IMO there should be a DQ for racers who join a pen because they met the pre-race Racing Score range, but then get a Racing Score boost above a given % beyond the pen’s threshold, because they have produced significantly better power numbers and got a good finishing result.
e.g. Joining pen E with Score limit of 300, but ending up with 330+ Score after race, I’d give a DQ for that i.e. 10% above pen limit.
The northern hemisphere traditional Sept-Apr turbo season hasn’t long begun and I’m already sick of seeing returning racers blowing up the easiest pens and then getting a pen promotion to A/B/C, after miraculously finding aerobic super-powers and super sprints, not shown when they sandbagged their 3x10min sessions that allow them to join a Racing Score event.
I could see an argument for that if the power produced during the race would be enough to push the score floor above the category limit.
Maybe not a straight DQ, maybe bring back the green cone from the original anti-sandbagging races along with the power scaling or whatever it was they used back then.
It’d need to be coupled with a better onboarding or reboarding process, something like a beat the bots tutorial race that is mandatory for people without any racing history or who’s history is old enough that their score has reset.
Its a ridiculous position, they cant enter a race to set their PBs. The expectation that someone is going to set a PB,more so an accurate PB in a 10min free ride is ill thought out and simply not practical.
The system basically encourages users to underseed themselves and work their way up as they race harder opposition setting higher PBs as they progress. There is nothing in place that supports a 4-5wkg rider to set their PB and enter at an appropriate level. (Talking solely around new or returning riders without power data)
In this instance, the system allowed them to enter the lower pen so I dont think a DQ is the right way to deal with it.
That just goes against everything this system is supposed to do, doesn’t it? You race hard and eventually you cross a threshold and are moved up in a category. You shouldn’t get penalized for working your way up in the system.
After reading almost every replay in this thread. I think a lot of people are way to focused on just the result of their race and not the race itself. Let’s say i get blown of the back and get in a group of 10 riders. My race is then with those riders and i’ll do everything i can to be the best of that group. You’re not gonna be competitive in every race and yes, sometimes, you’ll face someone who probably shouldn’t be in the same race. That’s just racing. In Zwift, at your local crits or even at a national level. It happens.
Not really, if you sandbag to be placed in a pen way below your real ability, you deserve a DQ. Same way as if returning racers joined a Category Enforcement pen D after the summer and then blew up the race, before being placed in A or B.
Extreme sangbagging qualifying efforts extract the urine, legit racers in the lowest pens deserve much better, than having at least one sandbagger in their races week in week out until around Xmas.
Here’s a good example from my own races on 6th July, this joker joined the Tiny Races pen E that had a 225 limit that week (and won all four shock horror), he now has a Racing Score of 409…
In my race last night there was just a problem with both riders their seed score who trashed the others from the start. They both flew of with 4.5w/kg and we never saw them again and there were plenty of talks amongst the others that it was pointless to even try to follow them.
They ended up with 3.9w/kg and 4.1w/kg while the others maxed out at 3.3w/kg and lower.
Besides those two the other riders were pretty evenly matched.
One of the 2 has been racing a lot these last weeks so I have no idea how he managed to still be in cat 3.
The other one had his first race since May so his seed score has just failed.
The two of them clearly had no business in cat 3, but even after trashing us all they stayed in that cat.
If it takes that long for everyone to even out we will have these kind of outliners till next spring and than the whole circus starts again. There has to be something done about the seed scores from returners, cause this is a joke. And till that is fixed they should have never go live with it.
There is no power limit in the new system*? Where do you draw the line? (probably at the person who beat you, but seriously, its just more arbitrary numbers for people to manage their power around)
The mindset of wkg & categories is going to take a long time to break.
/* there will be power limits, but it will be combination of X&Y gives you a score of N.
It wont take long to be reverse engineered to manage peoples seed score but hopefully results move people quick enough to the right place (This is the biggest fail currently, pen ranges are very wide and results dont move people quick enough, so underseeded riders will be in place for a long time.)
Edit to add - As of next week, zMAP & zFTP becomes redundant for most races. Just need ZRL & TTT to follow suit and we have got rid of that awful solution.
We cant draw the line I am afraid. It will only be fixed with an accurate seed score.
So lets hope they can come up with a solution for that fast otherwise we will be having outfliers in our races for months to come till their score settles to a score they should be.
But by that time a lot wont enjoy the racing they are doing I am afraid.
I dont excpect to win everything or even be in the top 10, but seeing riders fly off from the pen and are clearly so much better than the others that we dont see them again till the finish isnt my idea of having a fun and good race.
Yeah, I think the idea of forcing 3 random 10 minute efforts in order to generate a seed is just not useful, particularly when someone has an entire season of data from the prior year to start with.
Sure people’s fitness changes over time, but it’s somewhat unlikely an “A” category rider will start back at “D” the next season unless they’ve had some injury which can happen to anyone at any time in the year.
So, if they take the results from the last ‘x’ rides/races (even from previous season if you don’t have ‘x’ rides/races yet this year) OR the last 90 days worth of data in the case where you do have a couple of newer races to get a reasonable rank, then that would work out.
They can also add a degradation factor to account for some level of fitness loss, but never enough to drop two categories down for instance.
I think they’d have to be pretty careful about that. While it would help with the sandbagger issue, 9 months is also plenty of time to have completely lost fitness due to an injury, life event etc. You break your leg 4 months ago and you’re working your way back, your racing is still nuked for another 5 months.
But what is the effect of categorizing them exactly where they last raced? They have a couple of bad races and their score corrects itself in short order? I’m ok with that.
Using the current scheme these under-seeded returning riders destroy the experience for hundreds of lower-ranked riders as they slowly rise to their appropriate level. I’m not ok with that and Zwift shouldn’t be either.
