The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has announced that Wahoo Fitness, as the “Official Smart Trainer Partner” of the 2023 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships, will be providing the latest KICKR Smart Trainer to participants in the 2023 Esports Worlds.
According to the press release, over 100 women and 100 men from all 5 continents are expected to take part in the competition, which happens on Zwift February 18, 2023.
75% of the rider selections were made by National Federations, while the remaining 25% qualified via Continental Qualifier events held on Zwift November 12-13, 2022. Those who qualified via the Continentals had to do so using a trainer with claimed +-1% accuracy. But for the Worlds, the UCI needed to ensure that all riders were on the same equipment, to ensure a level playing field. That’s where Wahoo came in…
Crucial Quality
Wahoo’s latest KICKR (6th generation) is widely regarded as the top trainer on the market in specifications and reliability. Released in September 2022, it boasts +-1% accuracy as well as auto-calibration and wifi connectivity. These three qualities combined make it the obvious choice for the Worlds competition:
- +-1% accuracy means the power numbers sent to Zwift will be a very close reflection of the actual power being put out by each rider
- Auto-calibration helps ensure that riders aren’t tampering with the manual calibration in order to inflate power numbers
- Wifi connectivity reduces the chance of dropouts and (according to Wahoo) significant increases in data transfer speed, delivering on-screen stats over 65% faster than before
More Worlds Info
While the 2023 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships is happening February 18th, most of the UCI Worlds races will happen in August in Glasgow, Scotland.
The UCI’s press release says, “a race hub with 10 athletes will be set up in Glasgow, Scotland, the epicentre of the first UCI Cycling World Championships, which will take place from 3 to 13 August 2023 and will comprise 13 separate UCI World Championships. A similar infrastructure will be set up at the UCI World Cycling Centre (WCC), the UCI’s training and education centre. Three trainee athletes from the UCI WCC will compete in the 2023 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships: Luciana Roland (ARG), Maude Elaine le Roux (RSA) and Natalia Franco (COL).”
The Esports Worlds will be held on Zwift’s new Scotland map, which will be available soon in specific events. Watch Zwift Insider for more details on all things Scotland!
Questions or Comments?
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When is the January update due? Must be this week?
Seems like a pretty good guess…. 😉
Plus you know, Wahoo and the UCI are in (commercial) cahoots already. No doubt the biggest reason, similar to why the Tacx Neo 2T was the “obvious choice” in 2020.
The post feels like an ad… “is widely regarded as the top trainer on the market in specifications and reliability” needs citation. Could just rephrase to “widely regarded as one of the top trainers on the market…” and it would be fine. Plenty of people would say the Tacx Neo is the top trainer on the market.
Sure, everyone has an opinion. I wrote that based on what I hear/see others saying… and my own personal experience.
The NEO hasn’t been updated in over 3 years (released Oct 2019), and sells for $100 more than the KICKR. The KICKR is used by more riders, and handily outdoes the NEO in terms of specs/features now that it has Wifi connectivity.
How is pricing even relevant in a discussion over which trainer is best? The Kickr being $100 cheaper just makes it a slightly better deal not a better product per se. Which is actually only really the case in the US anyway, in the EU the Neo 2T is actually on par with or cheaper then the Kickr v6.
DCrainmaker, THE reference when it comes to everything cycling tech related, has been calling the Neo vs Kickr battle a wash for years. So no… the Kickr is not “THE best” on the market, it’s “ONE OF the best” in the market exactly as Bernie pointed out. He also called the Wifi on the Kickr Bike vs Kickr Bike v2 definitely not worth the extra money, and let’s be honest: it’s not. We’ve been managing just fine with ANT+ for years. Wifi might be nice, but honestly I’d much rather have an RJ45 port directly on my trainer instead of Wifi or instead of that sorry excuse for a product that is the KICKR Direct Connect.
PS: I have both a Neo & a Kickr Bike, so there’s 0 bias there. Let’s not pretend Wahoo is better then Tacx/Garmin. They’re on par, which is a good thing. Competition usually means better products at a better price for consumers.
I think you are missing a few continents when you say “all”
Depends on how you count them, I suppose. But I commonly hear that there are 6 continents, and that includes Antarctica.
So the 5 populated continents would be Africa, Europe/Asia, Australia/Oceania, North America, and South America.
Funny that you put together Europe and Asia, and not North and Sout America. Maybe in the US the continents are considered different that in Spain. Since I was a kid there were 6 continents: Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Europe and Oceania. Do not know if in other parts of Europe is the same, but I guess that Asia and Europe are considered 2 continents, not one.
Yeah – some folks split Europe and Asia up. Always seemed goofy to me, since they’re one landmass.
North and South American aren’t joined, technically – the Panama Canal means water separates them. 🙂
Here we divide America in North, Central (al the countries between Mexico and Colombia) and South America. It rally makes sense considering Europe and Asia as the same continent because of the extensive contact between both. But being the history told from and European point of view, I’m geussing that is why we separete both.
The Panama canal is a man-made waterway.
Wait, WHAT?!?! 😛
it is not the ocean that separate the continents. It is the tectonic plate. Iceland is one part Europe and another part North America