What's the point in entering races?

Another race, another leaderboard dominated by people from categories above Off the Maap Stage 3, Friday 21 August 09:03 (D). The highest actual cat d racer finished in 53rd place.

This has got beyond a joke. Little point in entering races anymore until zwift correct this cheating.

If you’re “recovering” as many claim, enter the group rides.

Is there anything in the pipeline?

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Hi @Tim_White

Zwift is working on something but there is no ETA.

Vote for this.

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Appreciate that but it’s ruining a lot of people’s experiences right now. By the looks of this thread, it’s been going on for a couple of years.

It would be quite simple to simply auto-assign category based on average output in previous 4/5 races… Would take me 2 minutes to knock up the formula!

Just frustrated and demoralised with it all to be honest.

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We feel your pain @Tim_White! It is especially bad with the large events and tours that have added racing to the group rides. A lot of Zwifters have never raced and we can blame some, but not all, of it on them entering the wrong category simply because they have no idea what they are doing.

Look for ZHQ Beta Crit City races, these have the anti-sandbagging protocols in place. I did my first one last night, cat C, and even though it was a very small field (only 7 riders signed up) there were no sandbaggers! 5 of us all stayed together at the front, one person got dropped and it looks like one person never left the starting pen. No one got the cone of shame, and it came down to the final sprint.

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Take a look at Off The Maap Stage 4 cat D at 17:03 this evening (24 Aug)…

One guy has lost 17 kg in one month… (NAME REMOVED)…

2 cat B riders
19 cat C riders

But seriously Zwift. You have their stats, just put them in the category they should be in.

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You expect Zwift to work on features that benefit the vast majority of its user community? How could they possibly find the time to work on things that have been discussed here for years - they have half baked novelty features and pro sports races to launch.

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I finished 42nd on track. 1st on Zwiftpower.

I mentioned in the chat about that number of people riding from higher categories and the number of supportive responses was very telling. Lots and lots of people are fed up with this. Something has to be done soon otherwise, Zwift will lose subscribers.

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Unfortunately I don’t think Zwift worries about losing subscribers as there is yet a reasonable alternative. As long as Zwift faces limited competition, I believe the company will continue to demonstrate a general disregard for its community of users.

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This is nothing new see this.

I get it’s not new but people feel zwift aren’t listening. All we have is talking about it in the forums with a hope we’ll be listened to!

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What gets me is, if you challenge these people, they go for you… “Get a life” is the latest one.

Zwift, these needs to be sorted soon.

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I don’t know if it’s a solution or not but upgrading to B has been a nice relief from the sandbagging. Maybe only 1 or 2 over the limit in the top 10 of today’s MAAP Stage 4 B cat while in C cat the first 13 places are all doing 3.5+w/kg for 45 minutes and D wasn’t much better.

Of course, the only problem is trying to hang onto a bunch of people doing 4w/kg while I can only do 3.2w/kg but then I was doing that when I was in C cat anyway.

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I’m about to get to cat C bit I’ll be very low end there…

Come join the fun Tim - as someone who also recently got promoted from D to C, you won’t notice too much difference. The starts are still as manic as ever, but as most D starts were being driven by C’s anyway, you’ll already be used to that pace! Keeping up on the hills however - that takes a lot longer to get used to!

The main thing is now when you finish 34th out of 45, that’s no longer good enough for a podium position on ZwiftPower unfortunately - you’ll actually finish somewhere in the 20’s instead :frowning: :-1:

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Most certainly will do. I’m still just in cat D but if my stats improve any more, I’ll be straight into cat C. How does one improve without people around to challenge?!?!

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Just did a chase race and this is the top 10.
zwifsandbagging

I think all but 2 got DQed on ZwiftPower. Sandbagging in a chase race means you’re not only cheating the category you’re racing in, but also the category you would have to be in. So it’s double cheating so to speak.

To your point: No rider in group B got DQed! So you may be on to something.
6 of the top 8 C riders got DQed and 4 out of 5 D riders :wink:

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It’s madness. I challenged a couple of sandbaggers yesterday evening and the abuse I got was crazy.

Then they started looking at all my stats… One bloke was actually a real world British Cycling club rider… Has competed in organised events for years, category B on zwiftpower and publishes his category D podium with pride!

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Just found this on Twitter, seems somebody is as annoyed as I am! @CheatsZwift!!!

Things can get toxic quickly when you challenge people to simply play fair. Zwift allows this situation to fester.

“I don’t care about cheating in video games and neither does Zwift” is an actual quote from someone sandbagging in a recent race I did.

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Almost verbatim one of the responses I got!