Thank you so much for your post!
I also guess the same as you do, but I hope the Tokyo would come true.
Since the world championship course was canceled this year, maybe this will be the next one Zwift releases, since they were originally planning on it being ready mid-2020 so must have done much of the work already (race was only canceled in February).
I wonder if they’ll compress the domain, similar to what they did with London and Surrey Hills, and hopefully extend the Mount Fuji road past the actual race course.
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I don’t see why releasing this course now would be any problem.
Give all the athletes time this winter to practice.
It isn’t building anticipation. More than not, it makes it look like they
are holding back, afraid the course won’t attract enough attention and praise.
They certainly have the money to spend.
Better on new courses than mere advertising and more Zwift merchandise.
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A much better map is here, on MapMyRide.
Here’s the map. There’s a run from Tokyo over Kogosaka Pass, then three loops: the Mt Fuji circuit (50.7 km), the Mikuni pass circuit (30.6 km, which goes back thru Kogosaka Pass), and the 17.7 km FSW circuit (which they do part before, part after,the Mikuni Pass circuit, visiting the Speedway twice). It ends @ the Fuji Speedway. Unlike the tradition in World Championship courses, there’s not a dominant circuit of 15 - 20 km which is repeated multiple times, so there’s a lot of options for Zwift.
Here’s the route profile:
There’s some serious climbs on this course. The Fuji Sanroku climb gains around 900 meters, putting it just below L’Alpe de Zwift in elevation, but not as steep (16.0 km, rather than 12 km). The Mikuni Pass climb is much steeper but with less altitude: around 690 meters in just 7.0 km, a 9.9% average. The reverse lap would be much more gradual.
It will be interesting to see what Zwift implements. The part thru urban Tokyo is probably way too complex. My guess would be the speedway will be tempting, a bit of work with the grandstands, but surely models exist already with all of the F1 games out there which can be licensed. While Mt Fuji is epic, that’s a lot of kilometers. So if I had to guess I’d guess they build the Mikuni pass circuit (30.6 km), with the Fuji Speedway circuit. They’ve certainly had long enough to work on it, and all of the loyal Japanese customers deserve something nice: Europe and the US have gotten all of the real-world routes so far.
Here’s satellite view of the speedway:
The red lines are from the RideWithGPS route which may not be precise (I’d think they’d be on the race track).
And here is an on-board video of a lap, and here is an existing game model.
So this would provide three obvious courses: the mountain circuit, the Fuji Speedway, and Olympic finale with the circuit starting and ending on the speedway, then the reverses. The climbs of Mikuni and Kagosaka passes would fill a bit of a gap between Epic KOM w/ Radio Tower and L’Alpe de Zwift in altitude gain, so a nice stepping stone there for people trying to make that leap.
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This is awesome and exactly what I’d hope to see as part a Tokyo region. I’m keen to another major climb to complement AdZ and V-T. The speedway seems like something that would have all sorts of cool applications.
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Inaugural Olympic Virtual Series to include International Federations and Game Publishers in Baseball, Cycling, Rowing, Sailing and Motor Sport
Zwift was announced as the platform for the Cycling and the virtual Olympics series will begin on 1 Jun according to Zwift Insider article so maybe we will be getting a Japan course and maybe next month. No promises, we will have to wait to see exactly how this plays out.
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Thank you so much for sharing the information with us.
Speechless!
I have never imagined that IOC would come up with such a great idea, and the venue would be Zwift!
Totally exciting!
I hope COVID-19 would be culled as soon as possible and our daily lives be back to normal, but at the same time, I’m glad to see the even will take place.
Thanks!
A new course “Yumezi” is available!
“ｈｔｔｐｓ://www.zwift.com/yumezi”
I’m totally happy because my wish on this post has come true.
Thank you soooooooooo much!
I tried this course, and I wondered if this course may be further improved in the future.
Let’s see how it goes!
The new world appears spectacular. Nice work Zwift! It makes me want to ride in Japan (except for the left-side-of-the-road part :)).
I do note the lack of an extended climb, so my guess is that one will be added as part of an Olympic RR expansion, especially given one can see Mt Fuji in the distance here.
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Zwift promised an official Olympic announcement May 27.
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Here’s what was in that announcement…
No events on the Olympic RR course. One race on the “Flatland” route in the new Japan world (avoiding the dirt roads).
Per the latest Zwiftcast, absolutely everything suggests there’s not going to be any Tokyo/Olympic tie-up as we’ve seen with the UCI courses.
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If that is the case, I think it was a wise decision. The majority of Zwifters will have more value in purposely built worlds that can last much longer than the hype of WC or Olympic courses.
I would agree with this if the plan was for a purposely built world that was UCI Course, only, like Richmond or Innsbruck (or even Bologna), but I think that if the Tokyo course (or at least the ‘loops’ on it were included as part of a larger world that would be great. And because ‘Makuri Islands’ is fictitious, I think this could/should be done.
Personally, I would be in favor of Richmond, Innsbruck, Yorkshire, and Bologna all being moved to a new fictitious ‘world’ where users could easily ride from one place to the next. All of the same routes and elevation profiles could exist, just with connector roads added between. I think all of these together might still be smaller than Watopia. It could be called UCIsland.
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Yes, my point was that just because it is a UCI course does not mean that all of it is interesting for Zwifters. Parts of it for sure and as part of a bigger would.
Still sad over losing Switzerland. Now Tokyo may be a false rumor.
But Belgium seems to be a go for September.
I wonder how long it will be until Yumezi has hills added.
It is hard to understand, from my point of view, why Zwift put so much work into these mostly unpopular/not-much-used courses. Bigger fictitious worlds with elements of real courses must be much more usable and valuable for the general Zwifter.
I would make two comments in response to that.
First, judging by how many riders are in these worlds when I fire up Zwift they seem to me to be less unpopular with Zwifters generally than they are with Zwifters on the forums.
Second, how can Zwift judge how popular they are going to be before putting in the time and effort to create a few and judging the long term reaction?
If we don’t see any more real world course replicas like this, I think we can conclude that this is something that has been tried, tested and deemed not worthy of pursuing further by Zwift themselves. If we do see others, clearly they are meeting the goals Zwift have set out for them.
Personally, I like them and still ride all of them.
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I guess Zwift has the statistics, but AFAK Watopia and the new Makiri Islands seem to be the most liked. I might off course be wrong.
They can’t, but they can look at what is historically the most popular courses and from that see if a real-world course will work in Zwift or not.
Exactly … they can do that now, but couldn’t have done before creating a few and seeing how they worked, so the work they put in was justified in being able to judge what to do going forward.
Hence my closing comments about what happens from here … if they create more, we will know that, from Zwift’s perspective, they are working and justified. If not, then they will have made the judgement that the time/work is better spent on other routes.