Purely asking out of curiosity. Many races state that they might (or will) bad Zwift Power users in the race description.
Not Zwift Power, but Zpower. They’re easily confused but are not the same thing.
Zpower is where Zwift does a pretty vague estimate of your power at any moment due to not having a power curve for your trainer. So it’s usually very inaccurate.
So some races disallow Zpower to make it fairer for those with less inaccurate trainers.
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Zpower is used for all “dumb” trainers, even if they have a power curve for it. Zpower means you are using a speed sensor, not a power meter.
Edit: I do agree that it is inaccurate regardless if Zwift has a power curve for the trainer or not.
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it also happens to share a similar name with the website name, zwiftpower, which is completely different. but when a race disallows zpower they’re not disqualifying users of the site
Thanks for the replies! It seems that Zwift Power can in fact help mitigate cheating. One race description even states that Zwift Power (with a history of public data) is required for all top finishers, along with other stipulations like dual power meters. Lots of effort to mitigate cheating. And lots of $$$ if you want to be a top competitor. “Luckily” I’m a long way from that ;-).