What an energetic thread all of a sudden! After quite a few rather quiet months in here.
I can’t help but feel a bit of Schadenfreude, to quote the Germans, as the flaws of the cat system make themselves known to the division between A and B and all the people affected, some of which were never affected before since they raced in a cat with no power ceiling.
And so you think “now they get it, now they too understand what we have been talking about for years.” But then not all do, still. Or they do in theory but they still just can’t help themselves from reaching for the repair kit.
So, while you guys sulk over some heavy punchy A riders who recently got to race in B and smash the locals, I thought I’d cheer you up a little with a funny picture that I st0led from the interwebz, a meme of sorts:
Have you seen it before? If not, then this is the so-called Tychonic model, an astronomical model by Danish renaissance astronomer Tyco Brahe. It was based on the Ptolemaic model, a far older ancient Greek model, but with some extra bells and whistles (quite a few actually). If that seems too abstract, you could vaguely compare them to the CE model vs the old WKG model, I guess. Just as some point of reference.
Anyway, the Tychonic model was a splendid one, because it had the merit of keeping the Pope happy. Hence old Tyco never had to burn at the stake. The model puts Man, God’s creation, and his home Earth, in the center of the universe, and then everything else revolves around it, the Sun included.
However, Tyco was forced to somehow account for various strange observations made possible by new technology, such as his own telescope, very advanced at the time and certainly not available in the LBS in ancient Greece. E.g. there were observations of Venus moving forwards as usual during the year but then suddenly going backwards for a while. Tyco therefore had to make a lot of changes to the original Greek model, which showed Earth smack in the middle and then the other stellar bodies in concentric circles around it. Among other things, Tyco was forced to offset Earth’s original central position quite a bit, as you can see, or the numbers wouldn’t add up. And then he came up with an ingenious solution to Venus’ and Mercury’s sometimes retrograde movements. They obviously had to… ehum… revolve around the sun… but… but… the sun still revolved around Earth… of course!
The stars were sprinkled on a spherical celestial backdrop that slowly rotated around the whole divine creation. God knows what was behind that backcloth, but some things were just not meant for Man to find out.
I suppose Tyco must have been redesigning and readjusting his model many times as new annoying observations came in and threatened the model. But he kept it together. All in all, it was a pretty (complex) picture.
But then came Copernicus and ruined it all. The damn heretic, may he burn in hell!
Enough history of science.
Guys, just give up. The cat model doesn’t need additional tweaking because it has already reached its highest state. It’s as perfect as it can ever be. All it needs now is just that little cherry on the top: a big cease and desist note. It’s time for Zwift to put Copernicus on the stage and to relegate the power measures of the CE model to the periphery of our solar system, in a pretty concentric circle revolving around the Sun - the Race Results. Why not put that circle somewhere past Uranus?
In the meantime, just accept the fact that racing is borked for now, as it always was. Just live with it and pray for a better tomorrow. Additional tweaking now won’t fix a thing. Power measures were never meant to sit at the center of the universe, that’s just absurd when you think about it.
And no, I don’t care one bit about low attendance in cat A events. Bohoo. There is already another cat that has had low attendance for a long time (once all the cat B sandbaggers were removed) and nobody ever cared. The division between A and B simply doesn’t need fixing, because it’s just a waste of time. Come Copernicus and that and a whole bag of other problems will all fade into distant memory instantly. That’s the only way actually going forward.
