This is frustrating as I sweat my butt up a 11% grade mountain road at a reasonable 270 watts and some clown(or group) flies past me at 7-11 w/kg and never stops. They disappear before I can see their names. We all know that in the real world you can’t do this without an e-bike(easily spotted). Even dopers only see a marginal increase in performance.
I don’t feel this is by accident(as some posts offer). These riders have their bikes, wheels and kits all tricked out like Mario Cipollini. They pretend to be bad asses.
One thing that could help is offering up the individual’s weight in their profile box in case they are just tweaking their weight as an easy way to cheat. Another way is flag the riders out with a red flag as possible dopers based on excessive wattage.
Check out the results of the event at zwiftpower.com after the event. You can then see the power outputs of everyone. Plus see who has been disqualified.
Why does it matter? It’s just a game. If people want to distort it then they are only cheating themselves. I personally just bumble along at my own pace doing my own thing and really don’t pay attention to what others are doing. No different to Wye;I am out on the road, I really don’t care who goes past me!
Steve - if there were was no racing on Zwift then I would agree with you. However there is racing and some of us take it reasonably seriously and would prefer a level playing field or as close to it as we can get. Same as outdoor racing. I’m in a road cycling club and race competitively at Masters level. I do care who goes past me!!
Yeah Nigel - as a past Cat 1/2 Senior a lifetime ago I am still a competitive type and really hate cheaters. The joke was always that if you ride past Thrash (me) it is like kicking a bee hive. Game On.
Different strokes for different folks - my crew is a very fun but competitive bunch. Lots of Masters National, State and World Champions. It keeps us young by enjoying the battle.
Marshall, we can’t stop cheaters in real-life races. How do you expect Zwift to stop cheaters where you are basically working on the honor system. If someone flies by you at 10w/kg accept that they are cheating and move on.
ZWIFT is fee based (I also have $$$ in two systems, bikes and laptops) and there are simple ways to expose cheaters and at least shame them a bit for being so bold. ZWIFT seems committed to continual improvement of their software and even a racing experience for those who want to compete; I like that about them. Please feel free to pre-pay a year of the service for me David and I will gladly “move on”.
What about someone who ISN’T weight doping, they have a powermeter or smart trainer but you KNOW their power is reading way too high. How do they do that?
I’ll give an example. There’s a kid (I mean 9 years old) who has half a dozen KOM’s in Watopia. His minimum weight will be set at 45kg as per Zwift standards. But…he’ll do a ride and snag KOM’s averaging 450+ watts. Now, I know kids can be freakishly strong, but not THAT strong.
How are some of these people getting their “verified” equipment to read so far off? I saw a guy last night holding 800w for 10 minutes! And of course, his weight was listed around 50kg.
Yeah, I hear “it’s a game, get over it.” Well I hate when people cheat at games too. The difference is, I use this as a serious training tool and data like that skews things - badly.
It makes it hard to hit fitness goals when some guy in the KOM competition is climbing faster than Il Pirata on massive doses of EPO. There should be some policing or if a rider wants to opt out and do their thing just go for it.
Easy. Could be using zpower or any one of a number of low end / budget wheel on smart trainers. Even calibrated many of these are inaccurate Worse if they aren’t calibarted. Problem is a lot of these people are naive to the fact their equipment is giving inaccurate power readings. Because they have a reasonable level of fitness they just accept the power theyr’e getting.
