Pedalling Pixels
The rise of virtual competition
Online racing is keeping us fit year-round, creating new development pathways for cycling talent, offering novel ways to cheat and influencing bike technology. It’s fun, too.
online racing is keeping us fit yearround, creating new development pathways for cycling talent, offering novel ways to cheat and influencing bike technology. it’ s fun, too.
When Jake Cullen decided to switch his sport of choice from sailing to cycling, he ran into a significant problem: a wet and cold West Coast winter. In the last few months of 2016, Cullen found himself enrolled in full-time studies at Simon Fraser University and working part-time at Vancouver’s Bicicletta bike shop. He’d just come off his first season of racing mostly Cat. 3 road events with less-than-stellar results. Motivation to train wasn’t a problem, but finding daylight was – until a colleague introduced him to the online training platform Zwift. “I tried it and was pumped right away because I found it engaging,” he said. “It made training feel a lot less like a chore and allowed me to spend more time doing it. It really changed the game for me.”
A group of four cycling fans in the tech industry launched Zwift in 2014. The Long Beach, Calif.-based company became a paid platform in 2015 and has seen massive yearover-year growth ever since. While most early adopters connected their old-fashioned trainers to the software using ant+ power meters and speed/cadence sensors, the rapid rise of smart trainers – with their built-in meters and sensors – has parallelled that of Zwift.
It’s not that the software was the first interactive cycling platform offering multiplayer racing. The now antique-looking I-magic trainer from Tacx, as well as the Computrainer, offered some version of that experience more than a decade ago.
But why have we been seeing such growth in recent years? Why is your Strava feed littered with virtual rides in the winter? (And they’re there in the other three seasons, too.) Call it a convergence of trainer, video-game and mobile technology. Think about it this way: the original Tacx I-magic was released in 2004, three years before the first iphone came out. You needed a powerful home computer to run the Tacx software. Today, even an older iphone can handle the Zwift software. Or, hook up a $200 Apple TV and run it on any connected television.
The other driving force behind the success of Zwift and its competitors, such as Rouvy, Sufferfest, Virtugo, rgt Cycling and Bkool, is the rising acceptance of online gaming as legitimate competition. People are now paying big dollars to watch professional e-gaming teams compete against each other and, in some cases, video games are being used to
identify real-world talent. Nissan partnered with Sony in 2008 to launch the GT Academy, which uses Gran Tourismo on the Playstation platform to identify potential racecar drivers. The program has worked, with many of the winners signing professional racing contracts and competing in some of the world’s biggest series.
As Zwift grew quickly in 2015, it also started a system for discovering fast riders. The company launched the first edition of Zwift Academy, an online talentidentification competition for women in 2016. “The GT Academy was a huge inspiration for us,” said Kate Veronneau, who has been at the helm of Zwift Academy since the start. “Everyone thought we were a l it tle crazy four years ago when our ceo Eric Min said we can do e-sports in Zwift. It was very risky. We had a lot of naysayers and a lot of questioning press.”
But Zwift Academy was an instant hit. More than 1,200 women from 51 countries entered the combined training program and competition, with U.S. rider Leah Thorvilson winning it and signing a contract with Canyon/sram for 2017. “We all know that with cycling, the best riders are not on bikes yet,” Veronneau said. “It’s one of those sports in which athletes who come from other sports might not even know they have the engines yet. Some countries do a great job of identifying other opportunities for athletes to see if they have the power or physiological ability for other sports. Zwift Academy is like that, but accessible to everybody.”
When Zwift announced its Academy would expand to include men in 2017, Jake Cullen was intrigued. He had spent enough hours on the platform racing against others to know he could hold his own. “In my head, I thought I would give it a go. I had friends who knew how much I used Zwift and were egging me on,” he said.
What he didn’t know at the time was that Zwift had seen massive growth since he had started using the platform just a few months earlier. The second edition of the Academy drew 2,100 women and 9,200 men from across the globe.
Much to Cullen’s surprise, he made it to the semi-finals, finishing in the top 10. On the road, he joined
Applewood Garneau Cycling Team for 2017 and acknowledges the role Zwift had with his improved results. “Put it this way, in one year I went from midpack in Cat. 3 races to winning Cat. 1/2 races. Zwift played a major role in that because I was doing maybe one or two rides outside each week, but five or more rides indoors on the trainer,” he said.
Mark Ernsting, who signed Cullen to ride with his DC Bank Pro Cycling Team for 2019, said the Zwift Academy
results factored into the contract decision, but it was far from the only reason he signed the 23-year-old rider. “We’re a development team, so I think it’s a good stepping stone and it gives a rider like Jake the opportunity to develop further,” he said. The team principal acknowledges, however, he wouldn’t have signed Cullen had he not spent a couple of seasons learning the sport at lower levels. “We’ve taken a few flyers on riders who have shown really prominent physiology markers. We could tell right away that they had a certain ability to excel,” Ernsting said. “But after that point, it’s a matter of putting in the time to allow their bodies to handle the demands of the sport.”
Since Cullen’s cohort, Zwift Academy has exploded in popularity. More than 35,000 riders competed in 2018, and that number nearly doubled to more than 65,000 in 2019. On the line each year are contracts with pro cycling teams. Veronneau says the early fears that complete newbies would be thrown into a pro peloton are far from valid. “The program has gotten so big that we’re now attracting riders with more racing backgrounds. So it would be very hard for someone with no peloton experience to make it to the finals,” she said, adding that the three finalists for each gender now compete for the top spot at real-life training camps. “If they’re not comfortable riding handlebar to handlebar or descending, they’re not going to make it,” she said.
Ernsting sees the platform as a talent-identification tool on the same level as the ergometer competitions that national rowing organizations use. “If you look at countries that have led the world in rowing, they hold erg competitions in key metropolitan areas across their nations,” he said. “From there, they take that data and hold camps to do more physiological testing on the individuals to verify the data and add in things like V02 testing to see if they could be transformed into world-class athletes.”
Ernsting says national cycling organizations could do the same thing, using indoor cycling to identify talent and then move them into a feeder system. “The feeder system would teach them cycling etiquette and dynamics,” he said. “From there, we’d see if they’d continue to progress and move toward the highest levels of the sport.”
Aside from the Zwift Academy, which is aimed at developing under-23 riders, racing on the platform is also growing at a rate that far exceeds that of traditional road or mountain bike racing. Zwift users can find races at a variety of ability levels (categorized by power-to-weight averages), at any time of the day or night. There are many series and leagues, and some now offer prize money. “It’s like a new sport,” Veronneau said. “It’s not going to replace outdoor riding, but it’s allowing people to race all over the world and giving them more opportunities to race and be seen.”
With bragging rights, cash purses and even real-world contracts on the line, the issue of cheating is never far from any conversation about virtual racing. Lie about your height or weight and it could affect your virtual aerodynamics (yes, that’s a thing) or your power-to-weight ratio. In early October, Cameron Jeffers, who had won the first British Cycling e-racing championships in March, was stripped of his title, fined and given a six-month ban for his alleged manipulation of data to unlock better in-game equipment. Some believe full-on hacking of smart trainers could be the next frontier of e-cheating. There’s also no drug testing.
But what online racing does offer up is data. And lots of it. “The nice thing is riding and training is all so data driven,” said Zwift spokesman Greg Fisher. “Zwift has a ton of data
“It’s like a new sport.. It’s not going to replace outdoor riding, but it’s allowing people to race all over the world and giving them more opportunities to race and be seen.”
that riders put out in the game. If a red flag pops up, it’s very easy to ask a rider to produce other data to prove or disprove the effort in the game. It takes some analysis and communication, and is a lot of work, but it has proven itself really effective.”
The policing is largely communitydriven. In late 2016, a group of Zwifters launched zada, the Zwift Anti-doping Agency. The informal team would look at a superhuman performance (such as someone who regularly averages more than 5 W/kg for long races) and do a deep dive into the Zwifter’s real-world data from services such as Strava to see if there’s a history to back up the virtual ride. As Zwift grew, however, zada got overwhelmed. In early 2019, Zwift announced it was taking the “agency” in-house, renaming it Zwift Accuracy and Data Analysis.
For now, zada is monitoring its own major competitions, such as the kiss Super League racing series and national championships, automatically verifying the data of the podium and two random finishers. “We’ve created this team that is wholly responsible for trying to find every loophole, and creating guidelines for data and what people have to adhere to,” Veronneau said. “I want everyone to feel very confident that this is a fair competition.”
But not everyone believes enough is being done to stop cheaters. Frank Garcia, ceo of Cycligent, a competing e-sport platform, thinks electronic doping is a far bigger problem than anyone wants to admit. “From my perspective, e-racing is broken on all other platforms and will remain broken for the foreseeable future,” he said. By “all other” platforms, he means those other than his own cvrcade, a virtual training and racing platform his company brought to market in 2019 after initially working alongside Zwift to offer a virtualracing league.
“This is one of the things that we talked to Zwift about early on. We were doing prize purses of $100,000. The only thing we could think to end cheating would be to have real-life events. We hoped that would keep people honest,” he said, referring to
“It’s more Mar io Kar t than Mario Cipollini.”
events where competitors ride trainers in one room while an audience looks on. Garcia said riders would show up to these real-world events significantly heavier than their online profiles, and they were often producing far less power than when they rode at home. “We developed an additional set of rules that was like 15 pages long,” he said.
cvrcade’s answer to the e-doping issue is what Garcia calls physical equalization, a sort of handicapping system that allows riders of all sizes and abilities to compete directly against each other. “Physical equalization puts you on a more level footing, but not an equal footing,” he said. “Fatigue and fitness still matter. Training and endurance still matter. It’s not just about one race; it’s about performing consistently.” Garcia said the technology his company has developed allows the equalization system to be evolving constantly and changing so that a Cat. 4 rider, for example, could beat a Cat. 1 rider if the former is working harder in a given race.
Another feature of the virtual environment is gamification – making virtual racing more like a video game than a boring training session. cvrcade is largely focused on this area with the ability to steer around or jump over obstacles, crash into other riders and use power-ups. If you don’t have a bike and trainer, you can play the system using a keyboard only. Even Zwift has gotten into gamification with the launch of power-ups in training rides such as a feather that reduces your weight by 9 kg for 15 seconds or extra drafting or aero abilities. It’s more Mario Kart than Mario Cipollini.
Veronneau said Zwifters will see more gamification in the future. “Zwift is a video game at heart and we will always have that aspect,” she said. “We’re still indoor racing, and we’ll have a lot of fun with that in the next couple of years.” At September’s Eurobike trade show, Zwift debuted the ability to turn within its environment. At the moment, you need a companion app running on your smartphone. With your phone affixed to your handlebar, the app and the phone’s accelerometer can send signals to the virtual world when your turn your bars.
The serious side of virtual racing is expanding, too. At the 2019 uci road world championships in Yorkshire (not coincidentally a course available in the Zwift platform), officials from Zwift and the uci announced the first-ever cycling e-sports world championships to be held in 2020. Riders will qualify through formal national championship events.
“As the governing body for the sport, we need to remain open to technical innovations and change, and to remain relevant to all audiences,” said uci president David Lappartient. “Zwift is a platform that is enjoyed by people of all ages and abilities. However, there is a particularly exciting opportunity through e-sports as we look to attract a younger audience to cycling. Together, we have an opportunity to support a fitter youth, through the creation of a new sustainable sport.”
The cheating issue received a small, but important mention in the world championship announcement with the uci and Zwift saying they would be working together to develop a new uci rulebook for cycling e-sports in the coming year.
While Zwift fights to hold its place as the market leader on the software side, the companies that manufacturer the trainers are jockeying for space. Indoor riding was a big focus at Eurobike in September with new or updated trainers from Kurt Kinetic, Elite, Saris, 4iiii and others. Tacx, Wahoo and Stages all debuted stationary bikes that work with virtual worlds. They all have extra buttons, usually built into the hoods. Each company hinted that the extra buttons would eventually connect to gamification features within Zwift.
“I love seeing how much Zwift has influenced the evolution of the technology,” said Veronneau. “The same way the cycling industry has always worked to evolve and create more opportunities, the hardware development will just create more interest and opportunities for people riding indoors.
“It’s super exciting to think you can show what you’re made of from your living room against some of the top competitors in the world and we’ve been able to offer more and more opportunities to do that.”