Men in the Women-only 2022 Tour of Watopia events?

I rode stage one of the tour of Watopia this morning, category D, women’s only. Why were there so many men riding in the women’s only category? It seems that having so many men jump into the women’s ride would prevent many of us from doing well in the sprints or the KOM. I would prefer to have only women in the women’s only ride.

1 Like

Hi @OlyChick welcome to Zwift forums.

Shuji at HQ here. Thanks for letting us know! Was it the D ride in this time slot?

Let me ask the team to see if there was an evet setup error with that one specifically. Stand by please.

1 Like

Yes, category D in the 10:00 am time slot. Thank you for checking on that! It was real disappointing to see so many men, out of 34 riders in our group, 17 were men.

10:00 AM Pacific standard time, that is

I’ve forwarded details to the team. Please give us some time to investigate? Thanks!

:+1:t2: Thanks a million.

@OlyChick
Wanted to follow up. The team checked and that specific event was set up correctly for women only. Not sure why this happened.

If you or any other women see this happen again for Tour of Watopia events - please flag it up to our attention

1 Like

Absolutely! I have noticed on other “women’s only” rides that there have been one or two men, but not in the number that I saw yesterday. I will definitely keep you updated if it continues to happen. Thank you for checking into this

Hi! There were still numerous men on today’s ToW Womens ride. Just wanted to make you aware.

@OlyChick what ride was this? I looked up 3 of the guys you show in the screen shot and none of them rode today or have activities from today. :man_shrugging:

That was the tour of Watopia, 10 o’clock women only ride. Very weird then, because when I go into my finished ride to look at the metrics, these are the riders who show up in my vicinity, Zwift indicates that these riders were near me.

I recognize most of the women in this list because we rode together. So I know the list is somewhat accurate

Just wondering if somehow Zwift is pulling any riders on the route that were “near you” even if you can’t see them to the “zwifted with” since the B category runs the same course as the womens only D category :man_shrugging:

1 Like

I looked up all the guys too - only one rode today and that was on a different map?!?!

I also checked the photos from a bunch of the ladies in that ride and all the names on the rider lists were ladies. So I think its a bug with the Nearby Riders in the CA.

@OlyChick - I’d suggest you open a Support ticket so that the Zwift team can check where those names were pulled from. Could well be that all of them were riding at the same time in another Category and marked their activities as private but only Zwift can see that info. @Steven_D is one of the regular Zwift support ppl here and he might be able to chime in and assist in facilitating this, or at least have some other ideas.

One thing that is worth a shot - clear the cache/memory on your Companion App (or remove it, restart the phone then download again).

2 Likes

Thanks for the input. I was just concerned that having men in the women’s only ride would potentially prevent the women from doing well in the sprints or KOM‘s. It did occur to me that perhaps Zwift is seeing nearby riders that have been hidden from our event. That has happened on meet ups, where four of us are the only ones visible on the course, yet we still receive ride ons from riders around us that we can’t see. So I’m just not going to worry about it. Zwift support has been made aware of the issue, so hopefully they can get this ironed out.

1 Like

Hi Teri @OlyChick

I appreciate you bringing this to our attention! I’ve reached out to the team for more information. We’ll update you once we know more.

2 Likes

Hey @OlyChick
Thanks for this screenshot - pictures of what you’re seeing are always helpful to us.

Question for you: did you notice the men’s names only in the Companion app, or were you also seeing them in the game app’s Riders Nearby list?

At this point, I’m going to split off this conversation into its own discussion.

EDIT: I’ll second what Dean said. Clearing the cache for the Companion app is definitely worth a shot.

1 Like

I noticed them only after the ride in the Companion app. Generally when I’m doing an event like this, I wind up in a blob of about 10 other riders, so those are the only other riders I see throughout the duration of the ride. I’m usually at about the midway point, so with half of the riders ahead of me and half behind, it’s nearly impossible to know whether they are male or female. Plus during the ride, I can see the list of riders on the right side of my screen, but that doesn’t show first name. So it’s nearly impossible to tell if they are male or female.

Can you tell me how to clear the cache on my Companion app?

Thank you again for looking into this question. I’m not really that worried about it. It’s not as if I’m going to score in the top 10 when it comes to sprints or KOMs. It just reminds me of old club rides where the racers would occasionally jump into our social ride and totally hijacke it, after which it was no longer a social ride, it was just hanging on by the skin of our teeth. I kind of miss those rides, but kind of not, LOL.

@OlyChick
We appreciate your very chill attitude!

This article shows how to clear the cache on iOS apps. An even simpler but somewhat brute force way is to uninstall the Companion app, and reinstall it.

I confirmed what others have said - most of the men’s names on that screenshot haven’t even Zwifted today, so there’s no reason why they should have appeared on that list. We’re looking into it.

4 Likes

Done! Thanks