One man’s quest to end cheating in virtual cycling

https://thehustle.co/one-mans-quest-to-end-cheating-in-virtual-cycling/

by Anon84 • 3 years ago

139 110 3 years ago

xyzelement• 3 years ago

I think if you go into virtual biking expecting some sort of exactness - and if there's money/fame attached, you are just set up for disappointment.

A while ago I noticed that all my Peloton PRs happened on the bike at my in-laws gym, not on my own bike. Clearly there is a calibration difference between the two that majorly advantages the in-gym one. And obviously every rider's bike is different so that person ahead of you on the leader board might be putting out less output than you are. But who cares?

I was repairing my Peloton the other day and getting inside made it really obvious how else you can manipulate it if you really cared to. And maybe some people do but again, who cares?

The two numbers that matter are; your weight and perhaps the comparison on output between yourself today and yourself some time ago. Anything where you attach significance to comparison between your number and someone else's, you are in trouble. Somehow the culture on Peloton is such that people don't get into that. Maybe because social interaction is blissfully limited to high fives and following someone's class history.

This system of competitive e sports on temperable equipment was sort of latent with disappointment from the start.

dktp3• 3 years ago

I think people are overblowing his investment in making it competitive

It's quite easy to cheat in Zwift as you can put any weight on your profile (and the metric for measuring speed is generally W/kg). As well as different trainers have different power measurement accuracy, etc

But to some degree Zwift and other 3rd party Zwift race-tracking platform find the cheaters based on outliers and other factors and remove them from the list

All he did is figure out a way to cheat which should be simple to detect by the platform itself (changing weight mid-ride -> ie make yourself lighter uphill and heavier downhill) and demonstrated it. And he got banned for it

The way I see it, it's the same as someone demonstrating an LLM prompt injection or a cheat in a video game. A geek hacking a thing they like and showcasing it

eitally3• 3 years ago

The most effective way of "cheating without cheating" is just using something like Sauce for Zwift or a head unit that displays your rolling 20min power, so you can effectively "sandbag" and keep your power under the threshold for the next category. This is arguably not cheating at all, just smart racing, but it is not a great racing experience when you're in the top third or so of a category and you race someone who very clearly is far superior and only staying in your cat to rack up podiums.

To be fair, though, 1) this makes a lot of sense for team racing series, and 2) it's a really crappy experience to be at the bottom of a category and get dropped within 2 minutes of the start of every race.

I'm 100% convinced the vast majority of people either outright cheating or gaming the system are Cat C riders trying to avoid getting upleveled to B.

artursapek• 3 years ago

Yeah who cares lol literally go bike outside and breathe in the crisp autumn air

lvturner2• 3 years ago

I wouldn’t last thirty minutes in Hong Kong Island’s traffic.

I’m sure many others are in similar situations.

singleshot_• 3 years ago

I started trying to think of reasons your times might be systematically different (other thin bike calibration, as you noted) and every one I could come up with -- altitude, CO2 level, noise level, how you get there -- could affect anyone at any time. If you're not racing next to me we're not competing to any degree of useful accuracy.

sjfidsfkds• 3 years ago

The trainers used by many people on Zwift (eg. the Wahoo Kickr) actually read out pretty accurate power numbers.

The classic Peloton is basically a mechanical device with sensors attached - and none of those sensors are a power meter. The power estimates are widely reported to be inaccurate (they exaggerate output to varying degrees). On the other hand, the Kickr precisely modulates resistance and is able to accurately estimate power. I believe the newer Peloton Bike+ has a better system that produces accurate power readings as well.

Of course, as long as the competitors are bringing their own hardware, there will be ways to fake the data. I’m just pointing out it’s possible to measure power accurately and hardware that does it is widely available.

Personally, I find power readings to be useful because they help me understand the effort of cycling in different conditions. I can compare the readings I get in my garage to those from the climb up a steep mountain road, or into a gust of wind. Measuring my training based on my power output has helped me to go have experiences that I couldn’t have before.

Lio5• 3 years ago

I was repairing my Peloton the other day and getting inside made it really obvious how else you can manipulate

That's because Peloton's hardware is ...to put it nicely... "somewhat economical". :P

Peloton's never been intended as a serious sports science tool though, so it really doesn't matter how inaccurate it is. Its experience is much closer to gym spinning classes than outdoor cycling.

A spinning bike is even cheaper in design, it'll just have a "make it harder or easier" screw to tighten a strap round a spinning drum. That's the level they're competing with.

Despite the name you're unlikely to see anyone in the professional peloton warming up for a Grand Tour on either a spinning bike or something from Peloton Inc's current range.

A high end smart trainer like the Tacx Neo family will use electromagnets to generate its resistance. 100 watts of resistance is 100 watts of electrical power to about 0.5%-1%. No calibration necessary because it's connected to a source of electrical power[1].

1. You can actually use a Neo without connecting it to the mains but it's less accurate and you don't get some of features like downhill simulation.

303uru4• 3 years ago

The Peloton doesn't have a power meter. They "calibrate" it at the factory with a curve based on resistance and cadence and ship it out.

Meanwhile a good trainer has a power meter reading actual torque in real time and giving a power accuracy around +/-1% or better. There's really no comparison.

For example, my FTP is 342 watts as tested on my Stages SB20. It's slightly higher outdoors. A buddy got a Peloton and asked me what my FTP was because he knew I rode a lot and was surprised that his was soooo good because the Peloton returned him an FTP of 280. I was suspicious so I asked if I could give it a go. My FTP on the Peloton was 560 watts. I'd best doped up peak Lance Armstrong.

ben7799• 3 years ago

It wasn't long ago all Power Meters cost more than a Peloton, some probably still do, but I haven't checked in a while.

They are still expensive, so obviously they're not going to put anything decent in a Peloton.

bongobingo1• 3 years ago

He was taken aback. It couldn’t be cheating. Could it?

Cheating? In cycling?? Say it ain't so!

QuantumG• 3 years ago

“It would mean all this training is so useless,” he thought.

That had to be written ironically.

paxys• 3 years ago

Basic life lesson – if you enjoy something, do not do it competitively.

eru3• 3 years ago

That's not widely applicable. Many people enjoy competing in business for example.

cuu508• 3 years ago

And in cycling.

callalex• 3 years ago

Those people are generally sick in the head, and ruin things for everyone else. Endless growth and competition are objectively killing the planet. Seeking wealth for the sake of comparison to others misses all of the reasons life is worth living.

xboxnolifes• 3 years ago

A shared experience maintaining its integrity is important to many people, more than most would realize or care to admit. It's not just about competition.

usrusr3• 3 years ago

Well put! Weight cheating existed even before Zwift embraced racing and it was despised just as much.

arp242• 3 years ago

He decided to publish what he’d found. The post racked up 800k visits in a day. > It wasn’t knowing about the cheat that made someone a cheater, he reasoned. It was using it. The platform disagreed. Zwift issued a shadowban, allowing Pollastri to still ride — but no one could see his results.

So predictable. "Please keep Mr. Feynman away from the locked safes."

It seems really hard to get this 100% fair, because so much relies on physical equipment. E.g. "Elite riders learned the serial codes of batches of smart trainers that overreported a rider’s power, and sought them out on the used market" isn't necessarily "cheating" – if you happen to have one of these trainers but don't know it reports the wrong data. And what's to prevent someone from just hacking these things (e.g. the firmware, or modify it so there's less friction when pedalling, endless possibilities)?

Seems basically impossible to detect all of this without physical access to the equipment. The stupid "cycles better than a doped up Lance Armstrong" ones get caught (what did you expect lol), but the more careful people won't.

nico• 3 years ago

The stupid "cycles better than a doped up Lance Armstrong" ones get caught (what did you expect lol), but the more careful people won't

I know someone who hacked their college system for applying for classes, it was a points-based system and he gave himself some ridiculous number of points, he got caught, ended up not getting in trouble

They also told him they had fixed the vulnerability. But they hadn’t, so the guy hacked the system again, and he gave himself a high number of points, just not a ridiculous number. He never got caught again

dktp3• 3 years ago

It seems really hard to get this 100% fair

It is, for all the reasons you mentioned, and nobody is aiming for that. He just found and demonstrated a cheat (bug) that the platform itself should have no issue detecting - changing weight mid race

Zwift uploads race results to ZwiftPower and removes any cyclists that are outliers and it assumes are cheating. 8w/kg would be a big outlier. But it looks like the platform calculates w/kg based on the cyclists' ending weight. So if you change your weight to 25kg right after the race begins and back to 65kg before the end - while cycling at 200w, then Zwift's cheat detection system calculates your w/kg as ~3w/kg, which is completely reasonable and would not get caught. But cycling at 8w/kg is far far faster than 3w/kg

The article is overblown. He's not trying to end cheating altogether. He found a bug and demonstrated it

eesmith• 3 years ago

The article is overblown. He's not trying to end cheating altogether. He found a bug and demonstrated it

The article says he did more than demonstrate a bug:

"He became a founding member of FERA, the Fair E-Racing Alliance, where he works with 25 other volunteers to assess suspected cheats across ~60 online cycling teams. The list of ways to cheat on Zwift he amassed? It’s now up to 127."

Lio5• 3 years ago

The whole Zwift w/kg category system is inherently flawed even without cheating.

If you're in a lower category and right near the w/kg limit you could be 70kg and racing against 100kg riders. If the cat limit was 3.2w/kg you could have 224w a maximum vs 320w for the heavier rider.

On the flats they'll destroy you, in the sprints they'll destroy you and on the descents they'll destroy.

On the climbs? They'll hang right with you because you both climb at 3.2w/kg.

If you get fitter you'll just be bumped up to a cat with higher limits but the same issue.

Unless you're an elite cat A rider, where there's no limits, you should treat the races as just a fitness activity.

The heaviest fit rider will always have a massive advantage regardless of the course. So why "race" at all?

eitally3• 3 years ago

A lot of the hacks available to users to cheap are the reason why the eRacing World Championships required riders to use smart trainers provided to them by the UCI. And the situation you state isn't at all the most common method of cheating. The hardest to detect (at least a while ago) was software based, where a third party software injection would intercept the data stream from Zwift and modify the power numbers. Before that, the most common cheating mode was probably either weight/height doping or intentionally using a power meter that reads high (frequently pedals).

(I race on a Zwift Racing League team, completed my 335th race yesterday, and have spent about 500 hours on the platform so far.)

The reality for Zwift is that less than 10% of their user base races and they don't really care about preventing cheating unless it's already in line with their product development plan. I don't think this is why they lost the eRacing WC sponsorship for next year (to oil-funded MyWhoosh), but I'm hoping it will encourage them to take this kind of thing more seriously. Highly doubtful, though, and anyone who trolls their forums already knows the animosity Zwift faces from many (most?) racers re: their refusal to fix stupid bugs.

LeifCarrotson• 3 years ago

Strava has the same kind of problems - many of the casual userbase just want to maintain accountability and get kudos from their friends: "Hooray, you kept your heart rate in the fat burn zone for 45 minutes!" Casual Strava users don't care about the top 1% hunting KOMs at the limits of human capacity. Therefore the Strava dev team don't care about that 1% .And the 5% who inadvertently leave their device recording when they drive away from the park, not to mention the 0.1% who ride a bike just above the running KOM to cheat back their record, completely ruin it.

It's very difficult to build a platform capable of fighting intentional fraud, especially when you have limited control of what your users are doing. It's completely hopeless if that fraud has limited impact on your business. Users with limited moderation/review tools trying to fight fraud are fighting a losing battle.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

“It would mean all this training is so useless,” he thought.

well, except that it made you more fit. Didn't it?

krackers• 3 years ago

See this defcon talk about cheating in virtual cycling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq9t0VEIMio

CitrusFruits• 3 years ago

I think this article is insightful in a lot of ways, but it actually doesn't even mention the easiest way to cheat: all you have to do is report your weight to be a couple kilos less than what you are. This is so prevalent that your "Zwift weight" is basically a meme in the cycling community. This is actually even complicated a little bit further since you weigh a lot of things throughout the week. If you go for a long ride and are a bit dehydrated, you can easily weigh 2.5kg less at the end than you do after dinner, which means you can report an unrealistic weight without "lying".

For me, this alone always made Zwift racing a really hard sell. Bike racing is already hard enough without having to grapple with doubts that the people ahead of you reported their weight correctly.

nradov5• 3 years ago

I don't understand why someone would waste their time on a quixotic quest to end cheating in a video game. Who cares? The whole think is ridiculous. It's not real racing anyway.

I had a paid Zwift subscription for a while but the game aspects of are boring and pointless. So now when I do indoor smart trainer workouts, I just use my bike computer to control it and watch a movie to keep myself entertained.

Mashimo2• 3 years ago

I don't understand why someone would waste their time on a quixotic quest to end cheating in a video game.

Are you sure you are on the right forum? :P For me it sounds like ~hacker news~ fun. Dig down into a deep hole and explore it. Find out all the technical ways to exploit something, try to find whys to fix it and blog about it.

I can understand why you might not enjoy it, but do you really not see the appeal for other people in it?

davidw2• 3 years ago

I think it's actually pretty cool that Zwift works well at all. I do the occasional race in a lower category, and sometimes they're pretty realistic.

I did one with a fairly large starting group that broke apart on the first hill, and formed into smaller groups that worked together and in some cases merged back together on the flats, then split up again on the last hill.

If you squint a bit, it felt like an actual bike ride with other people outside. Which is pretty cool for something controlled by a phone on a stationary bike in your garage.

prmoustache7• 3 years ago

But most of what makes things interesting in road racing are not taken into account right?

I mean the sheer violence of the accelerations after a slow corner, railing the corners at full speed in an exilarating way, being thrown in the gutters in crosswind fighting to stay on the wheel in front like your life depend on it, dropping other riders in a downhill section through faster speed in the corners, etc.

davidw2• 3 years ago

It's a fitness and, to a smaller tactics, game, not a handling game. So certainly far from the full experience, but... not bad when you're unable to go outside.

bunabhucan2• 3 years ago

sheer violence

It is safer! People die from time to time on group pelton road rides.

eitally3• 3 years ago

I think it depends what you find interesting. fwiw, now that Zwift supports steering, if you have the ability (hardware) to steer, it does give you a significant advantage.

Otherwise, racing virtually is much simpler than racing IRL, but it's also just different (there is essentially no freewheeling in Zwift, so even on a race that isn't very challenging you still usually end up in z2-3 on flat sections). I'm thankful there isn't sheer violence in online racing. :D

VeejayRampay• 3 years ago

I use zwift on a regular basis and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how much of a complete loser you would need to be to cheat on a virtual cycling app, whole thing's just mind blowing to me

ejb999• 3 years ago

My thoughts exactly - I could just sit at home and write down in a log book every day that I beat my personal best and rode 1000 miles per week at a record pace, - some people really need to get a life.

cainxinth• 3 years ago

I’m reminded of the tagline from The King of Kong, the documentary about competitive Donkey Kong: “The competition is so vicious because the stakes are so low.”

npongratz• 3 years ago

And essentially what Sayre's Law says about politics in academia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

bunabhucan2• 3 years ago

I once got a vm from a stranger telling me there was some stuff I should know about an employee. I asked the employee and the stranger was using a fake name and was upset that the employee had figured out the stranger was lying on some ultra distance internet forum.

People would post times for "events" they did like "bike from Boulder to longs peak, run up the trail to 13k feet, climb the diamond to the summit then run down then bike home."

Stranger was posting fake results then using sock puppet accounts to verify ("I met him with climbing gear at the end of the run, amazing effort!") He got caught because he posted a result on a rarely run trail that the employee had run, out and back, at the same time and not seen anyone.

Forum was tiny, free to join, no prize money or sponsorship etc. Some people are just crazy.

303uru4• 3 years ago

People will cheat anything. I did a fun ride this weekend, a century around Denver, and caught some dude I passed earlier in the ride getting out of a car toward the finish with his bike. It was an un-timed event.

For Zwift, there are cash prizes for high end racing and even slots on pro teams on the line at times. Zwift also ran the UCI world championship for indoor cycling. So there's more pressure on some to cheat than you might expect.

1-more• 3 years ago

I mean think about the lifetime midpack Cat 3s who get caught for doping every so often. Some people have that weird brainworm that makes them do this. I repeat this a lot but: powerlifting is one of the only sports that had a chance to be fair because there are tested and untested federations, and the untested federations had cash prizes before the tested ones did. With all of that being the case, I know of people who failed drug tests after coming in top 3—but not winning!—a local meet in NYC. Absolute loser behavior, and it only takes 1-2% of participants to do that to taint the whole game.

macNchz• 3 years ago

I had the same reaction when I first encountered marathoninvestigation.com, which is a blog that calls out cheating in road running races. Most of these people cheating aren’t even anywhere close to the level where having a slight edge might allow them to place, or win prize money. So they’re effectively competing against themselves to set a personal best time…and cheating at it. So strange to me.

diogenes4• 3 years ago

Have they considered therapy?

gonzo41• 3 years ago

Cheating such as tech, drugs, body positions, fairings, taking trains to skip parts of races, hiding off the race road for advantage, is as much a part of the sport of cycling as the riding bikes part. Why not this!

fluxem• 3 years ago

Go outside, touch the grass and ride on the streets.

jbm2• 3 years ago

Apparently, it is going to snow 30 cm next week here. No grass to be had sir.

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Ski?

Mashimo2• 3 years ago

Should still be grass under the snow :P

prmoustache7• 3 years ago

Then touch the snow and hit oustide. You know fatbike is a thing, as well as cross country skiing, snow hiking...

scott_w6• 3 years ago

Some things are difficult to solve because equipment manufacturers don’t really need to. Power meters just need to be reasonably accurate to each other and remain accurate to themselves as they’re a training tool first and foremost.

Some things are reasonably easy: don’t allow settings changes after a race starts. Why they don’t do this is beyond me.

That said, weight doping seems to be a big enough concern that esports organisers mandate athletes compete in a set arena and weigh in beforehand and use their calibrated trainers. I’m not sure how you solve that for people at home.

prmoustache7• 3 years ago

I’m not sure how you solve that for people at home.

You don't. And it is valid for most "e-sports".

But I don't understand Zwift anyway. A big part of the joy of cycling is about being outside, feeling the wind, handling your bike. The actual physical exercise is important but it is not the whole thing. I understand pro racers using turbo trainers when the weather is so crappy so that they can do specific structured training necessary for their job. But amateurs??? If the weather is too crappy (which only really happen in freezing temps or storms), just do another sport or focus on another hobby while waiting for the weather to be better.

Note: I am saying that as a former elite racer.

mft_2• 3 years ago

But I don't understand Zwift anyway. A big part of the joy of cycling is about being outside, feeling the wind, handling your bike. The actual physical exercise is important but it is not the whole thing. I understand pro racers using turbo trainers when the weather is so crappy so that they can do specific structured training necessary for their job. But amateurs??? If the weather is too crappy (which only really happen in freezing temps or storms), just do another sport or focus on another hobby while waiting for the weather to be better.

This seems unnecessarily narrow-minded. There are lots of hobbies and pastimes out there that lots of other people don't enjoy or understand; why the need to gate-keep, to judge? Maybe consider Zwift racing as competing on a computer game (think Fifa, or Fortnite, or Counter Strike) with the added bonus of exercise thrown in.

It's also worth noting that the world of cycling is quite threatening when you're a relatively unfit amateur; even joining a local group ride can be scary, given the uncertainty of relative fitness and speeds. Attending a race is likely even more forboding, and it should be obvious that joining an anonymous online race would be magnitudes easier - logistically and psychologically.

laweijfmvo• 3 years ago

I do cycle outside and love it, but for raw exercise nothing beats getting on the Peloton (or Zwift), putting your head down, music on, and cranking. It’s two different sports.

usrusr3• 3 years ago

You don't need to participate in formal races to enjoy the ability to go fast and/or far. Even before Strava, people would "race" each other in group rides whenever a hill comes up, and themselves whenever they hit their standard loop. Plenty of non-racers have turbos to get them through winter, some of them use Zwift to make it a little less boring.

rypskar• 3 years ago

>A big part of the joy of cycling is about being outside

That depends a lot on where you live, a road bike and snow is not a good combination. For me it is a joy for about 4 months a year, where 2 of the months is when my allergy is at it worst. So the rest of the year is training inside on a trainer

scott_w6• 3 years ago

It’s fine to not want to do that but there are plenty of reasons to use indoor training:

* Easier to do a session

* Weather is too bad (either today or the entire winter)

* Want to maintain some fitness through winter

* More convenient on that day (just finished work)

I don’t use Zwift for racing but then I live on the outskirts of a fairly remote city so it’s easy to get outside. I think I’d feel differently if I lived in Central London.

usrusr3• 3 years ago

Zwift had that one solved just fine for years: recognize the fight you can't win and never ever give the impression that the platform might be good for racing. Before they did a radical 180 on that topic, racing was the one feature users were suggesting over and over again that Zwift staunchly rejected.

Then the usual happened, ran out of VC money. Zwift are knee deep in the viscous cycle of raise money, hire lots of people with that money because you are obliged to spend the money you raised, fail to out-earn your newly inflated costs, try raising more money.

Of course they need a story to tell investors, a story why this time it will all be different, and one time, after "running!" and before "our own hardware!", it was "racing", abandoning all careful avoidance of the cheating problem in a 125M hail Mary: "we'll introduce racing! TV licences and sponsoring will make all our troubles faint memories". (at the time there were independent racing clubs doing events on the platform thatvtolerated them at best, which must have helped selling this story a lot)

Running is still a non-starter four years after introduction (fully unlocked on a free tier, and most of the very few runners you see I the platform are probably triathletes who just use the virtual cycling platform for the treadmill as well because they already have an account) and the hardware division was closed before the first product (current offerings are badge-engineered third party). Racing is certainly not quite as successful as hoped and suffering from exactly the same chatting problems that made them carefully avoid racing at first, but compared to those other "funding round stories", it's looking not quite as bad. They are still hopelessly overspending, but it seems that by the time of "racing will solve all our problem", they were at least aware of the viscous cycle problem and burnt off most of the excess money that didn't go to compensate ongoing losses as ad spending, instead of hiring even more.

atleastoptimal• 3 years ago

I've discovered that the more insanely pointless lying/cheating is in some niche community, the more likely someone is to do it.

darkwater2• 3 years ago

Considering the history of cycling on this very topic (cheating), I would say that having ways to cheat is a feature, not a bug. It's part of the experience.

prmoustache7• 3 years ago

Of any sport in fact.

It is human behavior. Cheating is engrained in everyone's life. Mostly everyone try to cheat at life all the time. That coffee in the morning? Your cheating your way into life trying to be and feel more awake than you should. The nutritionnal supplements? cheating. The sleeping pills, antidepressant some people take. Cheating. The hormone therapy of aging mens. Cheating. The aesthetic chirurgy. Cheating. Mentionning stuff you were in fact barely involved in in your previous job in an interview. Cheating. Going past the speed limits while driving. Cheating. I could go on for hours with examples.

In fact just considering using a turbo trainer at home and connecting to zwift can be considered cheating.

darkwater2• 3 years ago

Of any sport in fact.

Indeed, there are cases in every single sport out there (especially if practiced professionally), but cycling is probably the one with the biggest exposure on the topic (I would say the other big one is/was athletics).

m463• 3 years ago

There's a difference between doing the best you can, and behaving dishonestly.

geonnave• 3 years ago

Back in ancient Greece, statues weren’t constructed to celebrate athletes: They were built to shame them into not cheating.

Is this true? Could not find any source for it.

bloqs2• 3 years ago

Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki Zanes of Olympia

bloqs2• 3 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanes_of_Olympia

smallpipe• 3 years ago

Whoever made that graph for esport revenue should have their excel rights revoked. If you don’t look at the legends, it looks like a 4x increase over a few years, which is definitely not right

PeterStuer• 3 years ago

Preventing cheating in Zwift is unsolvable, and I mean not in the classic Red Queen co-evolving predator/prey sense. There are just so many physical hacks Zwift can never sense.

layer82• 3 years ago

Back in ancient Greece, statues weren’t constructed to celebrate athletes: They were built to shame them into not cheating.

Can someone elaborate?

skizm• 3 years ago

I'm always curious if they allow the instructors of the peloton videos to tweek their bikes to over report their power output so they can stay engaged while also putting up a competitive score for the people watching to follow along and pace against.

ubermonkey• 3 years ago

Somewhat hilariously:

I use Zwift normally, but only as a means to drive my smart trainer in structured workouts. Early in the pandemic, though, my cycling pals and I DID do some virtual racing and group riding, which was a nice enough distraction from cabin fever -- run Zwift on one iPad, and run a Zoom call with your pals on the other.

Anyway: actual world-tour pro Lawson Craddock is a friend of a friend, and he'd sometimes ride "with" us, though when racing he was obviously not in the same grouping as the rest of us.

In fact, he got dinged for power output, and provisionally DQ'd from Zwift racing, because his numbers were too high. Apparently, if you're ACTUALLY a pro and produce ACTUAL pro numbers, there's an additional verification procedure you have to go through. He posted the screenshot on Instagram; it said something like "Somethings wrong -- unless you're a pro!"

acomjean• 3 years ago

I used to use Strava on my phone for my work rides. One time I forgot to turn it off, hopped in my car after coming home to do an errand. A couple miles down the road I realized that Strava was dutifully recording my driving as riding (in light traffic definitely faster than almost anyone would ride, especially me). Whoops.

As the article points out they have trouble keeping cheaters out of bike races in the real world, they're going to have issues when everyone is at home in charge of their own equipment. I don't know why its seems like it a bike sport thing, maybe its the "bring your own equipment" aspect of it.

elzbardico• 3 years ago

There are a lot of impossible records on Strava in my corner of the world that I seriously suspect were logged in a motorbike or even a pro e-bike.

mikhailfranco2• 3 years ago

Competition is for vainglorious losers (mostly men) - perhaps Vainglourious Basterds.

There is always someone better than you, usually with a rare genetic gift, and/or an obsessive desolate life that is not worthy of any admiration.

Just compare yourself to how you were yesterday. If it is a moral quest, then monotonic progress in wisdom is the objective. If it requires physical or mental agility, then adjust your PBs by age.

If you compete and you cheat, you are a double loser - physically and morally.

tantalor• 3 years ago

Agree but I'd add a distinction:

Competition with others is futile.

Competition with yourself is productive.

mikhailfranco2• 3 years ago

I think that's what I said, but your summary is more pithy.

I love pith. The world needs more pith.

FrankoDelMar2• 3 years ago

I generally disagree. Ideally, sportsmanship is be about appreciating the limits of human abilities. In that sense, the line between competition amongst others and oneself is blurred. Is it so hard to believe that people can compete against each other and also be supportive at the same time? It reminds me of the moon landing and the shared feeling that we, as humans achieved it, not necessarily just the US in its arms face against the Soviets.

automatic6131• 3 years ago

Pure cope. Mad cuz bad.

One man’s quest to end cheating in virtual cycling

Related Stories