Peter Salt
Bittersweet
- Location
- Yorkshire, UK
I had a good night in Innsbruck. No hotel and no meal but a decent show 
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alex_cycles
Veteran
- Location
- Oxfordshire
It's an effective tactic, or so I've heard
Whilst there can be improvement in the scoring system WRTL, I do like the fact it makes it inclusive for a variety of riders.
Our last race we picked certain riders to go for certain points, it worked mostly. Heavy riders for the sprints, lighter rider for Kom points.
No disrespect to Alex but he would have probably only gained a few more places overall and not got KOM, if he just raced to finish well.
We used the rules as is to benefit the team and enable Alex to score extra points, giving him a personal victory.
There are so many varied riders within each category and one could argue fellas racing in their late 50s is not fair against guys in the 20 through to 40s in age and age weighting should be included, but it becomes ever more so complicated
We have to accept these anomalies of the system, game it best and use our own talents to garner the greatest points.
Just my thoughts
Totally agree. It's a video game with VERY expensive controllers.
We can lobby for rule changes. But whatever the rules are, we should be creative and use them to our best advantage. I read all the WTRL rules, talked to the CCC guys and figured out how best I could score points for the team. And did some testing.I didn't pootle to the climb, but I could have (I was a good 15s slower up the KoM than my "fresh-leg" test from earlier in the week). I agree with you. I doubt I would have gained much more than 10 places (2 points) pushing hard all the way to the foot of the climb.
I think, like real bike racing, that probably there should be a time-cutoff (they could easily have a virtual broom wagon) to avoid people totally taking the pee with "pootle and climb" or "pootle and sprint" for FTS points. But. Having done the research, done the testing etc. to prove it's viable, it's really rewarding to be able to score some good points for the team in a less conventional way. And if it annoys the strongest riders, that's just a free bonus
<Tommy>
Illegitimi non carborundum
- Location
- Camden, London
It's an effective tactic, or so I've heard
Totally agree. It's a video game with VERY expensive controllers.
I didn't pootle to the climb, but I could have (I was a good 15s slower up the KoM than my "fresh-leg" test from earlier in the week). I agree with you. I doubt I would have gained much more than 10 places (2 points) pushing hard all the way to the foot of the climb.
I think, like real bike racing, that probably there should be a time-cutoff (they could easily have a virtual broom wagon) to avoid people totally taking the pee with "pootle and climb" or "pootle and sprint" for FTS points. But. Having done the research, done the testing etc. to prove it's viable, it's really rewarding to be able to score some good points for the team in a less conventional way. And if it annoys the strongest riders, that's just a free bonus
Alex FWIW our team also tried our best to use the rules to our advantage to gain an edge. We had 3 guys who’d been dropped from the main bunch work together to collect a load of FTS points for example. You can’t fault someone for doing that I don’t think. In fact not doing it would put you at an automatic disadvantage. Don’t hate the player, hate the game I guess would be the way to put that?
But in the end I guess where we differ is that I’d prefer the rules to reward more conventional racing.
Maybe there should be more divisions in zwift racing? Andy’s suggestion of handicapping younger riders in some way because of their age is obviously completely ridiculous. If anyone isn’t happy cycling people younger than them then they can join masters races rather than try to punish people because of their age…. But maybe there should be more masters races that put people into age categories to accommodate that.
If there’s other people who don’t want to put the work in to get themselves into shape, then maybe there should be races where everyone has the same set weight. You could have races for tall people. Races for small people. The list is endless.
And then maybe there should be a category for people who don’t want charity. Who can handle losing because they take it for what it is. And they can race in a series without gimicky power ups or unbalanced scoring systems where people don’t win or lose based on how well they can game the system. They actually do have that in the premier league I don’t know if you knew that? It’s just a shame they feel they can’t do that in the lower leagues for fear of upsetting peoples egos perhaps.
I don’t expect that to be a popular view around here and that’s fine. This stuff isn’t life or death to me. It doesn’t annoy me when someone is able to game the system to beat my time up a hill. The same way it doesn’t upset me when someone sandbags to beat me. I just think it’s a bit lame really.
Hope that makes sense to some of you even if you don’t agree with me… Not a bad rant after a couple of bottles of plonk at 12 o’clock on a Friday night! Maybe we can all agree on that if nothing else! 😄
bobinski
Legendary Member
- Location
- Tulse Hill
Now THAT is definitely a late night post 😁 How’s the head this morning?
berty bassett
Legendary Member
- Location
- I'boro
I’d be more concerned about the blister on his typing finger
<Tommy>
Illegitimi non carborundum
- Location
- Camden, London
<Tommy>
Illegitimi non carborundum
- Location
- Camden, London
😄 Middle finger still working fine thankfully!
Definitely shouldn’t of opened the second bottle. Talk about getting old…
Just out of shorts young man
Firstly, I'd like to hold my hand up and admit I talked Alex into his tactic (having seen it used against us in CCC last year). I also called out the sprint tactic for Splitters
Every other team has the same tactics available so only right we also take (legal) advantage where our strengths lie.However what I'd like to see is a proper league setup with no cats. So teams are mixed cat and the better teams are in higher leagues. Only problem with this is teams would need to be fairly stable, season on season, to stop loading of lower leagues with ringers.
If they could sort out proper rider rankings then might be easier to manage. Maybe just too complex though, so what we have today is the best given number of riders and teams involved
One points option could be only the top 75% of riders score. In a field of 40, that means only those finishing 30 or above register points.
Would stop pootling around just to gain FTS. Would mean after I score Prime points I still have to work hard to finish top 75% to keep those points.
Again, could be harder to automate in the system, but it's only an algorithm run by a database, so shouldn't be that hard to script.
Lots of options .... but these leagues and racing is still relatively new and immature in development so I think we will see it get refined as time goes on.
In the meantime, play within the rules, and enjoy the ride.
Would stop pootling around just to gain FTS. Would mean after I score Prime points I still have to work hard to finish top 75% to keep those points.
Again, could be harder to automate in the system, but it's only an algorithm run by a database, so shouldn't be that hard to script.
Lots of options .... but these leagues and racing is still relatively new and immature in development so I think we will see it get refined as time goes on.
In the meantime, play within the rules, and enjoy the ride.
It's only software to add in a time stamp difference. That would help make everyone at least not dawdle.
A bit like individual TT on grand tours where riders time their efforts to just come in under the cut-off 👍
Please post a few pics of the Finland countryside @JuhaL - would love to see that.
<Tommy>
Illegitimi non carborundum
- Location
- Camden, London
The legs are about right. Not the hair though unfortunately
