together you could put on your own Meetup race; and club events are one of the features planned for the beta Club functionality. So you could create or join a climbing club that puts on its own race series.
The calendar is too busy and lacks variety / consistency. The model Zwift used in early days to open calendar to 3rd parties I feel is now unsustainable. A brief browse of events you often find multiple events on same route and distance within a 15 minute window. Look at these for example
ZwiftPower - Login and
ZwiftPower - Login
Same course same start time!
As a rule of thumb I would suggest
No more than 10 events starting every hour and minimum of 5 mins between each one.
Within any 2 hour period no event in a duplicate course to another. No exceptions.
Within any 8 hour window
Min of 3 TT and not always @ bologna!
Min of 3 climbing race >250m vertical
Min of 3 long race >50km
Min of 3 sprint races <10km
Variety is the spice of life. Those that don’t like TT or climbing would still have lots of opportunity to do their favoured style of race and we’d all benefit from having different routes to race over instead of the same being rotated all the time.
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Thanks Daren
Thats exactly what Im after. Twice up the Insbrook butt hauling hill of doom, now thats a good workout. Unfortunately Im in NZ making the start time at 11am here, probably not going to ever get to that one.
The Alp race is at 11pm, so also tool late.
I’ll look out for the club feature, would love to have a 3 sisters race on the weekend.
I guess everyone has different times times that they want certain events to happen. Maybe there could be random event slots in the calender that could be decided by votes cast in the proceeding week. For example, Saturday morning NZ long race.
Did you see the numbers for the Haute Route events? There were thousands of people doing those rides. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more popular event series (not counting pro cyclist led group rides). They were even breaking Zwift there were so many people doing them. There’s obviously an appetite for climbing.
As someone who likes cake I can’t say I see the appeal myself.
Perhaps when Zwift rolls out clubs and club racing someone will make a mountain goat club.
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But very different in length. 16km versus 48km. They’ll attract a different audience in general. Also, one has no powerups, the other has powerups enabled. Again, different races.
I think these are far too restrictive. It offers less flexibility in choice from racers themselves, making it harder to find a suitable race that fits their time needs.
I did see the numbers, I rode in those events. There were nearly 8,000 riders in the Stage 1 ride I did. Pretty big as you say.
I’m not saying there’s no appetite for climbing, just speculating as to why races might have fallen by the wayside. Alpe du Zwift remains popular, but the numbers of people I see on that route are far smaller than elsewhere on Watopia.
Besides, just because someone wants to ride a high profile climbing sportive doesn’t mean they want to race up hills. I’m an example of that. Happy to plod up the Alpe, but no chance I’d enter a race up it. 
So numbers in the Haute Route rides can’t necessarily be used to infer popularity of climbing races.
It might just be that Zwift are trying to meet certain criteria when it comes to scheduling races, and those races haven’t been put on the timetable. I dare say there’s a lot of competition for event and race slots, and I assume not all requests are successful.
There is the BRT Iron Goat series:
https://boltrace.team/iron-goat-league
I wouldn’t be surprised to find there are other series if you know where to look. But as I say, I never go looking for them.
Hi Darren they aren’t different in length. They are identical. It’s true that the Classic race offers flexible lengths but one of these choices is identical. No need for it.
On second point my idea would have a new race event starting every 5-10 minutes this is no less frequent than now it just means that there aren’t duplicates / similar events happening in a run. I am simply proposing that each subsequent event is different from the 3/4 events that start either side of it. I don’t see that as restrictive it’s actually MORE choice.
One is 3 laps, one is 1 lap…
One is 3 laps
One is 3 laps or 2 laps or 1 lap.
The reason for the misunderstanding is the way Zwift have position this using the ABC system for which there is a separate thread.
And they are on the SAME course with all of the variation that zwift offers this is not necessary.
I was just going by what ZwiftPower says.
But even if you choose the three lap race in both instances, they are still different. The Classic is an open race - three laps at 1 - 5W/kg, while the Fast’n’Furious offers three laps each for the different categories. You can race in the D category (2 - 2.4W/kg) for example. A/B and C/D do start together, but it’s not the same as a single category for all racers.
The point of this thread is about having more variety of races. I gave an example (there are many others) where there is a lack of variety. Lets not get drawn into a debate about one event and think about the feedback we want to see from Zwift which from me is more variety and more choice. Hence I support the original poster that there should be more climbing races.
I don’t think similar races are the problem anyway. It’s a virtual platform and I don’t see any reason why there can’t be as many climbing races scheduled as flat ones. The target audience does overlap, but there will be plenty of people who want one or the other.
that’s what I’m saying. Glad you agree 
I absolutely agree that there should be more climbing races. I love the Tour de Zwift Stage 2 Standard Route at Innsbruck. We need many more events similar to that. All I see now are flat races or flat with a little uphill races.