This also doesn't address a more immediate issue, which is that static calibration on both the PM and the trainer could be gamed. Comparable to the 50% HCT rule, which wasn't a full crack down on EPO and blood doping, quite a few of the rules listed above are of tangential relevance at best.

Much easier to require everyone to purchase certified weight plates (hey, Zwift could even make a buck here by having ZADA engraved into the plates), one 10 kg, one 20 kg. Make people do a video of them taking the mass of the plates on the scale they plan on using, then in the same video, have them do static calibration of the PM they plan on using. Have them submit the excel file with the various offset numbers recorded, and have them use that slope. That's what guarantees the accuracy of the PM. Now that the PM has been standardized (and I believe the slope is reported in the *.fit files), if the recording from the trainer doesn't match up, then there's an issue. Make people do this 3x a year. An added side benefit is that this also guarantees the accuracy of the scale used.

Otherwise, without addressing the more fundamental issue of people adjusting slope on the PM to match the wacky numbers from the trainer, it's all smoke and mirrors anyway. Yeah, some powermeters don't allow people to enter slopes. Well, if ZADA really want integrity of competition to be taken seriously, it should require that either the PM or the trainer to have slopes that can be calibrated (and require people to use data from that device as the primary feed when doing Zwift races).

As @ridenfish39 mentioned above, there are numerous A-grade Zwift racers who can't do what they do indoors when competing outside. I posted rants about this elsewhere, but someone who's a no name at GMSR (a climb-heavy amateur stage race) could apparently do 6.2 w/kg for 20 minutes on Zwift. Rather ludicrous, when our resident climber, who actually won the mountain top finish stage at GMSR and is an actual pro, has a 6.0 w/kg 20-min PB on Zwift, all the while being ~10 kg lighter.

Someone else (a former competitor of mine) who could apparently do 5.0 w/kg (325 W) for 20 minutes on Zwift either has a 0.29 m^2 CdA on the TT bike or uses a faulty PM/trainer when on Zwift.

Sure, go after the easy-picking targets such as Ms. Duncombe and Ms. Berger above, but one could easily do all that ZADA asks and still adulterate the integrity of competition, or one could skip at least step E mentioned above without compromising integrity of competition when people are forced to use PM/trainers with the correct slope.

The calibration of the slope can be manipulated, the crank arm length can be manipulated, the calibrated weights can be manipulated, there can be a man in the middle, there is at least one high rated swifter serving a 4 years ban in real bicycle racing, ... .

It becomes arbitrarily complicated to prevent cheating in virtual racing, especially as long as it is truly virtual, i.e. people bike at their home having full access to the hardware (and other stuff)). At the end Swift is a video game, ride and have fun, don‘t take it too serious.

The calibration of the slope can be manipulated, the crank arm length can be manipulated, the calibrated weights can be manipulated, there can be a man in the middle, there is at least one high rated swifter serving a 4 years ban in real bicycle racing, ... .

It becomes arbitrarily complicated to prevent cheating in virtual racing, especially as long as it is truly virtual, i.e. people bike at their home having full access to the hardware (and other stuff)). At the end Swift is a video game, ride and have fun, don‘t take it too serious.

Of course, all that could happen; it's not perfect. Nevertheless, it still represents an improvement over what Zada is currently doing. That's the whole point.

The current system gives a wide berth to the actual cheats and people who take advantage of high power readings.

Case in point, for the just-announced indoor Worlds, every athlete has to race on UCI-provided Garmin NEO2T trainers. That should make it much harder to cheat. With the side benefit of adding consistency, since some trainers are known to be very sprinter-friendly. Certainly not impossible to cheat. But harder. Particularly since I'm sure they'll keep track of all the calibration stats on each trainer before they ship them out, and hopefully have ways to detect shenanigans to those parameters, even remotely.

Ideally they'd work with Garmin to completely lock down the firmware to those devices. That would make it really hard to cheat, e.g. you'd have to implement man-in-the-middle software at the driver level that appeared *exactly* like a NEO2T to Zwift. Or something like that.

ETA: I just saw the following list of requirements for competition in the Pro-Am races and noticed the following.



It's actually quite difficult for a lot of people to go somewhere with a climb averaging 5% for 20 minutes. I will need to drive 10 hours to Pittsburgh to get to a place with a climb like that

https://www.velonews.com/...s-banned-from-zwift/

double letters again!

cyclingnews article actually has some specifics on how they did it/were caught
https://www.cyclingnews.com/...-digital-data-issue/

What does it say about me, that I immediately went here in my mind

echappist wrote:

As @ridenfish39 mentioned above, there are numerous A-grade Zwift racers who can't do what they do indoors when competing outside. I posted rants about this elsewhere, but someone who's a no name at GMSR (a climb-heavy amateur stage race) could apparently do 6.2 w/kg for 20 minutes on Zwift. Rather ludicrous, when our resident climber, who actually won the mountain top finish stage at GMSR and is an actual pro, has a 6.0 w/kg 20-min PB on Zwift, all the while being ~10 kg lighter.

Someone else (a former competitor of mine) who could apparently do 5.0 w/kg (325 W) for 20 minutes on Zwift either has a 0.29 m^2 CdA on the TT bike or uses a faulty PM/trainer when on Zwift.

Sure, go after the easy-picking targets such as Ms. Duncombe and Ms. Berger above, but one could easily do all that ZADA asks and still adulterate the integrity of competition, or one could skip at least step E mentioned above without compromising integrity of competition when people are forced to use PM/trainers with the correct slope.