In September 2020, Giant launched the Crit Crushers Series on Zwift. The series was scheduled for Asia-Pacific riders and proved such a hit that the newly-announced 2021 Giant Crit Crushers Series has expanded to cater to North America and Europe time zones and offer categories to suit all rider levels.
Event Format
This series lasts 4 weeks and totals 8 races, with short back-to-back events each week lasting between 10 and 15 minutes. But due to fact that events are back-to-back, you need to pace it accordingly.
The top 20 riders for each event earn points, but you need to have a ZwiftPower account. Series winners will be the riders with the most points. There are separate race events for men/mixed and women.
See events details/sign up at zwift.com/events/series/giant-crit-crushers-series
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More About the Series
For those not familiar with Giant, they are a Taiwanese bicycle brand recognized as the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer.
I caught up with Giant Ambassador, Lee “Hollywood” Turner to get more details about the event. But before that, I want to tell you about Lee. Lee has been a Giant Ambassador for the last 10 years and is a huge cyclist. He rides for fun, fitness and for the social interaction that it brings. He was the President of the largest cycling club in Melbourne called the St Kilda Cycling Club. What is interesting is that Lee has approximately 250 different cycling kits, with his favourites being the Aqua Sapone, Saunier Duval, and Mapai. Check out last year’s promotional video to see his extensive cycling kit collection:
After discussing his extensive wardrobe, Lee went on to explain that the first series of the Crit Crusher was excellent fun, with the beauty being that the events were not too long, around 10-15 minutes, so that if you are unable to hold the frantic pace of the front group, you could still cycle at your own pace and finish the event. As Lee described the event to me “It’s short, sharp and if you get dropped you can roll to the finish.”
Lee noted that the event was well-received, so Giant and Zwift were keen to offer it in multiple different timeslots catering to riders around the world. I recommend watching Lee’s promotion video for the event – see if you can spot fellow Australian Zwift Legend, Tim Searle!
Categories
Standard race categories apply based your watts/kilogram. New riders are recommended to start out in group D (1-2.4 w/kg). The fastest riders should register for group A (4+ w/kg). More information on choosing your race category can be found here.
Schedule
May 6, May 13, May 20, May 27th
See events details/sign up at zwift.com/events/series/giant-crit-crushers-series
Jersey Unlock
Complete one event and men will unlock the Giant jersey and women will unlock the Liv jersey.
These times are terrible for those living in Toronto. 5:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 9:00 pm (i get that its not meant for our time zone, but still) just add more slots please
agreed, time slots are pretty limited… and why didn’t I hear about this a few days ago, I’ve already missed most of the chances to race today. Would have been nice to advertise about this earlier than the day it starts…
you are not missing much the field is packed with sandbaggers. Plenty other racers on zwift that are better.
They also sent emails out a week ago and reminders last night advertising it
at least they should get filtered out in Zwiftpower, sounds like they are using those results to base the points off of
Every race people say this, and its because you are looking at Zwift results and not ZwiftPower results.
ZwiftPower results are the only results that count. They don’t contain any sandbaggers. If you aren’t signed up to ZwiftPower, you aren’t part of this race anyway, it clearly states points are allocated per ZwiftPower results.
That doesn’t stop the cruisers though
Yeah, there were at least 10-15% of each pen of the 2 I was in were B in a C field according to Zwiftpower about 30 minutes before the race (don’t know about all the unregistered riders). At the end of race 1, Zwift listed me at being 24th. On Zwiftpower, I was 14th immediately after the race. Once they’d gone through all of the filtering, I was 9th. Didn’t look at who was behind me, but I’d imagine there were a lot filtered behind me as well.
If you’re looking for an honest race, these weren’t it, but if you wanted to have a workout with 2 high intensity 10-15 minute intervals with 10 minutes of light recovery in between, it was a pretty solid workout.
I did sign up for these over a week ago based on an email from Zwift.
Assuming they will filter out folks in the wrong category? Already seeing a lot of people signing up for the wrong category.
“The top 20 riders for each event earn points”
Is this meant to be a joke?
I don’t see any where that results are published or series points are tallied. Either for recent events or past ones. The only “hint” that there may be something missing here, is someone mentioned they received an email. From whom? Why?
Maybe the results are passed along to a closed email list.
Results posted on Zwiftpower in the “leagues” section of the top banner. Here are the EU results:
https://www.zwiftpower.com/league.php?id=744
Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have loaded them for the US league yet.
Zwift Insider should stop promoting race series where the organizers cannot be bothered to post results.
We don’t always know how the results are processed. There is a level of expectation that it is all organised, and perhaps your frustration should be directed to them, that is Giant. For example, I wanted to do this event after promoting it, but was disappointed I could not due to the times of the events, a point someone else made. But equally, I would have been disappointed about the results. From my understanding, results were from ZwiftPower. Giant is a big brand and believed it was all worked through but clearly it isn’t so best contact them. It’s like the Haute event in Feb, I trained for that and was disappointed with the GC results not being processed, but nothing I could do. We use the system like you and are equally disappointed when it doesn’t turn out as expected or told to us. I had high expectations for this event particularly the promotion it has had with YouTube and the videos. I try and provide all the information when I promote the events and if it not there it is because we don’t have it.
I’m just frustrated. Wasn’t meaning to take it out on you Tim.
How do i even go about contacting Giant?
Hi, I got more info on the event from their website, so I would check there, they have Twitter and Facebook so I would reach out to Giant via that.
I understand how you feel, like is said, Haute in Feb was a total bust for me personally, due to GC failing to update as planned. Which is why when I run my Monday Mountain Massif TT I am concerned it goes correct as people invest time and effort and it’s important events are right, so I agree with you. The other week, my Women’s Category, E was open for all so I had to contact Zwift to fix it as I didn’t want to spoil the experience for those in that category.
I hope it does get fixed as it looked a good event as it was a different format to the norm.
Looks like they updated the standings finally today.
Yeah definitely didn’t mean to sound like I was complaining about you. I’d imagine that Giant’s advertising department just paid Zwift to put this event on and stepped away, so it’d be Zwift (or their Zwiftpower division if they keep that separate) that needs to get the results processed (though Giant could put pressure on them). The individual and team standings for the US races haven’t been updated in 19 hours (since before the races started), so I’m just sort of feeling like we did in December/January when Zwiftpower was 100,000 fit files behind in their processing (though they look to be caught up). Instantaneous gratification has gotten me to expect fast results and complain when I don’t get them.
Bummer that the time didn’t work for you. I had to choose between these events and the WTRL TTT races I usually do. For me, it came down to the fact that my 5-10 minute power is where I’m weakest and these (especially the second one on a short break) seemed like a good way to work on that while the folks I usually TTT with could easily find another rider (though I do love RGV, which was last night’s course).
I got an email advertising the event from Zwift. If your account is set to allow emails from Zwift, you should have gotten one as well.
Still no results loading for Liv Crit Crushers US League, although Week 3 races are tomorrow. I can see AU is loading OK… When will they be fixed?
Also I wonder – what happens if you graduate to higher category between the races? You loose your points from previous category? I just went from Cat D to C between week 1 and 2 and had to join cat C in week 2 races.