I’m not saying a report won’t help, but a single case which is “clearly obvious” to someone not getting a ban is also a case where people can lose trust in the situation. I haven’t really looked at this rider’s numbers, but part of Zwift’s process should be to re-review their internal process for action on a rider when very dubious accounts continuously get reported and slip through the process.
A system with no feedback loop, and a system that clearly doesn’t work in obvious cases both can undermine trust.
Yes we are not going to end up with perfection here because they can’t or won’t share results of specific investigations. My attitude is do anything possible to make it better, so my suggestion is to share what can be shared - anonymized summary demonstrating action.
Don’t bother saying anything on forums - better to avoid the “ignore it and you’ll be happy” type comments. Clearly the user isn’t happy or they wouldn’t have raised this.
I sometimes disable my internet connection to ride offline and avoid seeing these things. Not a solution for races, but sometimes it is worth it, especially when folks are so blatant and bragging about what they are doing. I am not the only one doing that.
This is true. If people report clearly dubious accounts and they keep going, then that erodes confidence in the process. One account took months before finally disappearing recently, good result in the end, but took a while.
After 15 days, the same rider is still riding, recording results, and ruining every single race they participate in. Zwift has still not taken any disciplinary action against this rider. In my opinion, it is extremely easy to detect that this is either a faulty smart trainer or intentional manipulation. However, Zwift apparently does not consider this to be cheating.
As a result, I feel that reporting suspect accounts is a waste of time and achieves nothing.
Here is an overview of their latest races—it speaks for itself.
Exactly. If Zwift genuinely thinks it’s normal for some random guy with zero racing background to pull higher watts than Mathieu van der Poel—without dual-recording or any verification—then community racing is completely cooked.
Don’t bother, if he’s removed he’ll be back. Zwift doesn’t care, they’re a subscriber. For instance, the last time I checked, there were 90/100 yr riders knocking out 4 w/kg! Concentrate on your own rides.
It’s not always that easy to ignore them when they are so obvious. Yesterday I saw one 60yo, doing 310 watts at 6.2w/kg and 140bpm for his 5-6minute intervals. One of his other activities recently shows up at 190w at 2.9w/kg which is fairly normal. You do the maths. This is pretty common.
Interesting that very fast ride wasn’t saved in his activities list… I guess with him being on MTB was trying to make the upgrade progress go faster.
Another different rider in front of me dropped 20kg while he was riding (approx. 70kg to 50kg). His w/kg shot up suddenly - then later he was back to normal. That’s not a good look.
No, I know it’s hard to ignore. But, as there seems to be nothing being done to stop it, (I’m sure Zwift will say they’re working on it.) the only thing we can do is concentrate on our own rides. I don’t know if the cheating is confined to cycling (I don’t run) but, look at strava, some ridiculous speeds and times are posted, more since e-bikes have become more common. The give away for these riders is often the no power data and, if shown, low HR’s
It is not, I’ve seen runners holding Olympic medal 1500 meter pace for hours. It’s actually a lot easier to cheat on the run, just step off the treadmill.
