It would be nice, but I believe it’s not going to happen…
If everyone has that attitude then it won’t. You have to keep pressing the issue.
Another example today, my puny 3.0w/kg was catching a 3.5w/kg rider quickly on the long downhill just after the start of Road to Sky. Checking the other rider I see 3.5w/kg at 125 watts… ![]()
They won’t do that as (my theory) it will show the tinkering they have done with the laws of physics in cycling to make the platform more inclusive to riders at the extreme points of the weight spectrum. Especially those at the light end. Because a market where people tend to be smaller and lighter is important (if I wanted to make money, as opposed to make a very realistic simulation of RL cycle racing, I would do exactly the same thing)
If Zwift applied to real life racing, the tiny climbers would keep up with the Classics specialists on the flat - due to being smaller and getting a better draft - then would blitz them on the Koppenberg / Poggio etc due to having superior w/kg, despite way fewer absolute watts. Cancellara and Boonen would have been getting dropped from the leaders if Zwift science was applied to the Ronde
I see this in Zwift racing all the time, where in some predominantly flat races I average way over 300w, but get beaten by 55kg riders doing 240w.
I watch some YouTubers in races I have done and see guys on Zwift Ride in the same bunch as me riding on the 13, 14 and 15 gears while I am in 17, 18 and 19. Our cadence is similar. This is not realistic.
Chris,
While I agree that Zwift needs to do a better job of detecting and stopping exploits, dealing with height / weight manipulation is much harder. The only way to truly deal with this is forcing new members to send in a copy of an official ID that lists height and weight and integrate the platform with smart scales, requiring them to “weigh in” on a weekly basis to make sure their in game weight is current and accurate. I think you can see from a personal privacy point of view, this will never happen with a company like Zwift. Even a more limited “verified” user system where only people that verify their height / weight with Zwift are eligible for jerseys / leaderboards / etc would still only be used by a fraction of the user base.
It’s not right and it’s not fair that people can cheat (sticky watts, power offsets, trainer mis-calibration) and Zwift needs to do more about this. The best we can do for manipulators is education, visibility, peer pressure, on both the riders and the groups organizing things in Zwift, and some basic tools from Zwift that prevents people making large changes over short periods of time.
Cheers
I don’t think a weigh in is necessary at all.
A simple ‘you can’t have professional power output and be a 50 year old anonymous user’ filter would make a massive difference.
Happened yesterday on the Fresh Outta 25 ride.
C group (ZRS 270-390), get to the Petit KOM, and I averaged 3.3 w/kg, and I get left in the dust by many riders doing 5 - 5.5w/kg all the way up the KOM.
That should not be possible in the C group.
According to Training Peaks, doing 5.3 w/kg for 5 minutes puts a rider in the top 15% of users.
On Zwift, it puts you in the top 25%.
I’d expect Training Peaks users to be more serious about cycling and have more of a background in the sport, and be far less likely to be dishonest about their metrics or miscalibrating equipment.
This difference is very telling.
Forget the virtual gear numbers. It’s as meaningless as the distance covered given by a speed sensor attached to the trainer freewheel. If you need to think about it, just think that they are running different gearing.
The first three averaged 4.4, 4.2 and 3.9 w/kg up the KOM and all three have been promoted out of that particular pen range. There were three others who averaged 4.1w/kg up the KOM. Although there may have been many who put in kicks of 5.0-5.5 w/kg I don’t believe any of them did that range all the way up.
Why not? Every rider has the chance of having watts above the limits at least once, before he/she gets promoted.
Wish he could share his diet. I would love to lose some kilos like that.
Ed Laverack is just below your results snip at 64.3Kg at 35mins 17secs, his weight won’t be far off at all.
weight exactly 50kg, it’s this kind of cr*p that Zwift could just kill so easily.
He has obviously just set his weight as low as he needs to so that he can win
He has a BMI of 14!!!
The winner is still in zone 2 at 320, apparently.
Outstanding!
But it’s not so difficult to show height and weight in the companion app details on a rider.
That WAS done before. Until it was hidden on on the grounds of privacy or health issues. Unfortunately that just aided the cheating.
And then the ability to choose the build of your avatar so that a 35kg stick insect rider can look like a huge bodybuilder doesn’t help either. That’s another way they try to hide their cheating.
Yesterday I’m going downhill at my puny 3.0w/kg and catching someone doing higher watts/kg, that almost never happens given I usually weigh less than anyone else. It’s a big muscular looking avatar, but going 125 watts at 3.5w/kg… Impossible!
He got reported with all the details.
This depends on what bike they are using and the virtual gearing. On kickr bikes we can choose different gearing sets to match real life. I would usually have the gearing I use for riding on mountains IRL - which on flat sections means I use higher gears.
You could do your second vEverest, on ADZ this time. And get it verified by the official site.
I thought it was hidden because of weight shaming or people with eating disorders. Something like that.
Not privacy.
You are probably right. I’ll fix that up.
Dont think me doing that would make me lose me 20 kilo like the guy in the screenshot.
Still consistent long distance riding helps and your first one was pretty fast. I don’t see it on the official site yet?
You should upload it there.

