I’m a newbie at Zwift and was surrounded by cones of shame who destroyed me in my first race. Not fun. I read up on Zwiftpower/forums to learn more. Lets face it, we all want to challenge for a win and some of us will cheat or sandbag to get there. The only “truth” of a virtual rider is their recent race stats for avg. watts for 20, 60, 120, etc. minutes. W/kg is bogus because weight cannot be validated.
What if Zwift had races where you are seeded into groups based on similar recent historic Watt stats and everyone rides at the same “race weight”? Now this sounds fun. With this I’m guaranteed to be surrounded similar strength riders. The high finishers in these races likely will improve there avg. stats and will be seeded higher in the next race, giving others a chance for the next win if they had a bad race. Assuming Zwift could track wins, they could even seed group cut-offs so that riders without podiums are the strongest of the group. Love it or too many holes?
How about instead of seeding group cutoff so that riders without podiums are the strongest we just don’t show results and give everyone a participation badge
Hi @Jenny_T. No changes to our profile weight. I’m suggesting Zwift manages a set weight for these special races. For example, lets say you and I both enter a race that will run about 60 minutes. And we get seeded together because we both have similar watt output avg of about 125W in our last three ~60 minute races. Then Zwift applies an arbitrary weight to all riders in our group so that we are perfectly matched and we have no fear that anyone has lied about their weight to gain an advantage. This causes our actual speed in Zwift is identical when we are both producing 125W, and we will climb/decend identically with that power. On paper, we should both finish at the same time but this is a race and we will compete with each other for an exciting finish. How exciting would that be with 20 more people with our same stats!
On a similar note. There are some weight handicap races I believe on zwift. At least there used to. They look at your FTP (I think) and tell you what weight to put in. Then you all start together. Stronger riders get a heavier weight to make it tougher on them.
If that was the scenario, you could possibly beat Chris Froome.
You will also need to make everyone the same height to eliminate height doping and everyone will have to use the same bike. Then how can you be sure someone isn’t using an electric motor or have deliberately miscalibrated their trainer? It seems like you want to get rid of all the real life Physics that Zwift has worked so hard on perfecting. That is the reason why most of us are here; because it replicates the real world.
The real world isn’t fair and we’re not all the same. It would be impossible to eliminate all cheats. Just compare yourself to yourself previously. That’s what I do.
I find the whole grouping system to be nonsense. I weigh around 103kg and I’m honest about it. I usually max out at 3.1 w/kg. And usually sign up for C or D groups. And inevitably I finish in the middle in the back. I don’t mind losing faith and square, but, usually lose to people averaging 4.5-5. Really!? In one Crit they ‘punished’ folks exceeding the max watts. Won’t I don’t understand is why the Zwift folks don’t do that for every race and group excluding A!?
