I wholeheartedly disagree but thank you for saying so. I think a lot of people feel the same and I welcome the chance to voice an opinion on it. I advocate playing by the crappy ruleset we have to play within today and making it as fun as possible.
People entering the wrong category is cheating. People lying about their weight, hacking software or hardware to lie about their numbers is cheating. Playing by the rules that exist rather than the rules that should exist is playing the game as it must be played. Everyone is welcome to complain their rules are horrible, cause they are. In sport when a governing body makes a dumb rule you still play by it, and complain, until it’s fixed.
There should be a system by witch you earn points for winning and get moved up by results not power, but there is not. The rest is strategy within the rules. Do you think its sandbagging to hide in the pack in a crit then go as hard as you can in the sprint? Cause thats how you race these.
The 2 or 3 lead groups in every class are all right at the power limit, this is how it is if people like or not the the race platform vendor has been deaf to change. So, this is an option to follow the rules and actually be able to compete at the edge of your fitness and still have it be a serious toss up if you get a podium or 10th, just like real races. The other choice is go as hard as you can in the first 20 min, still lose the race by a massive amount, get upgraded a class and never see a lead pack again, ride by yourself which is not a race, dont have fun and quit.
One final point, hopefully this one is the best. Here is my TR ride file for a race from wed. I was with the 2nd lead group and finished 7th. The first lead group was a bunch of people from class C who entered D, they were going to be DQed by zwiftpower so no big deal. The people who got first and 2nd both weighed a LOT more than everyone so they could do 250+watts so they managed to hang with the cheater lead group. They won by a minute plus, there was likely nothing any of the rest of us could do to stop that. I was within +/- 10 seconds at the finish of the whole group for the real race. My IF for that 45 minutes was 1.04. I have a 209 ftp and finished with an average of 207 and a np of 217. Look at that ride report and tell me it was sandbagging. The rules dont say you go less hard than you can, the rules say you have to carefully choose when you lay it out. Its restrictor plate racing.
If you are an A class rider racing in D and just doing 2.49w/kg the whole time you still probably wont win, and you wont have any fun at all. If you happen to be able to go over the class limits for 20 minutes but you cant hold it for 22 minutes why should you not be allowed to be in the pack of racers all within +/-5% of your fitness?
I would honestly like to hear other people’s opinions on this.