Is wanting to win all that great if you sacrifice your honor?

RojoRacing

RojoRacing

Donut Powered Wise-guy
This may come off condescending coming from me who many others think I can just pull wins out my A$% as if it's is nothing big. I mean how privileged to you have to be to say you hate winning? But here's a little observation taken out of a conversation I had with a team I'm involved with. The gist of the subject is they were trying to get a rider at the low end of the A class to do a race today slowly so his stats would bump him down to B and they could pad there team time trial team with one more A caliber rider as a B rider because rules only allow 3 A riders per team which they already had.

"Just what happened tonight in the last hour: Bob is an "A" but only needed one race below 4.0wkg to be a "B" except he entered a group ride instead of a race which doesn't count, so I'm trying to get him to "B".


Am I just from some alternate realm of thinking that I find it dishonorable to try and do a race slow so you can get bumped down and pad your team with stronger riders? As I get older I'm seriously starting to get disgusted with the idea of winning and people's obsession with it. I've always hated road racing and it's tactics of leaching off others for the chance of winning and the above quote perfectly sums up why I hate the road racing mentality. Maybe this has nothing to do with honor but it feels dishonorable to me.
 
ccooper

ccooper

Active Member
Yes, it's dishonorable.
That doesn't mean you should condemn the goal of winning. You condemn the dishonorable act, which is a separate thing.
But I get that if this lack of integrity appears often enough, it's pretty disheartening.
 
Doug Kline

Doug Kline

Guru
Kids these days have such bad ethics. Instead of working hard they just feel entitled to cheat to get ahead. I long for the good old days when road racing was honorable :rolleyes:
 
B

bladderhead

Zen MBB Master
Do boxers fall over in the required round? I do not know much about cricket, but what about spread-betting? Or ball-tampering? I expect there is something like an equivalent in baseball. The peloton has been dodgy ever since they invented it. Not nice, but if there is money in it, why not do it? My grandfather's mate rode the train across Canada early last century. Lost all his dough to a card-sharp. It is more difficult to do this sort of thing in solo types of cycle racing. Just monitor yourself and try to get a PB.
 
RojoRacing

RojoRacing

Donut Powered Wise-guy
Ccooper I guess I’m pushing my values into others, and oh course since their my values that are always the better one :lol

Doug I’m on old soul in a young body, these guys are near twice my age, the irony of entitlement is strong.

Bladder normally I don’t let anything outside my own circle bother me, but these ”tactics” have directly affect me the last few weeks. At one point I was excluded from the team for being too fast and now I’ve got people trying to pad the team I’m part of, glad they failed though.

These are the problems I see everyday in the point end of sports. I do envy others who aren’t as fast and can give it their all among some many others who just want to get better and have fun.
 
trplay

trplay

Zen MBB Master
Scratching my head in total confusion. I think you have simply joined a team that is sorta low in the IQ realm :) Unless this is the dudes 3rd race it will not change his cat. Even if it does unless he under-performs he will just shoot back up to the higher cat and his Team cat will go up with him after his next race. But seriously, A low Latte is winning more than a high ranking Mocha, assuming the latte team has a faster time. The results are displayed in order by time not Division. The Divisions simply break the race into groups so more participants can have reasonable target to compare against . I love these crazy TTT races. The prerace banter, race itself, and the workout you get from it is all the winning I need. You should dump therse guys, form a group of fast Tribe members into a fast team and demostrate how an honorable group of riders can get it done. I understand a plan is currently underway to do exactly this. I can't wait! Meanwhile Zone one of the TTT is finished and my under-powered Coyotes now have a target time to beat. Its above my threshold level but maybe just maybe if the team can just synchronize we can sneak up on somebody. I'm all stoked to go out and get dropped yet again. Shhhhh don't tell me, I think I'm winning.
 
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Doug Kline

Doug Kline

Guru
One of my clubs this weekend is doing our annual holiday team time trial.

In this version,
- you have two-person teams
- you find out what the course is at the start of the event
- you pre-ride the course once with computers
- you then discard all timing instruments and state your team's time
- teams go off at one minute intervals, slowest guess first to fastest last
- you ride the course and try to hit your time without instrumentation
- all kinds of rabbits ahead of you to throw you off

Closest guess wins. Believe it or not the record is one second. Now there's a team time trial that all can do, and you can't game to win.
 
RojoRacing

RojoRacing

Donut Powered Wise-guy
I think I’m just going to add 30kgs to my avatar and start racing up from the bottom of the B class again. I can’t deal with not having anyone to race with in the A’s. Then I can complain about how A riders keep poaching out B class podiums
 
Barefoot Biker

Barefoot Biker

Active Member
I don't understand zwift racing at all. It's just a computer that sends stuff over the internet. The computer can send whatever you like. It's not secure. It's not authenticated. There is no way to enforce any rule. It's completely arbitrary - best programmer wins in the limit, I'm not sure? Am I missing something?

Is sandbagging dishonorable? Maybe. Is it against the rules? I have no idea. It seems like you're running into people that are ultra competitive and morally flexible. It's sort of like in F1 when Schumacher won a race from the pit lane. You have all sorts or rules in racing and you can do a certain amount by operating within the intention of those rules and you can get a little bit more with unorthodox calculus that often ends up inventing more rules in the next season. Those things that are 'technically legal', but that aren't really in the spirit. Then, of course, people can purposefully circumvent the rules and some will be caught and some will not - nascar has a long history of this. I guess I'm personally more of a libertarian when it comes to racing rules - the fewer the better. Let's see what is actually fast in the real world.
 
ccooper

ccooper

Active Member
Barefoot Biker said:
I don't understand zwift racing at all. It's just a computer that sends stuff over the internet. The computer can send whatever you like. It's not secure. It's not authenticated. There is no way to enforce any rule. It's completely arbitrary - best programmer wins in the limit, I'm not sure? Am I missing something?
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It's still fun to compete, as long as you don't take it too seriously. If you find yourself worrying excessively about the cheaters, of which there will be some, then you might as well drop off.

My other sport is rowing, on the machine (erg). There are organized competitions, both online and offline. Because one company, Concept2, controls the market, all records must be set on their machines. The logged times are very reliable because they are hashed for verification. It is possible to cheat the machine, though it's not easy. Even so, all world records for the standard 2000m distance must be set in a sanctioned (offline) race. It works pretty well, but it's not as much fun as Zwifting.
 
RojoRacing

RojoRacing

Donut Powered Wise-guy
Most people don't cheat and honestly even if someone is and they are faster than me I welcome the challenge, but I fill they are the few and far between. The main issue is most people don't enjoy losing as much as I do so that is where all the hate generates from on the forums and FB.

I can't comment on the sand baggers of the lower ranks since I race in the A class and you can't sandbag in A. There seems to always be at least one rider that doesn't belong in a lower class and that can be annoying for the lower classes but it doesn't stop you from giving it your all for the personal best
 
trplay

trplay

Zen MBB Master
Barefoot Biker said:
I don't understand zwift racing at all. It's just a computer that sends stuff over the internet. The computer can send whatever you like. It's not secure. It's not authenticated. There is no way to enforce any rule. It's completely arbitrary - best programmer wins in the limit, I'm not sure? Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

Yes, you're missing a whole lot. And you never will never miss what you are missing. I literally just finished "computering" on my Recumbent with six other people who live in Places from Alaska to Georgia. LOL, I get off and the first thing I read is yet another Boo-bird post. We worked our butts off synchronizing our efforts to make a good effort even better. Lots of teamwork, lots of jokes, lots of fun. We did it against 107 other teams for fun but meaningless bragging rights that will last until the next race. It's a darn good way to get a workout. Is this where you say something about Lemons and lemonade? Naw, to each his own.
 
B

bladderhead

Zen MBB Master
RojoRacing said:
At one point I was excluded from the team for being too fast
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A consummation devoutly to be wished. If that happened to me I would really feel like Merckx. I am only ever going to be booted out for being too slow.
 
trplay

trplay

Zen MBB Master
RojoRacing said:
good news, we didn't win tonight :emoji_blush:
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Looking at your ATP umbrella teams it looks like they are filling teams from the bottom up for the most strength? By the time it gets to ATP1 they are too weak for the Espresso Division so they boot the odd guy out (you) if he causes them to move up to Espresso. Its legal but around here we call this chicken stuff. Most competitive folks would fill the teams top down for strength but your boys appear not to want any part of the Espresso Division not to mention all those trophies they might not win in the other Divisions. I do recall the time ya'll put out one heck of an effort in Espresso but were outside the podium. Some of your guys sounded like they were gonna cry. Stop playing around for goodness sakes, get Jim, Larry, and a few more and let us see how high you can climb the ladder.
 
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