Disillusioned with A racing

Racing
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I’m experiencing serious disillusionment with 690+ / A racing.

I am a massive fan of Zwift as a product and as a company.

But I have serious doubts about some users.

And I do think there are ways in which both Zwift and the community could ensure more realistic racing and get sufficient accountability from those riders who regularly deliver improbable performances.

If you’re in your mid fifties, you train 6-8 hours a week around a full time job, it is incredibly unlikely that you have an FTP of 5w/kg. Also, with the natural decrease in VO2 max as we age, you would be one of the fittest 50 somethings on the planet if you can hold 400 watts for 5 minutes at 66kg. I know elite level (not contracted) riders who can’t get over 5.5 for 5 minutes.

Perhaps it might be fair to ask such riders to demonstrate their fitness background? Or that their settings and trainer are correctly calibrated? Or that some sort of check is made when a rider drops their weight by 10kg shortly after getting the automatic promotion to A and can’t boss the races like they did in B?

This isn’t an ageist rant (I am 46) - it’s just I do see a pattern with ‘too good to be true’ performances. And, age is a massive factor in cycling performance.

Also, if you are a 950+ ZRS rider, or have an FTP and zMap of 5 / 6w/kg respectively - perhaps you could be asked to demonstrate your history and training volume, and use your real name to race? Or that you synch your Strava account to Zwift or log your outdoor rides, so that there can be a comparison made between your training volume and performance? Or a weight / set up check?

I mean, unless you are a recently retired pro, you won’t have an FTP of 400w if you train just 4 hours a week.

Final point: I love that Zwift is inclusive in a way that IRL racing isn’t. In elite outdoor racing all riders are within a few kg either way of 70kg with only a few outliers. It’s great that in a Zwift race a 54kg Japanese rider can race against a 100kg Belgian powerhouse. But the adjustment that makes it easier for light riders to keep up on the flat than IRL and easier for heavier riders to climb than IRL is causing all sorts of problems in racing. Plus it seems to me that draftable climbs give a major advantage to lighter riders who get the w/kg benefit and a better draft.

As a 77/78kg rider my choice of race is massively restricted to ‘anything that is almost exclusively flat’ because I can’t hold 500w for 4 minutes to get up a modest hill. And even on the flat, I’m busting a gut to hold the wheel of 60kg riders doing 270w while I am holding 350.

I’m sure I am not alone in avoiding any race with significant climbing volume. Yet I see plenty of really light guys excelling in flat races. Some days I want to race, but can’t as there is nothing without hills. I know guys who have very similar 20/5/1 min w/kg to me, yet they prefer hilly races but can do fine on the flat, whereas I get humiliated in the hills and can’t drop these guys on the flat.

Would it not be an idea to make the highest category of racing a little more like IRL racing?

I know inclusivity v realism is a polarising debate, but should the higher level of racing not be more on the side of realism than inclusion?

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You might benefit by changing your expectations.

You are not really racing on Zwift.

In a race, all parameters are open and verifiable. IRL, whether you lie about your weight or power or anything doesn’t matter because once the race starts, the first across the line wins.

It is too cumbersome for thousands of riders across the globe using different equipment to achieve the same level of verification and the variables affect Zwift performance to a greater degree.

In Zwift, you are not racing. You are riding hard and using others for motivation.

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Probably related to the CdA calculations. The CdA seems to be quite slippery, but from how it scales with rider size it seems like the Cd is low while the the Area component is too big. Area is modelled from height and weight, seems like it’s using a very upright model. So shorter and lighter riders get an advantage.

The what now? Other than heavier riders climbing faster at the same w/kg which is correct I have never noticed anything of the sort.

But yeah, a lot of the numbers don’t make a lot of sense. But unless you’re familiar with what those numbers represent you might not understand why they don’t make sense.

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I appreciate that and I do understand.

I just think that an ‘age and riding volume’ check on really elite numbers and performances might not be that hard and would be a win for fair racing.

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Oh no, make all racing more like real life, with steering, braking and collisions. Adds another dimension to the races, so it’s not just a matter of who can blast the most power, you have to be able to steer, avoid collisions, etc, just like sim car racing.

And to be able to do that while being fatigued.

How far do you want to go for realism?

That I agree with, there are certainly unusual performances in Zwift from time to time, and previously it’s been suggested to clamp down on those in racing, but everything else becomes a wild west of exploits and other dubious things.

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I am not great with physics, but my coach (62kg ex pro) tells me that Zwift is really biased towards lighter riders and whenever I have pointed this out others tell me that this is totally wrong and actually heavier riders get an easy ride climbing (which doesn’t seem to be the case for me)

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I think they brought back the “cone of shame “ but I think one has to be absurd to actually get one but it’s a start.

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Who is going to do this work? I think you are massively underestimating what it would take to verify all these so called “elite” racers, and putting an age and weight threshold on it sounds like targeting certain populations and I don’t think that is helpful.

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I’m sure we could find a stack of others with differing opinions to that, and on what basis is your 62kg ex-pro coach making that claim, has he seen the inner workings of the Zwift software? Few people have and you can’t just rely on addons showing overlays with some numbers, you need to see the actual code.

I do find it interesting to see have seen a verified elite racer go up ADZ with 216w average power for a 36 minute lap. I mean I’m light, but heck, that power figure would probably get me at least 15 minutes slower, and not through lack of knowing the climb. I saw that ride on his Strava. :roll_eyes:

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There should be something done to even prevent that at all. Nobody loses 10kg in one night.

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Well, the other week I got caught by the rider who started a minute behind me in a flat TT on Tempus Fugit after 20 minutes.

I had averaged 350 until that point. He was cruising at 180w with 30kg. Even if he really was 30kg, he still shouldn’t be faster than me on the flat with a wattage almost half mine, right?

I’m not going to name names as it isn’t fair, but I know a number of consistent A/A+ racers who are 55+ but have seriously elite numbers. Anyone at that age hitting 5+ FTP should really get some additional scrutiny - there really can’t be more than a handful of such riders, but they ruin races.

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That yes and when people gain 50 to 100kg or more (for descending faster), it should be that they can only lose about 2kg per day. So if they go make themselves 360kg, they get can only adjust it back by a small amount per day. So the next race, they’ll be doing that at 358kg instead of 70kg or whatever their real weight is.

5w/kg FTP isn’t that unbelievable on its own, I used to be at 5.1w/kg before a serious crash stuffed everything up permanently. But it doesn’t pass the test when you see seriously high w/kg of 5+ with very low actual watts.

Other than that, watch the seriously light folks fly up ADZ, then scream down ADZ at 90-100km/h. Bike aerodynamics can’t do all of that… The rest is those folks changing their weight, or probably also their height. I’m light as well, so I know what sort of speeds a 60kg rider on a Project 74 is doing downhill, and it’s definitely not 100km/h+.

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Trainers are a mess anyway, so that is hardly a thing to be worried about. When your trainer reads different outputs when the roomtemperature changes it will be very hard to even check that.

And besides that, who is going to judge/check all those videos and remarks ? Dont think Zwift wants to hire an extra 100 employees just to confirm the A riders …

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I get that.

But I don’t think that an age / riding volume / sudden weight loss v performance check would be too difficult to set up?

Another thing would be not letting free trial accounts race, perhaps?

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I am all for that.

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Indeed, but when you see on ZP ‘veteran’ and ‘started cycling in 2021’ it’s pretty suspicious.

It takes years of high volume to reach that level and even then most of us (guilty) get stuck at 4.2

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No real point, when even paying racers (even verified riders) were caught out using exploits.

At least the bike upgrade exploits all got stopped, after a lot of effort. But while it was still happening it exposed quite a lot of racers doing all sorts of dubious stuff in their efforts to get ahead at all costs.

This is all really getting to the topic where it’s not the issue of “A racing” but rather people want to be able to trust the performances of others are real.

I always use heart rate, I also always have dual recording of power. If it was possible I’d have companion app show my height and weight as well rather than being hidden.

For racing those should be shown.

Also for the big climbs like ADZ, Ventop and Epic KOM the leaderboards have to filter out the impossible performances.

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Exactly. IRL you can just look and see how big an opponent is.

In Zwift it’s really hard to tell.

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Biggest problem I see in all this is that everyone is a paying customer. If there were more things needed or checked Zwift might lose way more paying customers than they would gain from honest riders who want to compete fairly.

After all it is a game for us, but a business for Zwift.

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True, but I do think some paying customers get disillusioned and even quit due to obvious cheats.

I did see that one of the top ranked riders ‘retired’ from Zwift and explained why in his ZP bio, and it was all due to frustration with dubious performances.

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