Racing cheats

My post wasn’t entirely clear.

It should read more like The assertion that the riders sandbagging or cruising are somehow being dishonest is wrong.

PS: I shouldn’t need to see every one of his posts and still can’t ignore Gerrie. But some or one of you have been good at suppressing my posts.
Personal attacks are okay if they are endorsed by moderators.

If you knowingly back off to ensure you stay in a lower category that is rigging the system and is dishonest.

If you never ride a 20min race that is rigging the system and is dishonest.

If you quit a race because you have exceeded the 20 min power limits for category upgrade that is rigging the system and is dishonest.

I see people trying to argue that they don’t like longer races then enter the tiny race series every week which is over 1/2 hour long back to back but conveniently never puts a 20 min individual effort in.

Lots for zwift to sort out.

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I agree with that. People are conflating sportsmanship with honesty.

Are you saying that Sandbagging and Cruising is the way to race Zwift and should be encouraged?

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Honest question: Would you say then that anyone who wants to race on Zwift, even if they only wanted to race sub 20 races, should be forced to race some longer races?

Dishonesty is about intention, isn’t it? It’s tricky to claim that you know what everyone’s intentions are.

(Note that this doesn’t apply to me, I’m fine with races of various lengths, don’t race too much anyway, and would be fine with being upgraded. It’s just interesting to me that people are certain that everyone who fits the bill you described is intentionally trying to game the system, as opposed to just having certain preferences. We get into a lot of trouble in life when we’re absolutely certain we know what others are thinking.

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I would say short races is fine especially now that CE is working and looking at more than 20min. At some point there was work done on ZP to look at a shorter duration as well.

As I said before the 20min came from FTP not race performance. Most Zwift race don’t demand a 20 all out effort, it is a fast start then a climb then a Sprint.

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…and looking at less than 20 min" :wink:

Part of the problem is that CE hasn’t become the de facto system and it has been “diluted” somewhat to bring it more in alignment with the old ZP cat system (largely to appease the vocal minority of sandbaggers :roll_eyes:).

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You and I have very different definitions of “working”.

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I base my view on what i see.

Just skim through the top 50 on C rankings and youll find very few riders who play the game as it was intended.

The problem, as stated hundreds of times in various topics, is that the ZP Cats were based on a single metric … 20min power.

And even with CE, the Cat is much more depend on longer timeframe efforts (CP, 5-8min MMP).
You can be a beast in sprint power, 30s or 60s power and still be a B … or even a C.
That will make the same guys win or make the Top10 a lot of times.

With the Zwift Raking App, was pretty clear to see that the even the CE is hopeless to upgrade the real powerhouses that light up the Cat B and C races.

I (and others) have been talking about this since the CE was launched.

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Agree with this 100%.

It would be nice if ZHQ would include more variety into their races to “out” some of those egregiously gaming the system.

How about including a short ITT (mass start, no drafting, everyone on same bike & wheels) and a 20+ min KOM race into the ZRacing Monthly Series?

Those racers that live to display champion status on their Zwift profile palmares will then be faced with a tricky dilemma :grin:

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what i would have done, with CE, is move it up and down by 0.2 Per cap 30 day window, Per Cat, C can be as high 3.4w and low to 3.0 as a cap.

King bath salts.

How is it intended? Flat cat limit drag race?

Personally, I raced to my strengths. I’d hold back and emerge where I have an advantage, where I could eliminate competitive threats. I am small and light, low power, but high W/kg btw. In the process I kept my W/kg lower and within limits. It can look a lot like sandbagging and cruising. As much as strong heavy rider (who I am trying to eliminate) sitting at the back for the bunch sprint.

I see active forum censorship. Ironically the person doing the censoring is the person whose actions are being called into question. He has been given the opportunity to respond privately, but has declined.

They settled on it because they never settled on it.

Zwift made it clear that they weren’t interested in racing in the early days. The community set up racing themselves - meet at this point, and we will start the race at this time.

Soon it made sense to break races up in to abilities and ftp seemed like a sensible way to do it. ZP developed as a way to add structure to this approach. Zwift followed with some very basic functionality (like races as events, and very basic pens to match ZP categories).

Understanding the history helps to make sense of where we are now. I’m confident ZP would look completely different today if it had continued to evolve as a community effort. It would have adapted to meet the newer demands. They were already looking to change the ways riders were assigned to categories, and also considering a new results based system. Of course in an ideal world Zwift managing the whole thing is much better because they can change functionality in the game itself - but right now we have the worst of both worlds.

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I sympathise and empathise (similar situation as you but without the high W/kg :laughing:).

For a lightweight rider in most Zwift races (predominantly flat or rolling), hiding in the pack can be a necessary tactic to avoid being shelled. My definition of cruising would be e.g. a C-cat rider with an FTP of 3.19 W/kg hiding in the pack to manage power simply to avoid an upgrade to B.

There are 2 issues here:

  1. Riders that deliberately monitor their power to remain in a lower category

  2. Riders that would be capable of racing at a higher standard, but are simply effective within the current structure as they are good at drafting and in the majority of races only need to empty the tank at the very end, and this is more enjoyable.

You can’t code for intention, so for me these are exactly the same issue. Rather than tackling the cruisers/sandbaggers look at the structure and the issues that cause these symptoms in the first place. Primarily this is the static nature of race pen boundaries.

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Race to your strengths to eliminate these riders… or to expose their true cat.

I avoided that type of race. Always climbs even if they were shorter climbs in say Richmond.

How many of those riders are ranked that way because the way they like to race ends up ranking them that way because of how the system is structured, and how many are purposefully changing the way they like to race to fit the system? What part of the data set shows you what their intentions are?

It’s pretty easy to see someone who races like this and is sitting at the top of a category and say to yourself “aha, they are purposefully doing what they are doing to game the system”. But when there’s an alternative explanation–the way they like to race just happens to put them there, and they aren’t purposefully trying to make the system work for them in a certain way–it’s unclear to me how you are determining which of those two thought processes holds for any particular person.

Are some of them intentionally gaming the system? Sure. But you’re moving from ‘the odds are very high that some are gaming it’ to ‘everyone in that position is gaming it’.

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There does seem to be a class of folk who think “anyone who beats me is a sandbagger”, whereas I prefer to reserve that term for people who are blatant e.g. racing and winning 2 ZRL races back to back or winning a race while averaging Z2 heart rate, or ridiculously unlikely weight changes on their profile. People who are actually spoiling races for others.

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