Stop race category cheats - opinions?

Racing
225

No. The difference between the bottom of a group whether it be A,B,C, or D and the top of a group is HUGE. If you are at the bottom, you realistically do not have a chance of winning. It is no different in real life. Not everyone that lines up has a chance, unless you include miracles. Not everyone gets to be a winner, but that does not stop people from competing. Testing yourself, pushing yourself, setting new PRs, bettering yourself, etc., is competition. Sprinting against the guy next to you for 50th place is competition. Yes, we all want to be winners, but not everyone gets to be a race winner.

That said, the cheaters suck! Weight dopers, sandbaggers, etc., they all suck :-1:

4 Likes
226

Why not put some simple fixed power-based categories in place. This would at very least, allow some Zwift racers to believe a win might just be possible. A Zwifters experience racing can only be improved by introducing this functionality.

You need to start thinking outside the quirky Zwift box. Add very narrow power-based categories and there will still be a bottom and a top in each and you still ‘run the risk’ (how weird doesn’t that sound but it’s the reality) of getting upgraded if you compete hard against others at the top of a category.

You cannot keep a counter-intuitive system like this alive through this ever more complicated life-support machine with weird semi-official third-party monitoring from ZwiftPower, and flagging, and cones, and DQ’s and… it never stops. It doesn’t solve the underlying problem. It will not, no matter what you do. It is just dumb to try to keep the system alive. It is time to say goodbye, turn off the life support and just let it go.

The only reasonable thing to do is to base categorization on past results rather than past efforts. Like @Lin_Alan writes above, competing can involve fairness but never equality. There will always be one winner and many losers. But with a system where a winner cannot stay for long in a category since he will be upgraded because of his past results (rather than his past slouching to stay in category), strong riders who don’t cruise races will always pass through categories they don’t belong in. And if they still keep cruising, then at least they cannot win anymore. It’s a self-sanitizing system.

Now, assume a Zwift with no quadrupled subscribers due to corona, a Zwift with, for the sake of argument, no influx of new riders and no changes in fitness. And a results-based categorization. Then sooner or later it will be your turn to win, at least occasionally, since any and every consistent winner who is decidedly stronger than you will get kicked out of your category sooner or later. Because they win too much. And that eventually leaves you at the top. And then maybe one day you get kicked out too for doing too well.

It’s not quite that simple in reality with results-based systems. But almost. It is intuitive. It is fair. It is a proven concept in many sports and esports already. It is never going to be perfect but it will always work so much better than what we have today. It’s a no-brainer. It really is.

4 Likes
227

Just happen to be looking at a few somewhat random race results tonight (looking at names of people who are signed up for an upcoming event, then looking at their activities, their races, etc), and I see that a certain user has been 1st or 2nd in his last 5 cat-C races (both crit and road) at approx 5w/kg. Clearly no anti-sandbagging system is impacting this user’s results. I agree that a straightforward, results-based categorization would eliminate much of this issue, and should be among the simplest systems to implement.

4 Likes
228

Just happen to be looking at a few somewhat random race results tonight (looking at names of people who are signed up for an upcoming event, then looking at their activities, their races, etc), and I see that a certain user has been 1st or 2nd in his last 5 cat-C races (both crit and road) at approx 5w/kg. Clearly no anti-sandbagging system is impacting this user’s results. I agree that a straightforward, results-based categorization would eliminate much of this issue, and should be among the simplest systems to implement.

That example is ridiculous. Still you found it easily. What is that guy doing in C?

I’m not top C at the moment but I was a year ago - without actually ever having the slightest chance to win a race in C. On a course such as e.g. Innsbruckring I’d hang in there in the front group. I’m not afraid of suffering. I raced hard. Aren’t you supposed to? But then at the Leg Snapper I’d get dropped so hard. And I’m light. It’s supposed to be easy for me, it’s a long enough hill climb for someone light in C. I didn’t get it. “Hmm, you might need to work more on your VO2Max”, someone suggested. But that’s not it. I know this now. Because now I know what it’s like to be one of the guys dropping legitimate C riders in a climb. Or a sprint. Or on the flat. Doesn’t matter. It’s all too easy.

The biggest cheating problem by far is not the sandbaggers. They are just so obvious, so they are the ones getting ZP’s attention (Zwift itself doesn’t care). The biggest problems are the cruisers. Because they are so common and yet so inconspicuous.

The cruisers are the guys who could go 5 W/kg in a C race but don’t. Instead they take care to stay within limits so that they don’t get upgraded. I do this myself now in an attempt to draw attention to the problem. And you can read the full inside story as it progresses here if you like. I have cruised a number of races now and I have yet to participate in a race where I am the only cruiser. So far there have been at least a couple of others every time. And then a few sandbaggers on top of that. And this is in normal small events with fairly low participation.

The sandbaggers get DQ’s on ZP. The cruisers don’t. There is no realistic way to stop the cruisers given the current category system. So exactly how hard must you race to not get called a ‘cruiser’ by some angry dude in the forum? Can’t I race as hard or as easy as I like? Yes yes yes! But not with this categorization. Given a sensible categorization cruisers cease to exists because the concept itself goes up in smoke. It’s no longer an issue.

Imagine the 2020… err… 2021 Olympics in Tokyo on TV. Track and fields. The US hope for the 100m dash, the only counter to the Jamaican superstars, runs a qualication heat. Wow, he won that heat easily! But wait, what is happening? Some non-IOC organization, men in jackets and silly hats, rush to the scene waving their hands frantically! What? He gets a DQ?! “He was too fast.” Seriously? The IOC officials just stand at the sideline and do nothing while this other organization whisks away the shamed US sprinter. And in the next heat the Jamaicans successfully cruise their way into the quarter finals by running fast but not too fast.

Then the scene cuts to a high jump event. All the stars are there. Will there be a new world record this year? No, because the maximum allowed height for the bar is 220 cm. Some guys jump considerably higher. IOC don’t seem to mind. But then those guys in jackets and silly hats come rushing again. Who are they really? What is their actual relation to IOC? Anyway, they have devised some optical instrument that measures the distance between the bar and the jumper. It’s a bit unreliable, the commentator says, but if this other organization finds that the gap between the bar at 220 cm and the jumper is too big, then the jumper gets a DQ for jumping in ‘the wrong group’. One guy gets a DQ immediately. “Doper! 2 year ban!” the men in funny hats scream. “He should have signed up for the 230 cm event!”

Splitting up participants based on their past performance is something a PE teacher might do within a class session. Let’s say she wants two volley ball games running. It will be more fun and productive for all if everyone in a team is about equal and that the two teams facing each other in the two respective games are equal. So she picks the strongest players for one game and the somewhat weaker ones for the other. At the same time she doesn’t want to thwart the students’ individual development over time. She knows this. She will deal with it.

Putting ‘performance’ limits to competitive ranks and categories in sports is preposterous. It makes sense when you just want to get two volley ball games up and running on one occasion. Or when you want to provide some fun quickly for the subscribers on a newly released esports platform. But in the long run in any sport it just doesn’t make sense, at all. And some years later in Zwift we are there now. It doesn’t make sense. We all love Zwift (I do at any rate). It’s so much fun. Sure, improvements are always welcome. Like a new big climb modeled on real world… But as long as no one has hardware issues, there are no real big detractors. Except this.

3 Likes
229

lol just noticed your username. “Hey Zwift, I’m over here!!” Love it.

1 Like
230

how do you tell how hard others are working?

HR doesn’t tell the whole story,
I guess you can look at all of someone’s results on zwiftpower, but if they’ve always cruised then how do you know?

I frequently have races with avg HR in the 130’s, max around 160ish
if you looked at my results I think you may assume I"m “cruising” but I’m not. I’m primarily an outdoor runner, and just do zwift a little to mix it up.

231

Mass start cycling is about first across the finish line, not a wattage competition. As such, it can be practically impossible to differentiate between saving efforts as a smart race tactic versus a way to avoid an upgrade.

Of course, this is just another aspect about the W/kg-based category system that shows how how pointless it is…

4 Likes
232

Unless I’m totally missing the point, a results-based system (regardless of w/kg) all but eliminates any need to speculate about cruising vs race tactics—whichever you employ, if it gets you good results with any consistency, you move up in category.

A cruiser isn’t there for the competition (likely not with others and certainly not with himself)—he wants to feel good about the “good” results; i.e. he probably isn’t going to spend a lot of time purposefully getting “bad” results in order to remain at a lower-than-appropriate category, since those “bad” results don’t satisfy the desire to feel good about “good” results.

(One could still height/weight dope, but that’s an issue all to itself I suppose.)

4 Likes
233

how do you tell how hard others are working?

You deduce it from looking at how they behave in races and by looking broadly and carefully at their stats after races and (sometimes very important) other activities like GWO’s. I’d give anyone the benefit of a doubt, but seeing the same guys crush the D or C races over and over. And some of them have been at it for years. That’s cruising. That’s gold fever.

Also, remember cruisers won’t necessarily fit into some cheater cliché. It doesn’t have to be, I don’t know, something prejudiced like ‘the anonymous guy with a made up name coming from, quote, a s-hole country’. Not at all. I know of some respected and fairly high profile members in the Zwift community who cruise. I don’t know, sometimes I even get the feeling their peers know what is going on. But some things you don’t talk about.

Another way to detect cruising is how they spend their reserves. That you need to observe first-hand. If someone likes to race at a comfortable HR, then that should apply to hills also, no? But there they gladly show their true strength for a moment. And in the sprint. Or any time they feel it’s about time you got dropped. Sure, there are many borderline cases and let’s not pass judgement there, but often you can tell. They are typically experienced and show a lot of aggression in races but still somehow end up juuust below limit. You can’t borrow a cruising primer at the library and you don’t reinvent the wheel called cruising in your first month of subscription. It all happens much later, once you see right through the flaws of the W/kg system. They know exactly what they’re doing and why. And it’s only too obvious once you start really looking.

But in line with what @Anna_Ronkainen and @xavier_nihilo commented above, people shouldn’t have to sandbag or cruise and also people shouldn’t really have to be opinionated and point fingers at sandbaggers and cruisers either. You don’t stop the cruising by going after the cruisers. It’s the wrong approach and wouldn’t help anyway. It’s the system that created them. (ZP and their sandbagger witch hunt springs to mind here - that’s pointless too!)

With a different category system people can race anyway they like and it won’t ruin races for others. Someone wants to cling on to a certain results-based category? I can see that happening occasionally. Ok, fine, but then he needs to deliberately underperform, or shall we say take it chill, in quite a few races to compensate for podiums, and that means he won’t be winning those races where he underperforms. This leaves some room for you to win instead if you’re willing and able to put in the Watts for it. It’s happy-clappy time every race, or almost every race at least. You would solve so many problems with a results-based categorization, more than you create. I insist, it is a nobrainer.

3 Likes
234

Mass start events are the only way (IMO) to have an accurate race.
Yes, slower riders can draft off the faster ones but doesn’t everyone have that opportunity?
In a mass start race, there is one winner and everyone else “didn’t win”.
I don’t call these folks losers because:

  1. I’m one of them,
  2. Everyone has fun and pushes hard and tries to catch who ever is in front of them and hold off everyone behind them.
  3. Sand baggers didn’t push as hard and played a different kind of game but that does not bother me.

I don’t think I would mind if they totally ditched all the categories and had one winner per race.

I don’t believe people, who are presently avid Zwifters, would drop the game just because they are no longer on the podium.

Remember, 4 years ago you either were not using a turbo trainer or you were staring at a wall tracing squares with your power output.

This is some much more fun.

Since we have a W/KG system, just assign riders a Cat and prevent them from entering a lower cat.
Period.
None of this I’m injuried, I need a recovery ride etc.

These very light riders are currently enjoying an advantage due to a quirk in the program.
What can be more “Cycling” than a controversy over someone else’s advantage?
It really makes Zwift feel real!
They will Adjust this.
We previously did not have a lot of teenagers or preteens on the game so the program was not designed for them.
The light wt rider protocol was basically for light weight adults.

I wish everyone who beats me would quit taking advantage of my weaknesses.

235

I have a solution to this. Have 2 categories of events/races ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’. Unofficial can be the same as events and races are now, any type of trainer with any accessories allowed.

For official you must have:

  1. A smart trainer
  2. A heart rate monitor
  3. Completed a FTP, Ramp up test, or race using both items above to generate an official FTP.

They would need to make FTP in Zwift a non-editable field. Or perhaps create a new field called Z-FTP for ‘Zwift FTP’ that is only set by the algorithms of Zwift. This should be some sort of rolling average, so as you get more or less fit it will change to reflect that.

They will also need to add a maximum amount of weight change allowed per week. I think it would be fair to limit it to 2kg or 5lbs max change from one week to the next. Unless you are incredibly obese and get surgery, a person cannot lose 5lbs or more in a week. This will help stop the people who will inevitably do an FTP test at max weight, then change their setting to minimum weight for a race. The other option is if you change your weight more than 5lbs you have to redo the FTP/Ramp up test before you can enter an official event/race.

What are your thoughts?

236

A Zwifter’s maximum 20 minute power (CP-20) should be defined as the maximum power they’ve ridden for 20 minutes in Zwift over a recent period. The Zwift database should just record the CP-20 for each ride. To enter and start an event categorized by w/kg bands, the Zwifter’s maximum CP-20/kg must be equal to or less than the maximum w/kg for that category, where kg is the current weight in kilograms.

Have a rolling period to account for reductions in fitness. Older CP-20s roll off, after perhaps 90 days.

Or get more sophisticated, and use a CP-20 defined as the average of the n highest CP-20s recorded by the Zwifter in the rolling period. N might be something like 3.

Zwift sees the data to properly categorize Zwifters according to w/kg. The data just needs to be recorded and used.

3 Likes
237

There are all kinds of sensible suggestions like this but zwift has made up their mind. we get a green cone.

238

I’m giving up on Zwift. Today would have been my first win but I was cheated by 2 people with no HRM and no Zwift power.

IMAGE REMOVED

2 Likes
239

If you can’t be bothered setting up Zwift power you shouldn’t be allowed to race. End of. Ruins it for everyone. If more honest riders decide to boycott Zwift then perhaps they might do something about it.

240

If he averaged 2.7 in his last race then his category should be C not D or did I read the categories incorrectly? I don’t see any weight allowances EG like for a heavy competitor who may struggle in a hill climb race so weight can factor for or against

241

@B_W5 Yeah, the kid hasn’t done any more D races. He’s done two cat C crits since the conversation above (6th and 5th place) and, it appears, may be headed for cat B (3.3w/kg in the most recent crit).

242

Lol just watched a Cat B take overall first in a mixed categories race, putting out over 27w/kg for much of the final km. Impressive.

243

Took part in the Aussie Crit Crushers races this morning, I’m DEFINITELY a cat D rider as I finished last in the first race and second last in the second. I don’t mind that at all, what I do mind is that when I checked the results, the first 17 out of 25 riders were over the cat limit.

This means that over ⅔ of the people entered were sandbagging. What happened to this wonderful system that was supposed to be sorting this out? I don’t mind being the slowest racer in a race but I would at least like to stand a chance occasionally.

2 Likes
244

Have the anti-sandbagging efforts been implemented across the board? Maybe they’re only being tested in the beta races (e.g. ZHQ Beta Crit City)?