Zwift has just unveiled the 2022 edition of their “Zwift Classics” race series. Beginning July 11, this series of races is always popular among racers of all abilities. Here are all the details!
Series Basics
- 7 races, each featured on the calendar for 1 week, making series a total of 7 weeks long (July 11 thru August 28).
- Each race happens in a different Zwift world.
- Each race has its own mix of powerups.
- Open races (men/women) are scheduled, as well as women-only events.
- All races are scratch race events except for the final race in Bologna, which is a TT.
Race Schedule and Details
Races are scheduled multiple times each day throughout the week to accommodate everyone’s schedule.
See upcoming events: Open Races | Women-Only Races
- Week 1: The Apple Lap (July 11-17)
2 laps of New York’s Astoria Line 8 (23km, 282m elevation)
Powerups: Anvil, Draft, Feather - Week 2: Watopia Cup (July 18-24)
3 laps of Watopia’s Two Bridges Loop (22km, 240m elevation)
Powerups: Anvil, Ghost, Feather - Week 3: Watch the Femmes Takeover! (July 25-31)
1 lap of France’s Casse-Pattes (23.9km long, 145m elevation)
Powerups: Anvil, Draft, Burrito - Week 4: Yorkshire Grand Prix (August 1-7)
2/3 lap of Yorkshire’s Royal Pump Room 8 (18.8km, 343m elevation), ending atop Reverse KOM
Powerups: Anvil, Draft, Ghost - Week 5: London International (August 8-14)
1.5 laps of London 8 (27.8km, 262m elevation), finishing at the Mall sprint
Powerups: Anvil, Burrito, Draft - Week 6: Rund um Innsbruck (August 15-21)
2.5 laps of Innsbruck’s Innsbrucking (23km, 213m elevation), finishing atop the Leg Snapper
Powerups: Aero, Feather, Ghost - Week 7: Trofeo Bologna (August 22-28)
1 lap of Bologna Time Trial Lap (8.05km, 236m elevation)
Powerups: none
This is a mass start, non-drafting TT where riders will be required to use a TT frame. We recommend using one of the two new frames Zwift recently released (the Felt IA 2.0 or Scott Plasma RC Ultimate) due to their strong mix of aero and climbing performance.
Sign up: Open Races | Women-Only Races
Three Competitions
Thanks to ZwiftPower, riders can compete in three different ways in this series:
- Race Position: first across the line wins, of course. But you can race each event more than once if you’d like, and ZwiftPower will save your best finish for ranking purposes.
- Global Position for Each Race: see your results vs. all other racers for each week’s event on ZwiftPower. (You may filter results by gender and ZwiftPower category.)
- Overall Global Position Across All Races: track your performance across all the Classics races via an overall time-based GC on ZwiftPower. Track your overall GC position here >
Category Enforcement
Zwift Classics races are using Zwift’s newish category enforcement scheme, which sets a minimum category for each racer based on their 60-day power history in Zwift.
Live Broadcast
Streaming coverage will be provided by Nathan Guerra of Zwift Community Live, with a special focus on Wednesday’s races at 5:10pm BST/2:10pm EST/11:10am PST when Nathan will race the A category and live-stream his efforts on his personal YouTube channel. Details to follow…
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
Nice! Loved the classics last year, great to see them back.
I’m a bit disappointed they’ve got *so* many start times, over multiple days, per race this year. When WTRL ran the Classics last year, it was a single day per race only (albeit across multiple timezones), so you used to race the same faces every week – which added something to it for me. Now it’s just another Zwift series of races like Tour of Watopia etc – albeit with some attempt at a GC. I also enjoyed the ZRL-style sprint segments and KOM points from last year. Of course I’ll still race it – but on the face of… Read more »
Totally agree with this, and also spreads participants thinly across more events so you’re less likely to get a decent sized race. Nice half-way house would have been to have the single day / multiple timezones format, but a ‘makeup’ week at the end so people can complete the GC if they missed a race.
Having said that, I’ve signed up to all the races so I can’t be that put off!
I agree, I’ve being looking forward to this event since participating in it last year. The races were competitive with big fields. This year will be lucky to have fields of more than 20.
Also agree, they’ve got one every two hours for a week, with a few extras on top. Last year the lunchtime (Europe) races only got 20-40 riders and that was for waaaay fewer race times.
I’ll also miss the 6/7 different cat splits as the closer racing was an improvement
Category enforcement, so no real point if you’re a rider in between groups who gets bumped up. Another set of events that a lot of people now won’t have any incentive to participate in. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of the summer learning more about RGT.
dont let the door hit you on the way out
Any idea how they’ll do categorization here? Is it Zwiftpower categories or Zwift autocat categories based on the pen?
If they’re set up correctly, ZwiftPower will be set up to use whatever category people sign up for via Zwift – so it’s the cat enforcement categories that will be used. Essentially, ZwiftPower categories shouldn’t matter at all for these races.
Assuming Zwift has set up the events correctly.
How does the ranking work?
It’s a GC ranking, so you should sort by time. It takes your fastest time for each Classics stage you complete…
I’m on the verge of levelling up to higher cat. Will it mess up the GC if you mix categories during the series?
Hello! I missed the 1st race. Will I have the chance to make that race at the end like it happens sometimes or it is really gone for me?
It’s gone – no makeup events for this series.
Any idea how to sort ZP to view results vs all races PER week (“competition #2” in the article above)? Looks like ZP League is cumulative so anyone who missed Week 1, etc is ranked lower by default.
ZHQ has to set each week up as its own league in order for you to see weekly results. Looks like James Bailey did just that for week 2 – see it here: https://zwiftpower.com/league.php?id=1167
Not sure if he’ll be doing it for other weeks or not.
Thanks – just saw the week 2 league. That will be cool if it continues.