The success rate is much greater on Zwift than IRL

General Discussion
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The success rate is much greater on Zwift than IRL.

IRL has greater parity. I already explained the likes of Geraint Thomas and Jonas Vingegaard, GC conteder phenotypes, both winning criteriums. You have MVdP, WVA, and Pogi as top contestants, but that doesn’t dismiss Mohoric, Ganna, Kung, etc. as podium candidates throughout the Monument classics

Can anyone explain why Cory Williams wasnt contesting the win for a stage road race event like Joe Martin? Ignore the criteriums, where he relies on team assistance anyway.

I very much hope the future of the collision mechanics will resolve the majority of the frustrations. People of course dont like change, but that is at odds with realism as the goal

I side with realism. Not with “gaming.”

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I’m with realism up to a point, but Zwift is a game. If the serious cycling eSports needs to move to a full blown simulation of the real world, fair enough, but I don’t think that’s what Zwift needs to be.

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Just a word of caution. I’m not sure what criteriums you’re referring to that Vingegaard and Thomas won. If you were talking about the Critérium de Dauphiné, that has “critérium” in its name, but it is a stage road race. If you’re talking about the post-Tour criteriums, those are WWE-style exhibition races in that the outcome is scripted. They do those for money. Those aren’t real races.

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It wasn’t Critérium de Dauphiné. Both won on closed roads, short circuit crit races. I learned of this through GCN (race news show or their weekly “podcast”). Either in 2022 or 2021.

Vingegaard may have won something in Japan; while Thomas in the U.K. I will follow-up with links to ProCyclingStats and/or GCN.

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Right now, I don’t see any races meeting that description on Procyclingstats.com. Here’s Geraint Thomas’ page.

Your larger point is that IRL, when you were discussing elite-level mens road racing, you felt that there was more parity in that if you don’t have a superb 1-2 minute power, you still have a chance in a number of race types. I think this is probably broadly correct. Take US style criteriums out of it, since that race format is not really popular in European pro cycling (ignoring the kermesses in Belgium that act as a key talent development ground for the pro peloton; I think this race format is pretty similar to US crits). We do see a lot of specialization in the sport, e.g. pure TT riders, stage racers, climbers, classics riders; there’s sub-specialization beyond that, even. Part of the beauty of road racing at that level is that in principle, a number of different types of people might win any particular race. Sometimes it will take a total fluke for that to happen, but it’s possible. That said, in some disciplines, the strongest riders are essentially going to win barring an accident, a seriously bad day, or weather - time trials and cyclocross are examples (cyclocross also involving certain types of bike handling and other skills, TTs being extremely equipment heavy).

But in men’s road racing, you have very long races, far longer than amateurs. In principle, they could create long races for amateurs, but that may be too logistically challenging on the road (which is why the US gravel scene exists). You have team dynamics and strategy that amateur races do not have. Amateurs are probably less specialized than pros.

I guess my point is that it may not be completely possible to replicate a scenario where all rider types might have equal chance of success in one type of event. Within Zwift’s framework, we do have TTs, we have shorter road races, and we have gran fondo-type events (or some people do organize super long road races). That does offer some diversity already. Assuming your fitness is within a reasonable range of your racing category, a shorter IRL amateur race may simply lend itself toward the 1-min power guys being a lot more likely to win. Not enough time and not enough inter-team dynamics to generate a breakaway, etc. (Naturally, Geraint Thomas entering a US cat 4 crit at age 18 might simply ride everyone off his wheel, which is why the qualification that you have to be in the correct band of physical ability.)

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those are scripted

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I found this of Geraint Thomas. I could have sworn GCN or Lanterne Rouge spoke for both Thomas and Vingegaard’s wins.

@Weiwen_Ng

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And I suppose furthering your points here with other videos and/or performances I thought of that demonstrate solo efforts really make the peloton work their butts off:

  1. Tom Pidcock during Strade Bianchi 2023. Solo move for I think 40+KMs?
  2. Matej Mohorič initiating late attack on a downhill!
  3. Brent Van Moer nail biting last KM 2021 Tour de France Stage 4
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Congrats, Jonas! OK, more seriously, you don’t see this result on Procyclingstats. It is not a real race. It is for show. The riders get paid to appear, quite handsomely as I understand it. The results are scripted. Look, he beat Mark Cavendish. At that level, if Cavendish wanted the win, he would have his team chase the breaks down.

Consider this quote in the article:

The event was more of an exhibition event than race but the big-name riders made numerous attacks despite the heat and humidity. Mark Cavendish fought for the points competition, fighting with other riders in the different intermediate sprints.

I mean, it backs up my point, only it’s hilarious how understated it is. These criteriums are not real races. They are to cycling as WWE is to wrestling as a martial art, only I guess the post-Tour crits are less flashy than WWE. The event was “more of an exhibition event than race” in the same manner as 1 is more than 0.

Look, if Vingegaard beat Cav in a real race on flat terrain, it would be on Procyclingstats, and you would hear talk of it for decades. It would be like one of the GC guys winning the last stage of the TdF. Those are totally flat. By social convention, it’s understood that the GC guys are just cruising with the pack, and the sprint teams will take off during the finishing circuits - this part is a real race, btw. There are breakaways, sure. They never stick, because the sprinters’ teams don’t let them. The last GC contender to win the last stages of the Tour may have been Hinault or Merckx. They are … rather aggressive personalities. But more to the point, cycling was less specialized in their era.

But wait, Greg Lemond! Yes, he did win the time trial heard around the world.

OK, what happens if you go off the script? This guy won a crit in Germany. The funny thing is, nobody exactly knows why he went off-script. But according to the riders, it is possible that the organizers didn’t bother to brief the amateurs, because they all know that they aren’t supposed to win anyway … only this guy did not know. Anyway, have you heard of Dominik Bauer? Legends say that he is still trying to hold off Nickias Arndt, Fränk Schleck, et al.

OK, I do not mean to sarcastically belabor the point to show off my own prowess. The fact is that pro road cycling has a lot of history, and not everybody is going to know everything, and knowing all these little facts does not make me a smart person. I am trying to emphatically convey that Jonas Vingegaard did not really beat Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali, and all three of them beat Mark Cavendish (who did win the points competition), in a short flat race. That could have happened in a real race, but all the sprinters teams would have had to make a massive blunder, the sort of blunder which would leave road captains and DSes falling on their metaphorical swords in shame. Daniel’s broader point is worth discussing. Just do not rely on this result as precedent. That is all.

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This is harder because the Paysafecard Altstadt-Kriterium Graz 2022 is in Austria, so all the media is in German. If you Google translate their home page, you get this:

And, of course, an event like this draws national attention and so also to the UNESCO World Heritage City of Graz. A look at the list of winners from previous years shows the importance of the race – names like Lance Armstrong, Jan Ulrich, Sean Kelly and Erik Zabel can be found there.

OK. So, they will probably try to recruit the Tour winner, and the various jersey winners, probably some stage winners as well. Local amateurs probably round out the crowd. If this is a real race - as the Youtube commentator appears to think, sigh - then there is no way that Lance Armstrong or Jan Ullrich would have beaten Erik Zabel in a crit if it were real. I know there may be a hill in the middle of that course. I don’t care what sort of hill or what sort of dope Armstrong was on, it’s not going to be enough to let him get a breakaway in a short and otherwise flat race.

This race isn’t on Thomas’ results on Procyclingstats. Why do you suppose that is? And why do you suppose it got no coverage in major cycling media - it certainly should have, if it was a real competition and Thomas, who is definitely not at his peak, won it.

Look, my point is this. We don’t need pro road stage racers or TTers to be regularly winning short sprinty events to want to try to make Zwift racing be amenable to a bunch of rider types winning if possible. That’s a fine goal, I question if it can be achieved, but I hope Zwift tries. It’s just that Zwift shouldn’t swayed by Geraint Thomas’ apparent victory at the 2022 Paysafecard Altstadt-Kriterium Graz, and we should not be citing post-Tour crit victories to make the point.

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The point i try to make on these races is that a single guy can outwork a mass peloton OR at least exhibit that the chasing peloton strings out and actually rotates coordinated pulls. Thereby, distributing the workload

Zwift current PD engine does not allow this @Gerrie_Delport_ODZ. Its trueness is blunted. We can agree on this?

The videos are there to show exactly how position, drafting, and possible collision mechanics work. Not a continuous churning bunch that is overly reliant and confident in the blob doing the pulling

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There was a time Geraint Thomas beat all the sprinters on a flat course… it was nearly mentioned earlier…

Criterium de Duaphine stage 5 - 21? Or 20?

There was a U turn 1km out and Ineos blocked the road off and G held the chasing bunch off with a 1km TT/Breakaway… They nearly got there but didn’t manage to get organised.

That was the race, held off Sonny Colbrelli

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I think this is what you are looking for. (Im not reading this whole topic :face_vomiting:)

the Guy in Pink goes to the front and string out the pack and makes them work.