Z0ZZ eRacing Worldz Take Place Zaturday on Zwift
The 2022 virtual racing World Championships are on Saturday in New York—but not the real New York
Back before gravel became the meme discipline of cycling, there was a brief moment when eRacing on the Zwift platform was what we all poked fun at. And long before the UCI stepped in to create the World Series of Gravel or whatever they’re calling it, Zwift and the UCI held the first-ever eRacing World Championships in December 2020.
This year’s Zwift Worlds take place on Saturday in the virtual world of New York. The platform has created a fake future New York, so fortunately the race will not just be loops around Central Park. The fake fake New York features a rather steep 2-ish minute climb (for the fasts, at least) that will be the key feature in this year’s race.
The race takes place on the Knickerbocker route and will be a total of 54.8 zilometers—or about 34 ziles. That means the races should be about the length of a World Cup mountain bike race, thus making it a decent viewing option if you’re stuck inside for a trainer ride on early Saturday afternoon.
The women and the men each race separately, with the Women’s race taking place at 1:15pm EST and the Men at 2:45pm EST. The races will be available to watch via the Zwift YouTube channel or GCN, if you still have a spare subscription sitting around.
In last year’s event, the Worlds race featured a mix of professionals from other disciplines and Zwift-specific riders. The U.S., for example, held an open qualifier for some of the spots on the team. Highlighting this dynamic, last year’s Women’s winner was Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio, a member of SD Worx, and the Men’s winner was a former German rower named Jason Osborne.
With virtual racing continuing to become its own discipline and not necessarily a novelty for elite pros to embarrass themselves on, this year’s race will feature almost all Zwift-specific racers. Moolman-Pasio and Osborne are both back to defend their wins, but they will also face tougher competition from any number of strong riders who focus specifically on racing on the platform.
The “official” start lists are available online.
And speaking of when virtual racing was the meme discipline, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the potential for cheating. Each rider in the race was sent a Wahoo Kickr trainer that they must use for the race. Riders must also do rigorous, videotaped weigh-ins, and they were entered into the UCI drug-testing pool. While not perfect, the strict procedures to control things that could be perceived as cheating should help add legitimacy to the results.
Zwift races are known to frequently come down to sprints featuring large groups of riders, but the Knickerbocker route climb is steep, and it should serve to thin out the lead group in the first two laps and then create an exciting finish at the top of the KOM. It’s like a mountain-top finish at the Tour, only shorter. And fake.
Nowhere Fast Pod Zwift Worlds Preview
Now new readers may be wondering why we are doing a post about Zwift racing, and since cyclocross folks are generally anti-trainer riding, that is a fair thing to wonder. During the pandemic, I started a podcast called Nowhere Fast covering virtual bike racing. As I’ve often said, I expected it to be three episodes long and then die out, but 2 years and 32 episodes later, we are still cranking away.
This current season has been particularly interesting because podcast co-host Kevin Bouchard-Hall, a sometimes cyclocross racer as well, qualified for Team USA and will be representing America in the race. The opportunity to represent his country from his living room even comes with an in-game Team USA kit he has gotten to wear in the lead-up to the race.
My other co-host Mike Swart and I previewed the upcoming Zwift Worlds on the most recent episode of Nowhere Fast. We also discussed last weekend’s virtual racing National Championships that took place on the RGT platform. Seriously, these things both exist.
I may be a bit biased, but it’s been a fun show to be a part of and is worth a listen if you’re into real racing on fake bikes.