150,000 riders from around the globe participated in this year’s Zwift Academy Road, but only 10 (5 men and 5 women) made it to the finals.
This year, for the first time ever, both groups of finalists arrived in Mallorca to stay at the Zwift Academy Beach House and battle it out in the Zwift Academy finals. It’s like Survivor, but on bikes. And we get to follow them through a 5-episode video series from GCN, which launches today!
The riders had 5 days to impress the judges. Who are the judges? Canyon//SRAM’s Director Sportiff Beth Duryea and Performance Director Lars Teutenberg, and Alpecin-Fenix’s Director Sportiff Christoph Roodhooft and Performance Manager Kristoff De Kegel.
After meeting the 10 finalists, we get to watch the riders complete an indoor fitness test where they hit maximal efforts across a range of time intervals. This delivers crucial data to the judges, as shown below.
Fitness Test Results: Women
Functional Threshold Power
| 1 | Maud Oudeman | 256W | 4.5 w/kg |
| 2 | Imogen Alton | 246W | 4.2 w/kg |
| 3 | Rachael Wales | 214W | 4.1 w/kg |
| 4 | Caitlin Conyers | 230W | 4.0 w/kg |
| 5 | Willemijn Prins | 234W | 3.9 w/kg |
VLamax
| 1 | Caitlin Conyers | 0.63 mmol/l/s | 452W |
| 2 | Imogen Alton | 0.53 mmol/l/s | 394W |
| 3 | Maud Oudeman | 0.54 mmol/l/s | 389W |
| 4 | Willemijn Prins | 0.51 mmol/l/s | 389W |
| 5 | Rachael Wales | 0.45 mmol/l/s | 293W |
Fitness Test Results: Men
Functional Threshold Power
| 1 | Sam Hill | 395W | 5.5 w/kg |
| 2 | Byron Munton | 327W | 5.4 w/kg |
| 3 | Mads Rahbek | 335W | 5.3 w/kg |
| 4 | Alex Bogna | 335W | 5.1 w/kg |
| 5 | Cooper Sayers | 332W | 5.0 w/kg |
VLamax
| 1 | Cooper Sayers | 0.66 mmol/l/s | 576W |
| 2 | Alex Bogna | 0.63 mmol/l/s | 545W |
| 3 | Sam Hill | 0.49 mmol/l/s | 461W |
| 4 | Mads Rahbek | 0.46 mmol/l/s | 383W |
| 5 | Byron Munton | 0.48 mmol/l/s | 381W |
After the tests, GCN’s Daniel Lloyd discusses the women’s results with the Canyon/SRAM judges, while Si Richardson discusses the men’s results with the Alpecin-Fenix judges.
Riders of the Day
At the end of each day, the judges are being asked to elect a rider of the day. Here are the riders for day 1:
- Cooper Sayers
- Maud Oudeman
Watch Episode 1
Next Up
In tomorrow’s episode, the finalists head outdoors. They’ll take on a heartbreaking hill climb and go against the pros in a sprint leadout!
Your Thoughts
Share below!
From when the riders list was announced: “Based on the ZwiftPower profiles linked above, the average women’s FTP is 4.52 w/kg, and the average men’s is 5.91w/kg. (This is calculated by taking 95% of each rider’s 20-minute power.)”
I know those are from race efforts vs this test, but any guesses on why the riders are down 10+ % across the board? Don’t want to say it, but were the right competitors chosen?
I’d say ZwiftPower numbers shouldn’t be taken as accurate FTP readings, since they’re just based on your best 20-minute power.
You could do a nice warmup, then hit a Crit City 8-lapper for 20 minutes. That’s very different from the standard 20-minute FTP test protocol, which includes a hard VO2 effort before the threshold section.
In short: I’m not at all surprised that their numbers were lower in Mallorca. (There could be additional factors as well – like poor cooling in the workout room, etc.)
I’m certainly not going to question whether the right riders were chosen. The judges know a whole lot more than any of us do about all that!
yeah no kidding. that test they did looked disgusting. a couple of them had admitted they had never done that before
It is in plain sight:
Step one: Include the weight of the women used to calculate these numbers and compare them to their weights on ZwiftPower (they had to do a weigh-in during the ZA).
Step two: What kind of test did the riders do? What did we see? Did we actually see a 20-minute power test? Did all riders do the same test?
Step three: What did we see about the ZA finals? We saw the fragments of activities the makers wanted us to see, just like the tables above……?
So Darius is right here, Peter. Imogen here from ZA – we didn’t actually do a 20min test. It was a 20 second max, 3min max, 6min max, 10min max effort and from there FTP was derived (how I don’t really know!) All of our FTP’s calculated were significantly lower. My FTP from a ramp is 285w/4.9w/kg I know Maud’s was 5.2w/kg?? A couple of things here like Darius mentioned we didn’t actually do a standard 20min test, so the calculation was different compared to ‘norm’ tests, we had a small fan to cool us down, some of us had travelled from Australia to compete so were extremely jet lagged! Lots of factors and variables come into play but it just gave us all a base line as we all did the same test, same day, same conditions to make it easier for the judges to compare us all 🙂
It was quite entertaining! Can’t wait for the next episodes.
Can we find that workout in zwift, what is it called?
No, it’s not on Zwift’s list of on-demand workouts.