Is it really ? The people at the bottom of a cat dont win if they drop down. They are at the bottom for a reason and I really believe the top riders of the cat below will outsmart, uttactic and outpace them. They might be midpack, but dont suddenly win everything.
Yes. In the old power cats, if you were truly in the bottom half of a cat based on your own max efforts and you were put in a pen with people sandbagging at the top of the cat there is no amount of âtacticsâ that were going to get you to avoid being completely shelled and dropped either via attrition, or on the first slope of the race. Dropping a cat would keep that person in the mix and give them a chance at being there for the sprint (If they donât have a sprint they wonât win, but they will not be solo TTing the whole race either).
In an actual vELO system the people at the bottom of a cat âshouldâ have a chance of winning if they drop down a cat⌠thatâs why they would have been promoted to the higher cat. In Zwift winning for the most part requires a very good sprint, so some people (who donât have a good sprint) are rarely going to win just because of that, but at least those folks who dropped down wonât get dropped on the first climb, and they will have a better overall experience than getting shelled in a higher category.
Doubt it.
There are way too many playing the cat limits. Even if they have to lose a few races there are enough to take their place at the top. It will be hard for the people in the bottom part of a cat no matter how much we change it to help them. Only one thing that could really help them, but a lot wont like hearing that âŚ
Personally I was very hopeful when a results based racing system was announced
In theory itâs a great idea
perennial podium squatters get to race against stronger opponents
Giving other people a chance of virtual glory
But itâs not working like that
At the initial setup they didnât get the basic seeding right
Thereâs no taking account of relative performance or effort when scoring results
Etc
I could go on , but zwifts actions seem to indicate theyâre not actually focusing on fun, fair racing as they originally said
as I said at the top of the thread ,
I donât think a rider with an overly high score spoils a race for the other competitors - so why go to so much trouble lowering scores?
There are lots of clever ideas to improve the racing experience in these forums but is the corporate collective at Zwift interested in that ?
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I doubt that very much. Racing is just a very small part of Zwift (around 20% of all subscribers races and even less reguarly) so the idea I got over the years is that they do the minimum required so people dont walk away, meaning a few adjustments every year, but other than that dont spend much time, resourses and money on racing.
From a business point of view very understandable, but for us racers it kinda sucks âŚ
They will not be simply overpowered and dropped in a few minutes. They might not win but thatâs not essential to have a good experience. Itâs not like I donât enjoy racing if I make it to the finish with the leaders but donât get a podium. But if Iâm dropped in 5 minutes and finish alone, I admit that is not as much fun. If I get to hang in with a chance until the finish or the finishing climb, Iâm happy. I also like how ZRS uses both W/kg and Watts to seed riders, which means when there are hills I have a better chance than I did in a purely W/kg category system where I would be fighting it out on Petit KOM with 100kg riders who wouldnât get upgraded. I like how ZRS produces different outcomes for different types of riders on different course profiles. That also means Iâll probably get smoked by some guy 10kg lighter than me on an extended climb, but I can accept that because it makes sense.
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Unfortunately if you were a lighter racer, it was also very easy to exceed the category limits without ever having been at the top of the category in terms of results or podiums.
Racers with mid to low pack results in racing got promoted up while other people were allowed to stay at the top of the podium without ever being promoted just on the basis of watts per kilogram. W/kg doesnât not really work as an effective way to arrange pens and match racers. Unfortunately nor does ZRS.
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The biggest nonsense of the old cats were riders who were intentionally sandbagging, a cycling goalkeeper who was zwift verified was well known for this and even had a video getting the cone of shame when sprinting for a win and finish, he wasnât on zwiftpower thoughâŚ
What was initially asked for was to stop A riders dropping down, B riders dropping down etc but zwift gave us CE after 8 months of âtestingâ rather than just say your an A rider you canât join a lower pen
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Iâm still waiting for my racing score to drop somehow it crept up to 762 and refuses to go down, also I can never find high quality races to do, even when I do I finish mid pack and it goes up a few points. It seems like some riders are intentionally slowing down at the end to finish poorly to drop there score which then increases mine. 725+ races I really am no match for. I need like a 600-800 category.
Rhino crits use 690-850 for A pen if thatâs of any interest
Oh that might be it just depends what time they are and if there is good participation
These are the race times: https://www.zwift.com/events/tag/rhinocrits
If the times work, bring a friend and do something crazy together
I forgot to mention that due to low numbers in A we combined A and B pens, so you can expect to see some Bâs in there as well. The other categories all race separately.
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nice A, B combined is great. The more riders that start the better the racing.
For IRL racing I used to sometimes put A and B together, but Iâd set A grade off one lap after B because A was so much faster. I mean there was only 4-5 of them in A versus 20-30 B grade, but A was just so much faster, they could push the pace much harder when they wanted and through the one very sharp technical corner they would take that so much quicker.
This was on a fairly short criterium track.
Even with that handicap A would generally catch B before the bell lap and get away - which is actually good because A is finished and done with their final sprint and arenât going to be caught up in the B grade pack (which is a risk for crashes). It also gives them a chance to get away from B and the faster B graders canât try and get a tow from A grade (which is not allowed anyway).
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We do a race like that every Sunday as well, the Rhino Crash. Itâs usually well attended and all categories visible with time gaps adjusted for the route of the week. There are other chase races on the schedule with a similar format.
Herd Winter Racing is no-category races, first time slot of 6 this weekend is 6 UTC today (daylight savings change season, so not attempting conversion). Generally pretty good fields in the past, this is the first race of this season. Youâll almost always have someone to race.
Do yâall do points races or any other formats, or are they just all scratch races?
HWR is scratch. We do points races the rest of the year, Itza Party was a blast last week and we had a 1-off day of Bullseye on Tuesday as part of the Herd Club Championship / Tour of The Herd.
@Craig_D_Mart daylight savings is in 1 week from now.