Last Wednesday the first race of Zwift’s Z Pro Tri Series 3 took place. Antony Costes and Lucy Charles were initially awarded the win, but that has changed. Zwift decided to set new rules, as many athletes felt that it was unfair that some were allowed to skip the run. It turned out that in this bike-run-bike race, athletes who couldn’t run appeared to have an advantage over other participants on the final bike section.
With the new count, Canadian Jackson Laundry ended with the win in the men’s race, while Costes moves back to fourth place. The new rules didn’t have much of an effect on the women’s race, Charles remained the winner there.
Under the new rules athletes are obligated to take part in the run, even if a technical problem were to throw a spanner in the works. In total there were five athletes – four men, one woman – that didn’t take part in the run of this first Z Pro Tri Series 3 event. The athletes who skipped the run were fresher at the start of the final bike portion. Additionally, due to a calculation error, Zwift didn’t count the first part of the run, which affected the average pace and the final results.
To give athletes more time to set up their equipment in the next race, Zwift decided to shorten the run from 5.7 to 5 km. This will give athletes a little more time in between disciplines to arrange their gear and hopefully avoid technical issues in the future.
