UCI 2023 Cycling Esports World Championships

Streaming TOMORROW, Saturday, 18 February 2023:

Am I missing something or has this not been posted to the forum? I searched and didn’t find the above link.

EDIT - updated with better link from @Mike_Rowe1, and another to ZwiftInsider from @Anna_Ronkainen .

It was back in September, 5 months ago. Included this link

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The UCI website isn’t awfully informative either. A schedule would be nice, at least they have finally added the start lists (no idea where the national quotas were published, for instance). Very different from what they do for other UCI world championships.

Eric is running a two week UCI Scotland experience instead of his normal Tiny Races, three races that might take you up to ~75mins. There were three triple-headers last Saturday and Sunday, same again this weekend, but this time the event start times have changed back.

Stage 2 caused issues for some in D category because stage 3 starts 25mins later, 1 lap of City And Sgurr, ~8.9Km including the lead-in. It looks like there is now 30mins between stages 2 and 3, but it definitely pays to ride a gravel bike with custom gravel wheels.

Does this mean the pro event is using the burrito powerup for stage 1 and 3? :rofl:

I believe stage 3 is different for the pros, instead of four laps, it’s some sort of elimination.

This Zwift Insider post is substantially more informative than the official communications:

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could be spicy if the pros have only burrito. it means that being first across the line at that powerup point is going to be critical, as surely tonnes of people are just gonna drop the powerup as soon as they get it so whoever is in front will get away scott free. could be a good location to put in an attack (whilst everyone else drowns in burritos…)

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Surprised nobody is commenting on this thread :slight_smile: Interesting start so far!

are the rider dynamics different for these races - the riders looked very realistic, when jostling for positions etc

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No, it uses the same PD3 that regular Zwift races do (not the PD4 currently being tested).

Last 2Km of the Women’s World Championships the video froze. Classic Zwift.

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The TV feed is a bit of a zwiftshow to begin with because of the usual uninformative camera angles, fortunately at least fan view worked fine. (One teammate of mine renewed her rainbow bands and another made it to the podium, not bad…)

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What do you normally run zwift on?

A mix of laptop and iPad. Maybe it was just the unusual camera angles they were using. Just looked more life like. Looked great!

It’s not necessarily entirely Zwift’s fault. Not knowing the production setup, it’s hard to know. GCN are Eurosport, so you’d think they’d have some experience in broadcasting, and have a contingency (two PCs connected to spectate the race for example); but we don’t really know the nature of the issue.

As for the format, it was fantastic!

My main criticisms are that I don’t think the first race was hard enough to make a selection. Having almost the entire field of 80 riders together going into the last km or so meant that for many of them elimination rested on things like network latency or where Zwift’s algorithm placed them in the pack. There could be 0.001 seconds between 30th and 31st for example.

Next year I think they should make the first round longer or punchier, or something to string the riders out more. Dropping 2/3 of the field in the first race was a big jump too; I think there could be value in 4 races.

Or maybe there could be some sort of double-elimination/losers race. All the 60 or so riders who fail to make the cut in the first race get to ride an extra race amongst themselves, with say the top 10 getting back in to the main set of riders. I think that would be OK, because a) elimination could be a bit based on chance as previously described, but they’d also have another effort in their legs, so there’s still an advantage in going through first time.

The elimination part was particularly exciting to watch.

Nathan did the community proud as ever.

I missed seeing more of the data. No speeds on screen, seldom any heart rates or raw power numbers. Seeing those are part of what I enjoy about normal Zwift race coverage, and it’s lacking a bit without them.

All in all, a solid 8/10. Definitely an improvement on the older single scratch race format of old.

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Yeah, the first one (especially the women’s) was a bit of a snoozefest, but at least it wasn’t that long. Of course it depends on how you race it, I was expecting a team attack or something, but current Zwift pack dynamics do make those difficult to execute successfully. An additional intermediate elimination point would have mixed things up for sure.

And yeah, a repechage round might be a good idea as well, and maybe also interleaving the men’s and women’s races for more recovery time.

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Eliminations are an exciting format (ironically seeing as they aren’t actually a zwift feature), but the first two races were sub 1m TTs and didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment, nor of allowing anything interesting to play out in terms of team tactics.

I’d love to see one long elimination race across a mixed parcours, with eliminations at various sprints and climbs. Some longer climbs in there too. Like a proper classics race. Despite being longer it would all be exciting with the elimination format.

New pack dynamics are also needed more than ever.

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Yes, the pack dynamics update is definitely needed. Interesting to see how that changes the tactics, and also benchmarking it against RGT with the recent steering update (where you now among other things can actually get boxed in in an elimination sprint).

Of course, next year’s UCI worlds will probably be on MyWhoosh because :moneybag::moneybag::moneybag:

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That could work too. Didn’t the British Championships use a format like that a few years ago? I feel like I have some recollection of such an elimination mid-race on the Volcano flat route (but it might just have been the end of the race with eliminations).

Race 2 and 3 great, race 1 needed some arches along the route with a few golden tickets on offer, encourage them to push more and reward those that do.

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I’ll be the negative one… sorry.

Better than last year. Elimination race was a great format. Basically, we’re doing track races now?

However, without a vastly better physics model Zwift racing is still incredibly predictable.

It seems like a lot of effort going in the wrong direction. New world, live broadcast, host events, trainers shipped around the world, marketing etc etc

Actually functional game physics to provide exciting racing…

Imagine if Zwift spent the same money on updating their physics model as they did on this broadcast. We’d be on pack dynamics 959 by now.

The house is on fire and Zwift is remodeling the kitchen :joy:

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