- The first-ever UCI Cycling Esports World Championships on Zwift were held on Wednesday, December 9.
- Riders raced on a course in Zwift’s default world, Watopia, which featured four big climbs, and took about an hour.
- South African professional cyclist Ashleigh Moolman Pasio and German rower Jason Osborne won the women’s and men’s races, respectively.
Thousands of online spectators gathered Wednesday morning to bear witness to the first-ever UCI E-Sports World Championships, in which riders from around the world raced for the digital rainbow bands virtually in Zwift’s default world, Watopia.
This was a big deal for both cycling and the future of online sports; not only does this set the precedent for a governing sports body making the move to virtual racing, but it also legitimizes the nascent discipline of e-racing.
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E-racing may sound easy, but this isn’t your average weeknight Zwift Crit City race. Lasting just longer than an hour and featuring four brutal climbs, the UCI E-Sports World Championship is truly made with the pros in mind, designed to test the strength of riders who specialize in e-racing, just as the Mens and Women’s World Championship Road Race is designed to test the abilities of riders within the road discipline.
And it’s not just fame that’s on the line in Watopia. Riders—77 men and 53 women from 22 countries—competed for both a real and a virtual custom rainbow bands jersey, as well as large cash prizes, with the first place riders taking home 8000 euros.
So how did this all work? What even makes an e-racing specialist anyway?
How It Works
You might be wondering how such an event comes together—and how cheating on Zwift is prevented—considering every rider is participating within the confines of their own pain caves. To make things fair, the UCI sent every participant a Garmin-Tacx Neo 2T smart trainer, so that they will all be competing using the same equipment. (The riders have to send this back, but also have the option of purchasing the trainer at a discount afterwards.)
There were stringent anti-cheating measures in play, including mandatory video streaming of the riders, pre-race video weigh-ins and trainer calibration checks, as well as full disclosure of riders’ Zwift history so that Zwift’s data analysts can keep a lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Additionally, all of the participating athletes were tested biologically as part of the CADF Whereabouts program.
Gamification is a part of e-racing, and despite a kerfuffle between Zwift and the UCI, it was decided that two of the six possible in-game power-ups would be used during E-Worlds: the aero boost helmet (riders are more aerodynamic for 15 seconds) and the lightweight feather (reduces the weight of the rider by 10% for 15 seconds). Power-ups are awarded when riders pass through one of the banners in the game—the final banner, the sprint banner, and the KOM banner—and must be used up prior to another banner being crossed, lest they go to waste.
Whether one receives the aero boost or the lightweight power-up is a 50/50 toss up. There are 11 power-ups available in the race, and their deployment is integral to a good Zwift strategy.
Essentials for the Best Zwift Setup
A direct drive trainer like this one from Saris give a realistic ride feel and super-accurate power.
TCL Big Screen TV
Plug that gaming PC into a screen that rivals your bike’s wheelbase and enjoy all of Watopia’s beautiful landscapes in pristine detail.
Stay cool so you can make your best effort. I prefer fans like this one that put out a lot of air in a focused area.
The Course
The course is a customized version of the Watopia Figure 8 Reverse—something that was rather familiar to frequent Zwifters. For both men and women, the parcours is 50.3 kilometers in length featuring four climbs that add up to a whopping 483 meters of vert.
The race starts downtown on the flat before heading through the rolling hills known as the Esses. Things heat up at the Italian Villas, which are a prelude to the Watopia KOM Hill, the main climb on the course, before finally heading down to the flats of Ocean Boulevard and the Marina.
The riders completed various loops throughout these features, with the race ending just after a reverse trip up the KOM hill. The effort needed to race a course like this is similar to that of a cyclocross race or a time trial—a huge effort at the front followed by riding at or above one’s power threshold for about an hour or so.
The Women’s Race
Rather frustratingly, the official stream for the women’s race started at 40 kilometers to go, causing viewers to miss the great deal of action that transpired in the first 10K of the race. Namely, an effort on the first climb by Team USA caused a major split in the peloton, dropping the likes of the UCI Road World Champion Anna van der Breggen.
By the start of the stream, the front group, featuring race favorite South African professional cyclist Ashleigh Moolman Pasio, had been whittled down to about 30 riders. Van der Breggen’s group was 46 seconds back, with a third group 2:14 behind.
The composition of the front group was an interesting mix of large teams (United States / Great Britain / Australia) with a handful of accomplished Zwift racers without a large team, such as Moolman Pasio, a professional road cyclist currently riding for CCC-Liv who turned 35 today, and the Swedish e-racing specialist Cecilia Hansen.
Much of the major action in this race happened on its four climbs. With 30.4 kilometers to go, Team USA attacked again at the front, putting pressure on the peloton and shaving off another five riders. At the start of the third climb, with 15K to go, Jacquie Godbe of Team USA put the hurt on the other riders; gaps quickly opened up, but nobody was dropped. Kristen Kulchinsky, Godbe’s teammate, pulled another dig in a further attempt to create distance. Courtney Nelson, another American, followed, with a turn at the top of the climb.
With just 3K left, Godbe attacked again, followed shortly by Moolman Pasio. These efforts were not so much attacks, but rather further attempts to string out the rest of the pack before the race finish. Then Moolman Pasio strategically used her feather power-up at the steepest part of the final climb, with fewer than 1,000 meters left. Australian Sarah Gigante challenged her, but Moolman-Pasio hung in there til the final meter to become the first ever UCI e-racing world champ. Gigante of Australia comes in second, with Sweden’s Cecilia Hansen riding into third.
“I wasn’t a fan of virtual training before the [COVID-19] lockdown,” Moolman Pasio said in her postrace interview, “and now to win the virtual world champion’s jersey—I’m really proud.”
The Men’s Race
When the stream for the men’s race started at 29 kilometers to go, the peloton was still relatively large—unlike the women’s race—with around 60 riders. Also unlike the women’s race, there were fewer attacks at the earlier and middle parts of the race—riders dropped before the final 20K did so by means of attrition.
Things really start to kick off with 15K to go, right at the foot of the penultimate climb, when everyone used their feather power-ups where the gradient was steepest. There are several attempts to string out the peloton during the descent, the first of which transpires at 13.4 kilometers to go, when Julian van den Brande of Belgium attacks, followed by Victor Campanaerts.
Just when the peloton begins to recover, there’s another attack, this time by the Canadian riders Matteo Dal-Cin, Charles-Etienne Chretien, and Lionel Sanders, who ride down the descent team-time-trial-style. However, the Canadians are overtaken by Campaneaerts, who quickly does the work to bring the race back together. The attacks work—another 10 riders are dropped on the climb.
At 4.2 kilometers to go, Canada launches a massive attack right before the final climb, with Cheyne opening up a gap that lasts for an entire kilometer. Harm Vanhoucke of Belgium closed it at 3.1 kilometers to go, and for the next kilometer, it seems as though Belgium is maintaining close control of this race.
However, with just two kilometers left, it’s attack after attack: Cheyne, then Campanaerts, then Sanders. But it’s all for naught—with 613 meters left in the race, Jonas Rapp of Germany breaks away, not for the win, but as a leadout man for his compatriot Jason Osborne. In an incredible display of power, topping the charts with a whopping 12 watts/kilogram, Osborne launches himself to the front, winning the race in a solo breakaway. He is followed by Anders Foldager and Niklas Pedersen of Denmark in second and third, respectively.
Osborne is a high-level rower by trade; he’s currently training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and he uses cycling to help with those pursuits. “I do know how to hurt myself a lot, and obviously Zwift is not really comparable with the outside cycling,” Osborne said in his postrace interview. “Here [there] is so much more going on. It’s the experience that wins in Zwift. The guys who know how to race it. Obviously, I took that strength from rowing to cycling today, and it worked really well.”
What Did We Learn?
E-Worlds confirmed one thing: e-racing is its own discipline within cycling, requiring a special set of racing skills to excel at it. These skills range from managing one’s efforts—riding at or above threshold power for long periods of time, for example—to strategic deployment of power-ups at the best possible moments.
As a result, the e-racing peloton is more diverse in terms of the ages of its participants, many of whom are not just cyclists, but rather athletes participating in other sports, such as triathlon or, in Osborne’s case, rowing. Despite the fact that both races were packed to the gills with some of the biggest names in pro cycling, none of these major names ended up in the top 10 finishers of either race.
E-racing is very different from outdoor racing; the bike handling skills of pros like Uran and Pidcock are wasted on a discipline where there is no wind or tricky technical passages with which to contend. While there are features of e-racing that are similar to the real world, such as the effects of drafting and simulated gradients, the tactical advantage of these is reduced compared to outdoors.
This has an effect on team strategy. In a Zwift race, traditional team strategies (such as maintaining a train of powerful riders at the front) are tough to maintain, and controlling the race is very difficult when everyone around you is going full gas. Indeed, most of the tactical decisions seen via Team USA in the women’s race and the Canadian and Belgian teams in the men’s race seem to fall in the category of well-timed attacks where they will hurt the other riders most—and in this case, on the Watopia Epic KOM hill.
Finally, unlike outdoor racing, in e-racing, teams can recon the course at full intensity dozens and dozens of times before the race, without having to contend with cars or the weather, and by doing so they are able to fully plan out where they will spend their efforts, use their power-ups and launch offensives.
The UCI E-Sports World Championships prove one thing, which is that e-racing is here to stay. Not only does it look like Zwift racing will be a permanent part of cyclists training, it’s also clear that e-racing is evolving into its own discipline within cycling, now with its own World Championships to solidify that role.
Kate Wagner is an architectural and cultural critic whose writing can be found in a variety of publications including The New Republic, The Baffler, and The Atlantic. She rides, with utter devotion, a 2000 Bianchi Volpe.
