In the description of this event it mentions that a Zwiftpower account is only required for A’s and B’s. It is stated that this decision was made to keep the C and D categories open and inclusive. Additionally it appears that there is no DQ (via UPG) for any out of Cat riding in this series on Zwiftpower.
As a result of these two decisions, in just half a day’s racing there has massive sandbagging and cheating in lower cats (C and D) by higher Cat racers with the clear knowledge of their true category. Many of the C and D podiums this morning were claimed by B riders with plenty of experience and full, long histories on Zwiftpower. They are being allowed to game a system of which they have full knowledge and know-how of how easily it is corrupted with the suspension of standard Zwiftpower racing rules.
I would argue that allowing these folks to record fair wins on Zwiftpower and not be disqualified actually discourages new and inexperienced racers from continuing with the series as they have no fair shot of even being competitive and will be much less likely to continue on with the series if things are allowed to stand as they are.
New riders who intend to race should be encouraged to join Zwiftpower. This type of marquee event would be a perfect opportunity to get more lower category racers signed up so that racing fairness for all would be improved greatly in the future.
Please reconsider these rules for the remaining races in the series to ensure that these races actually do encourage a wider group of people to enjoy and benefit from the race experience.
For myself, I am lucky in that seems that the women’s only category has been far less plagued by this issue. I don’t think it’s because women are inherently better or more honest, lol, but I do think it helps that the fields are much smaller and thus the cheating would stand out far more. Which brings me to my final point which is that you might consider adding more scheduled start times for these events so that you don’t have hundreds of people trying to compete in a crit of such a short lap distance. Smaller more manageable numbers of riders would probably encourage less cheating, but certainly would be a better race experience for event of this type.
Massively appreciate any attention Zwift can give to improving the fairness and quality of this series.
events have not been configured right or maybe that was the plan to allow mass sandbagging.
Looks like a decision as they are not categorising by 20 min power like 99% of other races on zwift. Way to confuse people that already don’t know what cat to sign up to when they start using things other than zp cat.
"All races are grouped by how many watts/kilogram (w/kg) Zwifters can average for the duration. Newbies should probably start out with group D (1 - 2.4 w/kg) or group C (2.5-3.1 w/kg.) The fastest of the fast should register for group A (4+ w/kg). If you’ve raced before, you probably know your category, but there’s more info here. "
All riders are currently visible for the Legion Crit race - Will be an absolute shambles if it stays like that.
Same as the Specialised friday event that Eric rode in and must have got them to fix that issue mid ride as there was over a 1000 people visible in Crit city.
The purpose of this event is to get people in to crit racing. Surely the way to do that would be to limit the fields to 30 or so and put on enough events (they could even be at the same time) for everyone. This will just be a huge (boring) group ride.
Anyway I digress - any update on pen enforcement / race organiser pen split toolkit / ranking system?
It kind of does all link back in - Loads of the people who have entered incorrect categories are not ‘new’ to racing. Pen enforcement would improve everybody’s experience in the race, well apart from those strong B riders who are signed up to D cat later, they have done 200+ races so certainly are not new.
Think that 4.4wkg 20min effort should be enough for them to win that D race.
Is this one of those dystopian races where they keep riding until all but one dies of exhaustion? Chuck in a bit of wanton violence and call it Rollerball…
most of the neokyo courses seem to be missing one or have one that ends nowhere near an actual banner. Sprinter’s Playground has an incorrectly placed overhead banner about 25m after the actual lap ends. it just sort of ends randomly on a junction instead
Always use the distance to go on the overhead info window instead of where the banner is. I lost two or three places in a Yorkshire TofTW race when the finish line was 50 meters past the banner and I pulled up early.
