Impossible cadence - easy win in the fight against cheats?

Racing
1

Recently a new rider has appeared in the Advanced Category and is causing significant disruption.

Not only does the rider have an FTP of 445w at 77kg, but also appears to able to sustain a cadence that is physically impossible.

I love Zwift, and racing especially, and am sad to see such bizarre activities being tolerated. I have had two races ruined by this rider.

Surely riders who consistently ride at impossible cadences should be booted from races and group rides? This should be really easy to spot, right?

Could this user be using en e-bike? Or hacking the data?

I know cheating is really difficult to spot / prove in Zwift, but surely an average cadence of 170 over 30 minutes, peaking at 375 could trigger some sort of sanction?

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2

Likely on a spin bike.

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3

I hope you flagged this rider and encouraged others to do the same.

Does it still take 6 or 7 riders flagging a suspicious ride to trigger a response from ZHQ?

4

He probably has his cadence sensor on his wheel not on the crank.

5

If the cadence is jumping like that it most likely means that his equipment is miscalibrated and making him almost superhuman :sweat_smile::zany_face:

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6

Interesting theory but if this is a ZRacing event there has to be a power number coming from somewhere that isn’t a speed sensor

7

Guess he has added his cadence meter to a cage and is letting his hamster run in it.

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8

Why can you just ignore Him?

9

Because he goes flying off the front of races, and the 990+ guys crank up the pace to impossible levels to follow him, and guys like me get dropped.

If this guy wasn’t cheating, we wouldn’t get dropped.

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10

Cadence data is often “not great” from trainers - mine will frequently be either doubled or halved using Wahoo trainers without another cadence sensor because they use variation in power to guess cadence, there’s no sensor. If it was doubled full-time because of something odd (weird chainring or something) it’s 85avg and 177-ish peak - a lot, but well within possible.

I’d agree that it’s also possibly some other data spoofed into cycling power data, whether from QZ, one of those HR to Power things, or something else.

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11

Yes a cadence sensor on his wheel and a power meter.

Cadence numbers has nothing to do with power you can put a cadence sensor on a fan and pair it with your game.

I don’t know wat the relevance is to mentioning cadence as a cheat.

The person in question had a average power of only 350w for 30 min.

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12

ONLY 350w for 30 min? Yeah, that’s ONLY 4.55w/kg. What’s their 5 minute? 700w?

13

For Zwift, it’s somewhat more common to find people doing much higher than that. :astonished:

I won’t make any judgements on it, but it’s less common in IRL.

That power was high enough for some of the people I trained with IRL to have around 5.4w/kg for 30-40min, and they were in national pro teams and racing in international UCI tours.

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14

I personally know a rider who has finished the Vuelta a Espana several times and the Giro once and has an FTP of 320-350 at 72-75kg.

On Zwift this is pretty average, especially for those middle aged men with anonymous profiles.

15

Fairly average for IRL too I’d say.

Problem with Zwift is weight and height are hidden all the time unless you dig into Zwift Power (and all parties have an account for that). Zwift needs to revert to showing weight and height publicly as it did previously so that odd numbers are easily visible (sub 50kg, 130cm height).

There are a few folks who may be sub 50kg, but they most certainly are not the middle aged men burning up the leaderboards, and certainly not the types losing 25kg after a supposed “weekend riding in the mountains” (according to his Strava comment) and getting a huge ADZ PR.

Later club rides reverted to his regular 80kg weight according to screenshots showing power and w/kg.

16

Can’t wait to see all the 50 year olds beating MVdP and Freddy Ovett on their upcoming races hosted on Zwift soon. It should be pure comedy :smiley:

17

It’s sad.

I’m surprised I didn’t get obliterated on ADZ yesterday - clocked in a 44:56, was expecting to get smashed by a 34:56 or a 24:56… :roll_eyes: I at least have heart rate that is real which I suppose others can see.

I would regularly see folks doing 4 laps or more in a row of ADZ at low 30 minutes. Very unlikely.

I would be happy to have my weight and height shown to everyone else in Zwift through companion app or even on the rider list while I’m riding.

18

Y’all are making me realize that maybe I’m not {that} out of shape, getting beaten on the last climb while putting out 4.5 w/kg and being passed by dozens of other riders at 5.5 w/kg…

19

Imagine being an under 16 year old girl racer, that claims to be 180cm tall and 32Kg, claiming to have lost 12Kg from early October to mid/late November.

Imagine this girl having a teammate who can’t decide if they are 140cm or 149cm or 150cm over ~11 weeks, while dropping from 40Kg to 35Kg.

Then imagine informing the TT series organisers about the above and they give them the benefit of the doubt because they are juniors. Really?

At least neither have finished a Zwift race since mid November, doesn’t mean they aren’t joining and causing chaos, before leaving ahead of the finish banner.

A few others in their team have very questionable changes too.

The lack of policing by ZwiftHQ on weight and height, at least for racing, is appaling.

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20

This highlighted bit bothers me a bit, the “at least for racing” thing which I’ve seen before in various discussion topics said in slightly different ways by a few different people.

It has to be cleaned up across the board otherwise it will result in a situation of “have” and “have not”. The playing field must be fair across the board, no matter it being a race, a group ride or someone having a go at one of the big climbs like Ventop or ADZ, they should expect they can trust that results are real and free of exploits or cheats.