Self policing, which is the current state of affairs, by those who promise not to affect a lower cat race in any way at all (on their honour of course) is absurd on its face.
3 Likes
Everybody should just stop entering races. Like a strike 
Autoassign or - Disqualify on the fly as racing:
A easy solution could be: when Exeeding the Category with 0.3-0.4 watts over an average of 20 minutes will individually ban you from the race… „Race Hard and Fair“ - or get kicked… - just like the Red Grind / Banner for GroupRides
It‘s soo annoying with Sandbaggers…
Zwift is a game, meant for everyone to have fun.
Why kick somebody? They pay just as much as you do.
Stop taking it so serious and stop being so competitive.
No, I don’t think that’s reasonable. Zwift can work out a person’s 20 minute power without forcing people to take FTP tests. No one in the real world has to do an FTP test before racing, and it makes no sense in a game.
1 Like
True, but like any other game it has rules, and if everyone play by the rules then it is fun. The fun stop once people stop following the rules.
Imagine playing Chess with someone and he think it is unnecessary to only move in straight lines with his Rook because he just want an easy day, he say he won’t win the game but he will motivate you to do better, will it be fun? I think not!
5 Likes
Results from my race this morning according to ZwiftPower:
Out of 90 participants the top 1/3rd of the finishers were almost all over cat C limits.
6 Likes
Wow that guy in Real Second place look super strong, 
Good result Mike.
I wonder if we need to remove the names of those over Cat Limits, it is open for anyone to go look at. 
It is sad to see that so many people can’t just follow a simple rule, no wonder the world is in such state.
Imagine if all racers just followed this simple rule, that would give the Zwift and Zwift Power programmers time to focus on even more cool features. We could then have a race series where we say we use ranking and you enter according to your Zwift Power ranking no programming needed everyone just follow the simple rule.
2 Likes
Hehehe, it’s always the way. Especially online.
Back in the late 90s I used to run a Quake 2 CTF league. We had rules about “LPBs” (people with a good, low ping connection compared to “HPWs” with high ping modem connections). But people with a good connection would run software or a download to pretend they had a higher ping. They still had better connections than geniune modem players.
Then there were rules about not playing for more than one team in the league or cups. Again, various teams had “ringers” who’d play under “false names” (we all had false names online of course). In fact, this is similar to sandbagging in Zwift races, because maybe a Division 1 player would ring for a Division 5 team, making them much better than they should be.
Then there were rules about not using “spiked” player models (e.g. modified models that meant you could see a player behind a wall), or modified graphics (e.g. replacing a wall with a transparent texture so you can see through it).
If people can abuse rules and lack of checks in order to gain an advantage, plenty will. It was a constant battle to try and keep on top of it, and to a large extent we failed as much a we succeeded.
1 Like
I remember this, sure though people spent the time to get their license then enter races and cause carnage by just ramming people. Did GT not go the way of private lobbies so those numpties could no longer cause problems.
So what you’re saying is all Zwift races should be invitation only?
If everyone did it this way – essentially hang out in the pack somewhere incognito and not pushing the pace – I don’t think we’d have as much of problem. But the race results show otherwise, where higher cat riders are, for the most part, dominating the leaderboards. We see this in the results posted. Aside from the obvious, this pushes the average range of a category up a significant amount – say, instead of C being an average 2.8/in the middle, it’s probably 3.0 or higher. This demotivates riders and then encourages them to also drop down on future rides, only further adding to the problem.
So, Zwift needs to give organizers the tools to implement restrictions to suit their needs. From what you’re describing, Svenne, it seems the E cat is the most appropriate for you if it is available.
2 Likes
What if there was just one category … like a marathon style…
It’s complete and utter nonsense. If you’re doing a ‘recovery ride’? Don’t enter a f____ing race, period. There is no defensible rationale for why someone would do this. Want to recover properly? Build a workout for that (or use any one of a number that already exist: Zwift workouts: Federico Bassis » Active recovery | What's on Zwift?)
Sandbagging someone else’s race is not the place for it, and everyone knows that.
8 Likes
I like being in my Cat. I want to be legit. I don’t want to be looking at Zwift power to see who should be in this race, or checking my Garmin for my average watts, or working out if can I stay in Cat and do the watts I need to do, to stay with the group? etc, I just want to race.
If I’m in my group, I’m not going to be DQ’d, I don’t have to draft to keep my watts down or check my average watts on the Garmin. All I have to think about, are my heart, lungs and legs. Oh, and can my head keep those three things going until the end? 
5 Likes
Almost 60% of the people in my cat C race this morning were over the cat limit… SIXTY PERCENT!
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
4 Likes
And that’s also the main reason why i support you guys for getting this thing about race categories sorted out. Believe me, i would like to see this happen as much as you are. I was only giving a reason why someone (as me in this case) would enter a (lower category) race.
I don’t think i’ve much things to say otherwise. Some ppl don’t bother. For others it’s sandbagging and cheating. As long as i’ve a choice in the Zwift menu, i make my choice. The day that we don’t have that choice anymore, there’ll be other ways to enjoy Zwift. Now try to convince those that do mess race results. Me, you’ll find me in race results as much as you’ve already found me: almost negligable. Ride on!
And a good many of them appear to be flyweights - substantially less than 60kg. Are there really that many 125lb male Zwifters?
Besides racing below cat, I would imagine a good many are fudging their weight numbers.
2 Likes
Hi Svenne,
I don’t think it’s you, or me or any other we have to “convince”, as we can all see some area of Zwift racing that needs improving.
The only people we really need to convince, are Zwift.
2 Likes
To be honest if there are ever races that encourage recovery riders in a lower cat, I’ll likely do it, too. If I hop on the bike to do a low intensity recovery ride by myself, but notice a C/D race starting that “welcomes A/B recovery riders” as long as they don’t push tempo, I would join it because it would be more fun than biking by myself. (I don’t see that happening, but just saying I see your logic.)
1 Like