The men’s Zwift Games Climb Championship took place yesterday, with riders taking on Alpe du Zwift to determine the overall winner of the Games. Below you’ll find Zwift’s complete press release on the race.
The biggest cycling esports stars turned out for the final stage of the Zwift Games elite championships. UCI WorldTour Pros joined the pack and hit the startline as the pace was breakneck from the start.
The jungle flew by and within a few minutes the race went skyward, to the summit of the Alpe du Zwift. 12.2 kilometres, with an elevation gain of 1036 meters and an average gradient of 8.5%, a Zwift replica of the real life Alpe d’Huez.
The front group contained all of the big hitters. Josh Harris, the Wahoo Overall classification leader heading into the race, head to toe in the gold Leader’s kit sat at the back, pacing and measuring his efforts.
Johan Norén and Thomas Perren made repeated digs, stretching the front group out along the road between the hairpins. Jason Osborne suffered a mechanical and dropped from the front group, that would be the last he’d feature at the front of the race. Lennart Teugels sat on the front, making it difficult for the riders behind as the group lost a few more riders. Freddy Ovett was there too, never on the front, but never near the back.
The live Wahoo Overall Classification leaderboard had Thomas Thrall on the podium consistently, as Josh Harris slowly slipped down the rankings.
As the hairpins went by, the pace continued at a ridiculously high level.
A group of five emerged with five kilometres to go; Perren, Ovett, Teugels, Lennart Jasch and Mickael Plantureux.
It became clear no riders would be able to bridge back to the front, our winner would come from this group.
Just before the Flamme Rouge, Plantereux dropped off the back and we were down to four. Ovett was at the back, and Jasch made the first move at over 10 watts per kilo from a long way out. Teugels kicked, and finally, so did Ovett.
Ovett crossed the line, arms raised, claiming the Climb race win and the Wahoo Overall classification by a handful of points. It was a momentous achievement given the calibre of riders in the race. Teugels finished in second, with Perren in third.
In the post race interview Ovett revealed he was racing without the Zwift HUD, choosing instead to focus purely on the in-game visuals to guide his race tactics.
Ovett claims $10,000 for the Wahoo Overall Classification, $7,000 for the Climb race win, a unique Gold Wahoo KICKR Bike, and of course, the gold Concept Z1 bike in game.
Watch the Race
Results
We’ll add links to final standings here once Zwift has finalized and published results.
Tiny edit – “Just before the Flamme Rouge”, rather than Lanterne Rouge
Ha! Truth. That’s what I get for quoting Zwift’s press release!
Are the full results available anywhere?
Great to see a Scotsman taking the win!
Where can we find the finishing order and times up The Alpe? That data is missing from your article, Eric…
Zwift hasn’t published verified results yet. Probably by Wednesday. They’ll be added to the bottom of this article.
Surely the point of the elite entry criteria, using approved trainers, dual recording etc would be that verified results could be published live.
You would think that yes. Luckily (most of) the climbing times can be found on Strava.
You can see the results in the video… the point of the entry criteria was to ensure those immediate results are as accurate as possible.
Putting together an actual results doc only happens after post-event checks are done by IndieVelo, interestingly enough…
Why is the report of the men’s race a reasonably written article but the race report for the women’s race cheaply copied off chatgpt?
Two different writers at ZHQ.
Hi Eric,
It would have been good to hear some Zwift set up info for the different finalists up the Alpe, which was a good video: some finalists chose the Tron bike, others obviously didn’t. And what trainer difficulty setting did they each use? Or is there a mandated setting? The video feed of some finalists showed them out of the saddle at low cadence for what seemed like the entire race!
Equipment was neutralized for these races… and I believe Trainer Difficulty was set at 100% for all riders.
For me It looks strange. If you see snipes of Freddy Ovett from old virtual trainings.he weights of proximily 65 kg? Now his latest weight looks more 55 kg…. If you calculate his power and the Watt/kg that Zwift show On his latest virtual rides. Makes a big difference. So my question is, how correct is this race for such a big amount of money?
Zwift did extensive verification of racers in these events – height, weight, and power.