Zwift has announced the details of their rebooted North America and Europe crit series. Renamed the “KISS Crit Series” and run with the help of the seasoned KISS team, these races will feature top-flight Zwift racing talent and culminate in a live final.
This can actually be best understood as two separate series, each culminating in a live final. Here’s how this works:
- The North America series ends with a live eRace final in North America, while the EU series final will be in Europe. Locations TBD.
- NA series races are at 8PM EDT and 8PM PDT. EU series races are at 8PM GMT.
- For the NA series, the top 5 men and women from each time slot will advance to the live final. For the EU series (which only has one time slot), the top 10 men and women will advance to the final. This way, the live final for each series will have 20 total riders.
- Sponsors: NA series is sponsored by CycleOps, EU series by Tacx.
Schedule
Races will run every Thursday starting on December 7, 2017, and ending February 28, 2018. There will be ten race weeks in all, with two weeks off for the holidays. EU race is at 8PM GMT, NA races are at 8PM EDT and 8PM PDT. Once you join a time slot, you’ll need to continue to race in that period for the duration of the 10 weeks.
Scoring
This is a points-based competition. The winner of each race receives 20 points, second place receives 19 points, third receives 18, and so on… 20th place receives 1 point.
Results displayed in-game are preliminary. Final results will appear zwiftpower.com.
At the end of the series, the ten racers with the most points (culled from their best seven finishes) advance to the final.
Prizes
It’s good to see that Zwift has gone all out on the format and prizes for this series! Here are the details:
- 40 finalists will win an all-expenses-paid trip to their live racing final events in March (locations TBD).
- Top 3 live finalists in each gender winning a Tacx trainer (for the Europeans) and a Cycleops trainer (for the North Americans).
- The crowned European and North American Champs will win Zwift for life(!)
- Weekly random prize drawings will also be held for all participants.
Other Important Details
- There will be separate races for Men & Women, but both groups will have a mass start.
- Riders’ best 2 results from the previous Crit series will be carried over if a) the rider only completes 5 races. Or, b) the best 2 results are better than 2 of their 7 qualifying racers.
- While you are not required to wear a heart rate monitor to participate, you are required to wear a heart rate monitor to qualify for points.
- Zpower riders will not be eligible for league points.
- Riders must be registered and agree to terms and conditions at zwiftpower.com or they will be excluded from the results entirely.
- Riders producing over 5w/kg average will require ZADA aproval to qualify for points and an automatic DQ will be in place. They can be reinstated if real life matching performances can be provided.
- Powerups allowed.
- Road bikes only. No TT bikes.
More Info
Need more info? Zwift has put together this detailed page which should answer all your questions.
