bblair

I think you'd have to enter some absurd number to make a difference.

For me to be competitive in the "C" group I'd have to list my weight at 46Kg, which is about 100lbs. Which is why I still ride a lot of Zwift, but no more races.

Now if I could figure out how to double my power output.......

himespau 

If there were 1 million categories, as long as there were at least 1,000,001 racers, you'd have that one extra racer trying to enter the category in which he had the best opportunity to win.

MinnMan

reductio ad absurdum?

You are suggesting that the force required to induce sandbagging is infinitesimal. That's an unprovable position, though it also is not falsifiable.
For certain, the broader the categories, the greater the force to induce sandbagging.
.

spelger

was going to chime in and say essentially the same thing.

AdkMtnMonster

Zwift racing seems like a competition to see who can watch a Bugs Bunny show the bestest. I just watched the Z World Championship race (yeah, I skipped forward a lot. A whole lot.) What a goofy idea for what appears to be a serious competition. I can't call it a sport because the "racers" are allowed to use powerups and other cheating tools. How bizarre. It's like the World Series of Poker. Those guys are putting out the Watts, to be sure, but the competition aspect is nearly all distilled down to timing your jump and clicking on your cheater button. (But I've been wrong before. Very, very wrong. This time is likely one of those times.)

Dancing Skeleton

I often wonder when I do well (for me) in an event, as I did today, how many in front of me were weight or height doping.
I've only tried one or two races, and it was clear that a significant number of people were cheating.
I don't get it, who are they lying to?
They're lying to themselves, and just being real a-holes.
Then again, I used to be an avid golfer, and if I was playing in a league or tournament, I'd call a penalty on myself, even id no one saw the infraction.
On a casual round, a two-foot gimme' was fine, but in competition, if the ball moved & no one saw it, it still moved, penalty.
On solo rides I may not weigh my self before every ride, but for a race etc. I make sure that it's accurate.
When I'm on the road, and racing a friend over the top of a hill, we are each moving at the speed that were moving because of our W/Kg which we can't fake, and that's only slightly affected by our bikes.
If only it were that way on Zwift.

La Tortue

To all the fighters against dishonesty in the world of Zwift. You noble warriors whose only goal is to bring parity to the honest Joe consider this. Especially those who don't even Zwift race but bring the fight to the keyboard anyway. Even if all the weight dopers were found and discovered it wouldn't impact Zwft races one iota. I have well over 600 documented Zwift races and performed miserably in all of them. I still have enjoyed this absolutely wonderful app that allows you to have one hell of a good time with old friends while meeting new ones. I seriously doubt there has been any serious cheating in any of them nor do I really care because it doesn't matter. Fix the weight fudgers and you still have the inconsistencies of trainer models, the elevation of the riders, and another host of issues to keep you fighters of windmills happy for at least another Century. You could get in the mix, do your best, and watch your personal improvements soar. Or constantly whine over some geezer who beat you at the line because he bumped his weight by a kg.

ingo

I raced the Rapha Climbing Challenge yesterday up Alpe d Z, in the B category and finished 240 out of 468. Probably a whole bunch of cheaters in such a race. Rode up La Reine today and finished 230/994. lots of people over cat limits in both rides. It doesn't change anything about the experience since the division of cats is arbitrary. I got to ride with a group of avatars and enjoyed myself, put in a harder effort that I would alone, and got some exercise while there is 6" of ice and snow on the roads. Cheating matters at the highest competition levels and when there's something on the line, for the rest it doesn't matter.

unterhausen

Even IRL, the way people get their w/kg up is to lose weight. Which is why cycling is an eating disorder. It's just that on zwift, you don't have to go hungry to lose weight.

I joined zwift to ride with my friends and those rides are rubber-banded usually, unless the developers break the rubber band functionality again. It's fun to do that.

Ed Wiser

It’s interesting to watch all this racing talk. How many actually race in the real world. We could use a lot more American actual bike racers. Many real races have been dropped these past few years.

gthomson

yeah, I'm on the side of "don't really care that people cheat". After all, lots of cheating outside of the world of Zwift cycling and I can't control that either. It's human nature for people to be arseholes (yeah know, I'm a pessimist). When I join a race or group ride i put way more effort into it when just riding on my own so I got loads out of that ride in sweat and calories and that's what I'm working towards.

But talking about the real racing leagues, I thought they had way more control over the riders in their environments? that year they cancelled all IRL races and had a few e races for professional teams, didn't they require they all use the same trainer, test and send weight right before the race, track numbers from previous rides so there was nothing out of the ordinary and then have a camera on them so they could see if they were cheating? Not sure what else you could do to control it?

Wasn't there some cheating going on in the 80's and 90's during the real racing circuit?

PeteHski

I think this is spot on. The B group in particular is too wide. I'm a mid cat B most of the time, but I drop to cat C for mountainous races because I'm often up around 80 kg and get whipped by the lightweights. For flatter races I stay in cat B. Either way it's rare that I get on the podium, although I only count Zwift Power results, as they usually disqualify the blatant cheaters and sandbaggers.

I don't think there are all that many massive cheaters, but probably a lot using their best fighting weight even though they put on 5 kg over the holidays etc, lol. Also plenty of people with optimistic power readings who don't even realise. Although I think that situation is improving as more people move on to decent modern smart trainers. It's not often I see ZPower riders now. Even a couple of years ago there were a lot more of them.

tempocyclist

Very few people (racing at least) who use "Z Power" now. Cheaper model smart trainers probably helped the move. Speed sensor setups would have brought a lot of people in and then likely upgraded to get the full interactive experience.

spelger

I've seen this term sand bagging many times now but have not been able to figure out what it means exactly. please explain.

i've tried two races in zwift. both times i was honest about what cat i should be in (B much to my surprise) and both times i was handed my rear end. part of the problem was my noob experience and also just on the cusp of C to B. Got a sour taste for racing and tried a vew events. the one l liked a lot was the fox and hound or some variant of that. tried both chasing and being chased. both were fun. the chasers were cat A so that was pretty tough, i could not catch up to all the Bs (chasees).

MinnMan

Sandbagging would be if you raced in "C" even though your FTP is technically in the "B" range.
Many people on the cusp of C to B would race in C. Whether that counts as sandbagging is in the eye of the beholder.

genejockey 

I've never raced IRL, at least in part because I have watched local crits up close and gosh, they're exciting! But, you know, I'm 64, with old bones and mediocre bikehandling skills. So I race a bit on Zwift where you don't have to fight for lines through corners and never have to worry about touching wheels in a bunch.

genejockey 

I've been racing in D, and now apparently Zwiftpower thinks I should be a C. When I race, I tend to sit in near, but not at, the front, and then try to win the sprint. I've won a number of races - mostly with very small fields - but never won one going away, and I'm not pulling punches in the sprint. But, isn't that how you're SUPPOSED TO race? You don't go full bore from the gun through the entire race IRL, so why would it be so in Zwift? Is that sandbagging? I dunno.

MinnMan

Yeah, this. Most of the IRL racing around here, apart from gravel, is crits, and I'm just not up for those. I don't want to get hurt and i don't want my lack of cornering skills to take down others. There are very few road races, and I've considered them, though I know I'd get demolished. Gravel events don't have the same issues. Everybody does what they can and not everybody rides them as a race.

gthomson

A few years back I watched a few local crit races that took place just outside of my office on the commute home from work and mostly young lads who would recover much faster than I would from a crash. I was amazed though to see this mature woman, younger than me but older then these lads and she was right in the middle of the peloton the entire race. Full kudos to her for having the guts to battle it out it out with these guys half her age.

unterhausen

I was about to start racing again 30 years ago and then non-cycling related events intervened. At my age, I don't bounce very well. I'm not sure I'm up to racing on zwift at this point, although I do enjoy going on group rides sometimes.

It would be interesting to see how TrainerRoad's new ftp estimation software would work relative to zwift racing. Although people might perform at a higher apparent ftp under those conditions. I think I can sometimes.

PeteHski

Yeah I think as long as you don't win easily every time it's fair play. You get a feel for when it's time to move up a level. As I'm not a particularly explosive sprinter I tend to go for a solo break in the last couple of kms. Full gas off the front and then try to hang on all the way to the line. The element of surprise sometimes works as others are starting to sit up in preparation for a bunch sprint. But I can only pull that sort of move off in a C group with a reasonable chance of success, no chance in a strong B group. So although technically I'm a mid-pack B rider I usually race in C where I may have a realistic chance of a win or podium rather than absolutely no chance whatsoever in B.

I believe Thomas De Gendt famously once said "it's easier to break away from the pro tour peloton than win a Zwift race!"

GhostRider62

Is Thomas De Gendt the guy who did done breaked Zwift?

His output on a climb was too high and he crashed the server or something. LOL

There are people who can legitimately put 500 watts down for a pretty long time and IRL, they win World TT titles. In Zwift, they get dropped. LOL

PeteHski

Yeah, he got pulled from a Zwift race because they presumed he was cheating. I guess their algorithm wasn't designed for pro tour riders at that time!

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/de-...oing-too-fast/