Interesting post about Zwift racing and women racing in particular. Would love to know your thoughts, as so many of you do races based on Zwift Cats, ZRS, vELO score, etc.
I think that what might seem fair for one person might not seem fair for someone else. In my opinion, categories are just references and what makes a race fun is having people around you so you can challenge yourself. And this applies to IRL categories and races too. For example in my MTB races, we are split in beginner/sport/expert categories and then by age groups. However for women many age groups start together and sometimes sport and expert might be combined too because the number of participants is low. But just like in zwift, the level within the same category can be pretty wide so, is it fair to race in a sport category when your finishing time is good enough for expert even though your skills are nowhere close to expert? Someone might think MTBing is different because skills are key but on zwift, if you are a great sprinter and choose to only do flat races you probably have a great score but if you join a mountain race, will you finish at the back of the pack and then think you are in the wrong category?
For “bigger” zwift races, I enjoy mass starts as that allows me to find a group around my level even if they are in different categories. That was the case for the age group category races that the article was talking about and I thought they were great. If you wanted to race your age category, you knew who they were because of the different jerseys but if those people were too fast or too slow, you still had people from other cats you could race against even if they were not part of your category results. I really don’t care if I finish first or last as long as I have a good battle. Racing solo is boring, no matter if you are at the front or at the back… no matter if it’s a zwift or IRL race.
I feel like the new zwift racing score is a little bit better than the ftp based categories however if I was at the edge of a category swinging up or down constantly, I might not feel the same way.
I really enjoy ladder racing though as it is less dependent on your individual performance. Here you have to think about your team, your opponent, what type of riders are participating, which course will suit your team better if you are choosing it or what strategies will help your team even when the course selection is done by the other team and it is not in your team’s favor. And even though you might be racing against people with much higher scores, you have a chance to perform well and beat them!
Fairness in zwift is tough as there are many factors out of our control (weight doping, different trainers, sticky watts, etc) so I just choose to have fun and challenge myself every time I race. At the end of the day is a gamification of the sport and I know I can’t make myself lighter for 30 seconds when I climb outside but I love using my power ups during a zwift race 
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Interesting article. I guess I don’t know what the answer is because there are challenges with any of the systems and race formats. I also enjoy Ladder because even though your individual score is based off where you place (my score drops like a stone almost every race. ), as @Covi said there is alot more strategy and team dynamics in the race as well as intimate interaction with the “competition”. Each race is very unique. If ZRL goes to ZRS in the fall that will change things up a bit and will be very interesting. So let’s race to have fun and eat more cookies 
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I don’t see this at all when I look at your score. The position where you finish in a race is not as important. What matters the most is who you are racing against. So if you are racing a field of silvers and you finish last, your score won’t be penalized. But if I’m bronze and I finish after a few coppers then my score will definitely take a hit.
There are also some floors to your score based on, for example, your 5 min power.
Anyway just came here to say, that ZRS definitely captures way more data and I feel like it reflects much better the way we are performing in races and it’s much more dynamic than the A, B, C, D ftp based categories.
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Thank you @Covi I guess it just seems like treading water with the Velo score. So I try to not look at it and just enjoy the race. Thanks for the explanation.
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Yes! That’s the most important thing.
Sharing the last 90 days of my score graph which very accurately reflects my decrease in fitness and how I’ve been regaining it little by little
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You have been doing so well in regaining your fitness!! You will come back stronger than EVER dear @Covi It is truly inspiring to watch your hard work paying off!! 
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vELO is not quite the same as Zwift Racing Score but i honestly like to look at vELO sometimes more
there’s no one best option, but i think vELO and ZRS are better than the Pace Categories and the older Zwift Power
I was telling my boss today during my 1:1 - he actually asks about me as a person go figure and knows I like cycling and race - that when FCC did the Women’s by AG in May there was all sorts of “what? i’m not doing that?!” when the reality is that’s what happens IRL often, aka i think there are a lot that do not race IRL which I get and am not criticizing, but AG racing this happens a lot and its not different from racing ability cats where some are at the top and some aren;t
I think those that race AG more often whether virtual or IRL get it -
I was actually disappointed in the article, I didn’t think it really went anywhere unless I totally spaced when i read it
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I agree that with current w/kg categories, lightweight, build specialists, all-arounders etc. can be misaligned in race types. Rigid w/kg grouping may not reflect diverse strengths or rider preferences. Looking at available groupings, I like ZRS and vELO better than A-C Cats. I wish I had raced the series based on age to form an opinion. IRL, like Gail says, is age-based, aside from USA Cycling Cats 1-5, which are based on experience/results. I personally like racing other people my age.
The use of the word “fairness” isn’t the best one in this context, because as long as the rules are the same for everyone, fairness is subjective and thus subject to individual interpretations.
Similarly, “ensuring everyone has a meaningful role” is nearly impossible in Zwift racing. People need to accept that they will probably suck, a lot, for a long time. That’s how it is with all sports. I suspect the closest you can get to having roles for all racers is in Ladder races. The annual Fearless race format last December was also good in that riders had different roles.
In terms of diverse racing formats and specialization, it’s a nice idea and one that I bet Zwift has no time or resources for. So it would be up to the community-organized racing to come up and implement these.
The post indeed does not offer a solution, and I don’t think that was the intention.
My only comment on the post on the website was to say that, as long as drafting and group dynamics in Zwift continue as they are (i.e., nothing like IRL), esports will be nowhere close racing IRL. To me, THAT is a bigger fairness issue. I have countless real life examples of people who are fast and win all the time in Zwift who can’t handle their bike outside and/or would be left in the dust by the people they smash on Zwift. It’s VERY frustrating for IRL racers to experience that in Zwift racing. And if I post this comment anywhere on any Zwift discussion group, people will tell me “it’s just a game” and “it’s just different take it for what it is and have fun” - which renders the whole discussion about Zwift racing and fairness a mute point.
PS - at the start of the article, the author seemed to present the topic in the context of women racing, but as it went on, it seemed to relate to all racing. Was the intention to have it be about women racing?
See also this related discussion.
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