Probably an equal number to how many pregnant women are using training plans… maybe 5?
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I’ve no idea who they are, but it seems more aligned to RGT than Zwift.
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Here’s the Zwift Insider post just published on this topic, including some of my thoughts on the changes: Zwift Announces Community Welfare and Anti-Harassment Update | Zwift Insider
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Either you hide wkg and zwift becomes a non sens. I would change platform for sure. Either you keep in watts and wkg and we still know every weight. Do you thing people that laugh about people s weight aren’t able to count? You re ridiculous.
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Let’s hope those harassing others regarding their weight lack the ability to do simple math.
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Alice, I get what you’re saying and don’t want to minimize the eating disorder concerns.
To me a better solution is to make all riders’ avatars the same weight and go entirely off power for the game. That way no one with an eating disorder has any reason to attempt to lose weight, and will not to make any racing not moderated by Zwift (which is only elite racing) a complete joke. Which they already are other than the ZwiftPower results with zPower 400W on/off switch riders, riders losing 35kg in a month, etc. In addition to that, as is the in-game physics are over-emphasizing weight as it is, IMHO.
I think I might be done with Zwift after the current Zwift Racing League season if my IRL racing is back. Maybe even if if’s not. Things are getting worse for racing, not better. And racing is the entire reason I’m on Zwift.
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I get it and at the same time am incredibly disappointed with ZHQ. If they can make this change which will make it much easier for the cheaters why can’t they roll out the entry category limit we’ve been screaming about for years at the same time? I’ve NEVER heard of anybody getting harassed due to weight and height (this doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, just means in my little sample it’s not been heard of) but EVERYBODY in the D and C groups has experienced the category sandbaggers.
Fix this ZHQ!
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Terrible decision for Zwift racing. This basically opens the barn door for cheating across all categories.
Apart from the top 250 racers on Zwift, nobody is going to be actively checked by zwift.
Why not keep zwiftpower in it’s current form for the people who want to race with the transparency requirements needed and then let the casual riders do Zwift without displaying weight/height.
As a hard working A+ rider I simply can’t see myself racing against a field not being transparent. RGT here we come
20 Likes
It’s not aligned fo any platform.
So how does the current system benefit anyone then? You spot someone you think has falsified their weight - what is the consequence?
I have a history of eating disorders. My first race in zwift, I could immediately see that at 175cm and 66kg I was pretty much the heaviest woman in the race. Outdoors I had been riding well, my weight hasn’t been an issue to me and I was doing well with battling the eating disorder voices that never go away completely. But now I immediately felt embarrassed that everyone could see how ‘heavy’ I was compared to the other riders. I got a great 20 min wkg that day (5.0) but that was overshadowed by how rubbish I felt about my weight. Even though I tried to fight it, I rapidly slipped into disordered eating again. Had I only been able to see I had the best 20 min wkg in the TT and had come second, that wouldn’t have happened in the same way. Yes, I may still have realised a kg loss here or there would ‘help’, but I wouldn’t have seen how many other women my height were 5-8kg lighter.
The weight and height data being visible on every single event provides another way for riders to compare themselves. You don’t focus on training to improve your absolute power, you end up drawn into losing weight to match your peers (or to keep yourself lighter than them).
When I spoke up about my difficulties at the end of season 2 of ZRL, I was overwhelmed by how many people from premier division though to D category contacted me to say the display of weight on zwift also created pressure for them to lose weight.
Eating disorders are really complex and really hard to understand, even for professionals like GPs. I don’t expect people to get it but I just really hope they can see that this could be so significant in saving people from permanent health issues
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If Zwift had a category system that didn’t rely on W/kg then you could hide it.
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Why are we also losing height information. Surely if weight is removed (something I disagree with) there is no need to also remove height. I’m not sure there are many ways to change your height, healthy or unhealthy, so I can’t see the mental health argument for this, which does exist and needs to be considered with for with the visibility weight.
This change will just end up with 2ft tall riders at the top of each category zipping around as if they have an aero boost 24/7. At least height compensated slightly for the benefit heavier riders had at Cat limits. Zwift will soon be seeing 100kg riders under 100cm. Congratulations on breaking any fairness in community racing.
Zwift racing was one of the few things that kept me going mentally through all these lockdowns. This change now takes that away from those of us who are interested in clean and fair racing. Damaging the mental health of the 10000s of people who race on Zwift. 
17 Likes
A problem clearly existed. You know it did wrt. performance witch hunting, but that’s not the only way folks get harassed either.
Feel like lots of folks are glossing over a pretty important word here (emphasis mine):
we will no longer publicly display Zwifter weight and height in ZwiftPower, Zwift Companion, nor on zwift dot com.
Take a moment to reflect on that one.
2 Likes
Simply horrible news! Again.
We need more transparency, not less.
You are ruin zwift racing! For gods sake ZHQ…
How many people are actually getting harassed about their weight when it’s not related to blatant cheating?
RGT here we come!
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I think the point is that these folks are complaining because their weight is public, not because they are being harassed. It has nothing to do with disordered eating but everything to do with disordered thinking. Having their weight displayed publicly is causing them mental anxiety and depression because they compare it to others. I doubt that this is about harassments because that is simply not happening widespread.
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Isn’t that exactly what most people are upset about? Loss of transparency in racing, encouraging weight doping.
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Not having suffered with this il take your judgement on this.
How does this change fix the issue?
If I was as focused on weight as I (& I apologise for this bit) ‘presume’ you would be, wouldn’t you just do the math and still work out how much you weighed against others based on the wkg?
Especially any who might have beaten you?
So you would still check your weight against others.
To then compound this, this encourages weight doping, so if you do the math off the wkg race result you are now looking at a opposing racers weight that has increased in chances of being manipulated… but you wouldn’t know this…
Apologies, but I don’t see how this change gets you out of that downward spiral.
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Hi everyone, we want to clarify several points:
Height and weight can serve as unhealthy triggers for some, and we’ve removed them from public view for this reason.
We know how important ZwiftPower is to the racing community. The changes made simply remove the labels that can act as unhealthy triggers. Average watts and w/kg will remain visible so the ability to validate results and weights will remain.
The 2 hour pre-race weigh-in window only impacts international pro-am races. This option is used by the IOC, and is becoming a standard that pros should be familiar with.
We encourage community racers to report suspected cheating (as well as harassment) offline, rather than making public accusations. Our Customer Support agents have all the tools to look at egregious changes in weight and make informed decisions if someone is “weight doping” or not. This process maintains privacy for all parties and that’s why we’ve been doing it this way since last September.
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Last time I looked at the terms of service Zwift doesn’t actually you require to enter your actual weight. Has this been updated?
1 Like