This sounds remarkably similar to roller racing which was really popular in the UK many years ago.
They would fill out town halls and watch the top riders battle it out.
I’ve taken part a couple of times in a modern version based in London. It’s really fun and if this is Zwift’s direction I would feel much happier with it as they can control the consistency between rigs.
It is very functional now (and has been for all the 3 years I have used it). They had some server crashed back in the day for big events. But has been very stable.
Most of the issues I see are outdated hardware or setup errors on the user side.
Zwift have secured a pretty hefty investment according to this article:
The article claims more than one third of the Tour de France peloton are Zwifters… I’m curious, do Zwift pay the pros to use it?
The quote from Cav seems very much like someone on the payroll
“Before Zwift, there is no way I would have chosen to ride an indoor trainer. Now though, I genuinely enjoy it – it appeals to the gamer in me. Riders like myself are genuinely fitter now, thanks to Zwift.”
Wasn’t that the issue, that he hadn’t done the meters himself but a bot was used on his account to bump up these climbing stats to get that tron bike? and I guess that was done to put him on a level playing field?
Do believe too they should have standardised the bikes for the race in question but I guess that’s part of ‘the game’.
Just like to point out that Cheating wasn’t invented when Zwift was created, people in the TDF used to take Taxi’s \ Trains, as we know, no matter what the environment, people will try to get fame without the work