Cheating is rife. The speed calculation seems to reward small and light riders with ridiculous speed on the flats, anonymous riders with professional level wattage animate most race, speeds are ever increasing. I sometimes feel like a clean rider must have felt in the mid 90s when EPO hit the scene.
Here are some ideas I have been thinking about to make it fairer:
No anonymous riders. If you are good enough to race in Advanced, you should race under your real name. Not JC. Or ā¦ Anonymous riders with World Tour power outputs shouldnāt be fooling anyone.
Smart trainer must be primary power. There is a remarkable correlation between riders using a PM as primary and obvious sticky watts, often combined with an anonymous profile.
Anyone doing 6 w/kg + for 20 minutes / 7 w/kg for over 5 minutes should be asked to provide some sort of explanation as to their pro level numbers (eg. Ex pro, former Olympic rower etc) It should not just be accepted that someone with no evidence of sporting achievement can achieve world class fitness. This should apply to a very small number of riders.
Anyone producing professional level wattage at an improbable age (eg. early teens, mid 50s) should also be asked to verify. Cheating aside, this should apply to a very small number of users. Itās so ridiculous to see actual pro cyclists being beaten by anonymous 50+ riders.
If you are an adult male and you are under 50kg / 150cm, perhaps itās just not possible for you to race fairly under the current speed calculation formula? Harsh, I know, but there are riders with this profile winning flat races at not much over 200w, which is utterly bonkers. Or Zwift need to drop the CDA / aero obsession when determining speed on the flat. I did 350 on a Tempus Fugit TT and got caught by a 30kg rider who started 2 mins behind me who averaged 180.
There needs to be automatic disappearing of those who produce unworldly performances during races, not a DSQ after the race. 8w/kg for 5 minutes? Automatic removal. Over 11 w/kg for one minute? Removal and a request for verification to continue using the platform. āLooks like you missed your calling as a pro cyclist. To ensure fair racing we invite you to complete a verification processā¦ā
It needs to be in the user terms and conditions that if Zwift is satisfied that you have cheated in races, you are kicked off the platform and banned.
The races have become infected with a small, but significant number of trolls (sometimes the fake names make it obvious), who have spawned a larger group of delusional riders who adjust their metrics to be able to keep up with the trolls, then you have a third tier of riders who have clearly accidental setups that produce vastly overinflated power. All of this can be policed with my suggestions above.
Or just have two versions of racing: simulation and arcade.
Simulation is based on a sim of IRL racing, with these rules applying.
Let those who want to race anonymously with World Tour power ācompeteā in Arcade, which could be seen as the āfunā āgamifiedā option.
Could agree with a few points you mentioned but I am afraid it is never going to happen since Zwift is more numbers and so paying customers oriented so getting 300 riders stop or banning them isnt a good message to have to report to the CFO. And there is no way to know if there will be 300 others joining or returning to zwift to make up for that.
And the numbers or Zwifters who are willing to ride in an elite club where you could only join with your regulations would be too small for Zwift to put in the hours and money to uphold it. Zwift had elite races before and retired it.
And the clubs organizing races arent even doing everything they can to ban those that annoy you. And you know that. There are a few races on Zwift who are a lot stricter in their rules, so perhaps you should try those, but that is something I have already told you multiple times or even try another platform that is well known for their Sunday races. But I would not get my hopes up for Zwift to do this.
I really think so yes. The āridersā who willingly cheat their way to the advanced cat and win races there by cheating would not be happy if they get banned from those races or even from Zwift at all. And that last one would automaticly mean they would stop paying.
If you have an acount to troll and/or cheat and that gets taken away why keep it ? They dont care about fitness to begin with.
1 - Will never happen I am afraid and it is also completly uncontrolable. And it makes no sense at all.
2 - If it is about āobvious sticky wattsā than have Zwift do something about that. Why punish people who are genuine and have their powermeters set up perfectly and calibrate often ?
6 - A bit like the answer above. My guess is Zwift wants te punish legit riders as little as possible and dont want to get into discussions and negative publicity when that happens if they get removed instantly. Cause there will always be innocent victems who get punished.
And think of it. Lets assume there is a troll from whatever country we can think of. Do you really think he cares if a Englishman who lives in Belgium can call him out with his real name on an online platform called Zwift ?
If you can legit do 7w/kg for 5 min and 6+ for 20 mins, it might suck to get banned from Zwift, but on the plus side, a career in the World Tour awaits you.
But I also believe racing isnt that much high on the list at Zwift, so not much time and resources spend on it. Seeing only about 15% of all paying customers race.
And my guess is they silently hope that organizers like FRR/ECRO/SISU and a few more I cant remember now, do the job for them (just like they do with Sauce and Velo) and let them have more rules controlled races so they dont have to.
And as we have already talked about earlier. Race organizers on Zwift can also do more if they want, like in the Friday Zeal Race you like so much, but they also kinda refuse to do so.
Itās not that I like this race, itās just flat.
Because of cheats in general, and the weird ālittle people are fastest on the flatā thing, I canāt compete in any hilly races if the climb goes into VO2 max territory, which is mad as Iām only 77kg and Training Peaks says my VO2 max power is my strongest area.
This is something TrainingPeaks virtual has for races.
But how do you stop people faking smart trainers? Or devices in the middle hacking the power data? As a top level racer you must be aware that this happens.
Which makes Wannieās sarcastic suggestion of fixed 75kg for all racing avatars a bit pointless because everyone will just hack power.
I ride Zwift a lot on certain routes that are well known for dubious performances in the realms of TDF competitors. Folks with random power generation, random cadence and heart rate generation or others with realistic power āpatternsā except that seem to be 20-30w higher than youād expect. All this stuff is easy to spot.
But at least put checks in place for adults at sub 150cm height and adult males at sub 50kg for Zwift in general. Also prevent large weight and height changes per day. Itās not perfect but it is a start.
Zwift should exclude Zpower from races (rather than leaving it to race organisers) and also filter it out from leaderboards across Zwift. Itās a start. Zpower defenders will say oh people will still cheat, but it will clean things up quite a lot.
One other thing Iāve seen in TPV is the a section to enter your racing license details from the real world, be it a local/national one or a UCI license. I did have one of those before I quit ahead of the new national federation trying to take over the state federations.
Perhaps this is necessary for higher level races? I know most of the folks should have these already from their IRL racing. This will reduce some of the anonymity.
That āraceā needs to be booted from Zwift until it is cleaned up.
Anon riders. Just because an account has a name on it doesnāt mean much. The top rider for a few years had stolen someoneās identity to cheat with. Your account could be anyoneās .. there isnāt a Strava or photo to prove any different so how does anon vs your set up change anything?
Smart trainers - makes sense but they are easy to manipulate and duals help but donāt solve issues.
Arcade and Sim mode makes sense but if we went that route Iād say make people get a sim licenseā¦ which could be a ZADA run thing again or would need Zwift effort
And probably clarify that itās not really worth fixing advanced racing if itās just a 16km flat zraceā¦ most advanced racers want something more worthwhile
Would having them put in their real racing license from their national federation or UCI be enough?
People racing at a fairly high level usually have them already because they are needed for real life racing. Adding another Zwift specific license might complicate things, especially if it costs money.
Could it be possible with smart trainers to properly secure the communications between them and Zwift? And do it without the trainer device manufacturers wanting everyone to go out and buy new and costly smart trainers? IE, doing it with a firmware update.
I know whatās most likely to happen, theyād all say right, buy a new AUD$6000 Kickr Bike Pro whateverā¦ Cost is key these days given the money pressures we are mostly all facing these days.
Trolling and cheating is something the community hasnāt taken very seriously, to the point where you just see comments such as āitās a gameā or āitās funā. The slippery slope started when the bike upgrades first came along, then it has just kept going from there.
If this stuff is to be cleaned up, then everyone has to be pushing for it. It canāt just be a few folks trying to take on the cheats and trolls.
On an app where number of subscribers, and therefore cash coming in, is paramount you have absolutely zero chance of getting any change. I gave up racing on here months ago, and Iām level D where cheating still took place in every race. Well done to the cheats for beating a 70+ year old man by gaming the system.