We see that now someone can do 4,3, 4,4 …or even 4,8W/kg average for more than 20 minutes and still appearing as winner in B category.
For example two official ZHQ recente races today and last week:
Without this feature of removing from results the people with a performance out of category, what’s the point of Zwiftpower?
For clasifications full of cheaters and sanbaggers we always had the regular Zwift Companion or web results…
Was this a CE race. Is this the first time the person raced in 60 days?
Probably not sandbaggers just people that didn’t race recently or it is the first time going above cat limit.
Looks like they’re all very experienced! One guy is a clear a cat so must be borderline for ce
The 1st 2 links are Watt Floors specialists and in the 3rd link riders are not removed cause Zwiftpower has a treshold before you are DQ.
I did the C-cat race on Tuesday.
6 of the top 10 were Cat-B at the time (based on ZP) and had raced recently (one of 'em currently racing B in ZRL).
Yes, I realise these races are CE-based, but there seems to be an awful lot of riders who constantly teeter on the cusp of an unwanted (C to B) upgrade.
I remember when Zwiftpower filtered results automatically if a rider performance was out of category.
If the 95% of the 20minutes power exceded the limits, then the filter removed that rider.
Now that’s not happening.
This is what I’m talking about.
We need this filter working even in autocat races, category enforcement doesn’t work.
Or yes, CE could work for Companion/web results be better and fair, but not as good as Zwiftpower filter did always.
No CE and ZP are two different things, they can’t be mixed. Like apples and frogs. The one has nothing to do with the other.
You will see people in CE races that over perform once because CE only use the last 60days. But you will only see them once.
Not like ZP where you see them in the race in the wrong category week after week.
ZP only makes the results look better it doesn’t do anything to make the race experience better.
About that, I will say yes, it’s interesting for the Leagues, where overperformers, next race will be category upgraded so we will not see them anymore in the league classifications.
But if you can have new overperformers everyday, results are adulterated almost always in a race, and race experience destroyed too.
A legit racer could never win neither in Zwiftpower, thats why filter was useful.
I can’t understand why filters doesn’t work unless are deactivated just for being CE races.
Both things better than choose one.
I agree with this, but it will only happen in the beginning of the season.
Yes we would like to see people DQ for over performance BUT you can’t tell someone that they can enter a spesific category just to DQ them for over performance.
We need to congratulate them for their improvement and have them move up.
What we need is to improve CE to help better categorize racers. But CE need data to do this.
Maybe a option would be to use 90 days of data.
For the race this evening, as seen at Zwiftpower: ZADA 5 and 20 min limits, so will be filtered results?
@Susun_Corda I have a feeling that is a redundant race setting; or the thresholds are ridiculously high that few breach.
i’ve seen 20MINs and 5MINs before and would probably guess they’re set at like 6wkg and 7+wkg respectively. although the actual zwiftpower site says 5wkg and 6wkg somewhere, buried in one of the sub sub sub sub pages of one of the header tabs.
@S_A_ccc 6.5w/kg or 450w for 20, 7.5w/kg or 550w for 5
Old settings before ZADA stopped working with ZP were; 6 w/kg for 5 or 5 w/kg for 95% of 20
And that doesn’t filter out women doing world tour level numbers so those generally go totally missed (even when riders are very far into the veteran age categories 
)
Seem to recall the old ZADA Female limits were:-
Best 20 Minute Power: 4.5 w/kg.
Best 5 Minute Power: 5.3 w/kg.
Best 1 Minute Power: 7.9 w/kg.
Best 5sec Power: 16.3w/kg
Very similar to our internal flagging numbers (ie riders need to provide extra evidence of these through IRL results / outdoor data / filmed indoor riding)
I think it would be really useful for these old ‘flag’ limits’ to be widely publicised to help guide zwift team managers for when they really should start asking some more questions.
I actually think things are better than ever, even though they are still not good/acceptable. What I write below might seem off topic/a misunderstanding of the topic. I get the point. There are just a few things I think should be said or added for the full picture.
The problem is mainly two things, the way I see it. First, there is the lack of transparency of CE limits, which is being addressed and we will soon be able to view them on ZHQ, hopefully in a sufficiently informative and explanatory format.
While waiting we’re still stuck thinking cat limits are somehow mainly W/kg. We know that is no longer the case but in the lack of transparency we tend to view performances over previous cat limits as suspicious or even outright unfair. That will hopefully change with better transparency. At least I’m willing to give Zwift a chance to prove themselves with the transparency bit before I stop seeing CE as a temporary improvement of categorization.
Second, there is the increasing ‘desync’ between ZHQ results reporting and ZP reporting. They are more and more dissimilar in some ways and Zwift doesn’t seem to be very invested in maintaining ZP, for better and for worse. I mean I don’t think there should be two places were results are reported, especially not if they diverge, but on the other hand ZHQ still doesn’t support leagues etc, which is of course a big problem for the community.
But other than that I actually think things are looking better than ever. They are NOT good enough. CE can never be fair, per definition, since you absolutely cannot have categorization based on physical performance metrics. This is being addressed too, however, although it will take some time. I have decided to be patient and to keep the faith that they will actually do it this time.
Here and now, though, I see much less crap going on in races. The weight/absolute power thing is still a big issue, but that is what you get with physical performance metrics as basis for categorization. You can’t really fix it. However, sandbagging (which I myself call ‘cruising’, whereas I call ‘sandbagging’ signing up to a lower cat, something you can no longer do under CE) has decreased drastically. It’s not impossible to cruise. It will always be possible under a performance metrics categorization. Nevertheless, cruising has decreased.
Let’s just assume for now that someone winning with a higher W/kg than would have been allowed in the old cats is still playing within the CE rules. We’ll have to postpone our judgement until we have better transparency. And let’s set aside the fact that ZP can’t track the CE rules properly (they could fix this after we get transparency). Then intentional/unintentional cruising has still decreased.
I don’t think the reason for this is that the CE cat rules prevents cruising in themselves or that people have become less prone to exploit the system to the fullest in order to win. I think it simply has become much harder to cruise and for two reasons.
First, it is more complex and difficult to cruise now that you have to take several measures into account. And even if you manage to keep track of all those measures to make sure you don’t overstep, it is harder these days to fit it into your race. While you may be able to keep your 20 min performance in line (not that hard), the situation in a race might not allow you to maintain your shorter measures without having to drop at a crucial point (it’s usually crucial any time anyway) like a climb or something. I’m referring to situations where you have the overcapacity to stick with the front, perhaps easily so, but you might not be able to without overstepping.
Second, it is really hard to cruise without CE transparency. It’s hard enough to even mentalize your own relevant measures in a race, but to also gauge others around you over several measures is a challenge. That was much easier in the old days, to make the decision whether you could stick with the front or even allow yourself a push, or whether you had to drop to save your cat.
Sure, making ZP fully CE compliant is an issue, if it will happen at all. I also don’t exclude the possibility that the CE rules needs a tweak or two. It’s possible that there are pockets where some riders with certain power profiles can reign unthreatened by others, that you need to fit a very specific mold to be able to podium. While still waiting for the implementation of a real categorization, one could and perhaps should try to reduce any such pockets, to spread out the chances of winning a little more, although you don’t want to spend too much time fixing legacy code since it slows down progress. But… let’s wait for better transparency before passing that kind of judgement. We’ll see.
You may think it awful that someone winning displaying a 4.3 is terribly unfair while you yourself believe you are confined to a 4.0 limit. It might be fully compliant with the CE rules, but let’s say you still think it unfair, that the rules are bad. But do you actually think this is any different than what has been going on for ages in Zwift races?! It isn’t. Both you and that other guy being restricted to a 4.0 does NOT mean it is fair. Not if e.g. that other guy has +10kg on you - given equal fitness, you are not allowed to compete with him. So what’s the difference really? We already knew the system is fundamentally borked. Still, I think the CE rules polished off a couple of really sharp edges, to make racing a bit more hospitable while we’re still waiting for the big change.
What I like as things stand today is that podiums tend to look like this:
Whereas I see far fewer winners of this kind, the type you used to see quite a lot earlier:
(Both pics taken from anonymous strangers)
And this is absolute key. It’s not about ethics or masochist ideals. Rather, the short format of Zwift races and the stiff and even competition within them will necessarily drive a fair race towards the first picture, because under those conditions it is the only way you can win. It’s plain logics. If, on the other hand, it looks like the second picture, then something must be very wrong with the cat system.
In the here and now of Zwift racing development, setting aside that we still have a static cat system where winners can keep winning forever in a sub-A cat, I personally don’t really mind losing to someone doing 0.2 W/kg above old limits in a well-attended race, assuming it all follows transparent CE logics, not as long as the winner looks something like the first picture, give or take. And it seems to me most do these days.
Also note that this will not change under a points system categorization. Fair Zwift racing is, should and must necessarily be absolutely brutal. For everyone. Just like a CX race.
