The Zwift revolution

Zwift has rapidly become a byword for indoor cycling, revitalising a concept until recently considered deeply unappealing by almost all by the most dedicated athlete.

That Zwift is road cycling’s new rock ’n’ roll is testament in large part to the quality of the product; marketing has been low key and its success has spread mostly by word of mouth.

Zwift allows subscribers (membership costs £8 per month) to ride in its virtual world, Watopia, as well as on online recreations of the RideLondon and 2015 Richmond World Championship courses. Riders can join group rides with – and compete against – other cyclists from more than 150 countries, with former pro Dean Downing joining a bunch sprint on one recent Zwift ride. Users can also create their own training sessions and plans.

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However, community is at the heart of Zwift: a sense of shared experience promoted by the game’s functionality and propagated through any number of social channels, notably Facebook (there are more than 100 Zwift-centred groups on Mr Zuckerberg’s platform, apparently).

Steve Beckett, formerly head of cycling at Sky (the broadcaster) and now Zwift’s VP of sales and marketing, is disarmingly frank, describing community as simultaneously the brand’s biggest threat and opportunity as it grows.

The threat lies in becoming isolated from the audience. Nothing would be worse, Beckett says, than for Zwift to “walk off into the sunset” and forget the community that made it a success. The “generosity” and “goodwill” of its users must remain part of Zwift’s identity, he insists as its astonishing growth continues seemingly unabated (200,000 accounts in 155 countries, though not all are paid-up subscribers).

Friend or foe

Zwift, of course, is not a bike manufacturer, and so such a mutually advantageous relationship is easy to conceive. It’s not so immediately obvious whether the likes of Tacx, a company producing trainers and accompanying software since 2001, would welcome the arrival of the Zwift juggernaut on its lawn.

”Tacx is a really good example,” Beckett says. “They had their own software. When we first came into the game, we didn’t know if we were ‘friend’ or ‘foe’, but they’ve come to realise that by building a global community, it makes indoor training more appealing. Our software solution fits over the top and drives sales of hardware.”

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Even hardware manufacturers like Tacx might be described as one-step removed from Zwift. Competitors directly in the same software space, such as TrainerRoad, and, to a large degree, Sufferfest, might take a less welcoming view?

Becket says, not unreasonably, he cannot answer for those who share Zwift’s market. He is, however, at pains to emphasise that Zwift is not outwardly competitive. It does not measure success by market share, he insists; rather by customer feedback. “It’s not about being the biggest; it’s about being the best loved.”

Outdoors…the new indoors

We return to competitors, and Zwift’s refusal to regard alternatives to its product as such, later in the conversation when we turn to the elephant in Zwift’s room: the road. With the best will in the world, and with the best functionality, the biggest community, the most love, cycling on a static trainer simply can’t compare to the road, can it?

“We don’t want to compete with road,’ Beckett says. “All Zwift staff ride on the road. We don’t say that riding on the road is dangerous, or go on about bad weather. We’re a complementary tool for cyclists.

“I agree that cycling outside, in a social environment in the great outdoors, around nature, experiencing the elements, is really invigorating and creates lots of new friendships and is healthy. One hundred per cent we love riding outdoors. The way we’ve come at this is how do we become problem solvers? There are many reasons people can’t cycle.

“If you look at cycling as a pie chart, people want to ride 100 per cent of time, but can only do 60 per cent. So how can we help with that other 40 per cent? It’s about how we complement outdoor cycling.

“As a company, we champion outdoors. Next year, in Australia, the US, UK and Japan, we’re going to have Zwift get-togethers where we all get out and ride on the road: Zwift staff and customers all riding outside. If we’re an inclusive brand, oriented around cyclists, we need to have a holistic view.”

Kickr start

The rise of Zwift has come hand-in-hand with the growth in popularity of smart turbo trainers, which offer the connectivity to communicate with third-party software.

Wahoo is the comparative new kid on the block of the trainer market but has helped drive the popularity of smart trainers and an association with Team Sky quickly gained Wahoo a foothold in a competitive market.

More significantly, perhaps, has been Wahoo’s willingness to adopt a so-called ‘open API’ approach; essentially, allowing developers at the likes of Zwift and TrainerRoad, an app designed specifically to help time-poor cyclists train more efficiently, to build software which is able to control the resistance on a Wahoo trainer.

“Zwift and TrainerRoad are working on software and doing an excellent job,” says Kevin Abt, sales and marketing director for Wahoo’s European operation. “It’s a really great two-way street where they provide fresh, compelling ways to use software, which completes the eco system for indoor training. Everyone is adding a further dimension.”

Abt, now in his mid-30s, admits to being a member of the video game generation; one with memories of becoming so absorbed in a game that he would often look at his clock in surprise to discover the time was 3am. He believes the compelling nature of video games brings a much-needed dose of enjoyment to the typically ‘all work, no play’ environment of indoor training.

“Indoor cycling is a very isolated experience,” says Abt. “You can joke and call it a ‘pain cave’… but that’s not a name that gets people excited about riding indoors. With Zwift, you can jump into a virtual world, but more importantly you’re there with other people; there’s some gamification and you can chat with them.”

Abt is not proposing indoor cycling as a replacement for the real thing. Rather, time on the turbo trainer – ideally, paired with a gaming experience, – is a complement to outdoor cycling: an option for when time commitments or weather prevents time on the road.

“Although Zwift is a video game, it’s one of the best video games you can imagine for building cardiovascular endurance,” he says.

Wahoo have noted a growth in sales in what Abt describes as ‘mega cities’ – colossal urban environments which provide a barrier to serious training by sheer density of population and the concomitant of roads congested by traffic.

“One of [Wahoo’s] biggest markets is the ‘mega city’: London, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai,” says Abt.. They’re mega cities for several reasons, but it’s challenging to get outside the city and find terrain that’s appropriate for a challenging ride. It might take you an hour to get out of these mega  cities. That’s ok on the weekend, but how about in the week when your schedule is tight?”

The time crunched cyclist is fast becoming the gaming cyclist. Wahoo’s willingness to interact with games manufacturers like Zwift and TrainerRoad, up to and including opening their trainer’s ‘genetic code’ to developers, has helped hardware and software developers to grow hand-in-hand.

Tacx free

Tacx occupies an interesting position in the centre of a rapidly dividing market. Back in 2001, the Dutch manufacturer was first to market with an integrated system of training hardware and software: a turbo trainer with an accompanying graphical world in which to ‘ride’. It continues today with this integrated model, despite the emergence of hardware specialists like Wahoo and software providers like Zwift and TrainerRoad (though Tacx’s smart trainers can also be used with third-party software).

“The playing field is changing, but that’s good,” says Simon Tacx, sales manager at the Netherlands company, supplier to a host of WorldTour teams, including world champion Peter Sagan’s new Bora-Hansgrohe outfit.

“Our skills and focus are more in the hardware side, but software has been a very important part of the company for many years. We see now that Zwift and TrainerRoad are specialists. They have more focus on software and greater resources in that area, but as a company we want always to offer software in addition to our hardware.”

Simon Tacx concedes that Zwift has stolen a march on its competitors in developing a community, and has done “a really great job” in developing a virtual reality system. Tacx, however, has the lead on Zwift in creating a software solution accessible from a tablet or smartphone, without the need for a powerful gaming computer, dongle, or other miscellaneous hardware. As of writing, Zwift has not yet released its long-anticipated iOS solution but its arrival will open up Zwift to a significantly bigger audience who do not currently have a high-powered Apple or Windows computer currently required to support the software.

“We have a different focus,” says Tacx. “Zwift are creating virtual reality worlds. In our app, we are focusing on videos, GPS courses and creating workouts. It’s a little bit of a different angle. We don’t believe in creating two communities. One community for Zwift is perfect and we don’t want to split that world. There’s still lots of potential in the videos.”

Virtual reality, new reality

There’s little doubt that online applications – virtual worlds, cycling video games, call them what you will – have changed the landscape of indoor cycling. What remains to be seen is whether it will change the nature of outdoor cycling too.

The video games industry is always keen to brand its players “athletes”, a spurious notion, but who could deny the epithet to those who use platforms like Zwift and TrainerRoad to increase their fitness and generate serious wattage on the road?

It seems unlikely that the ‘gaming’ cyclist will ever replace the man on the road, and, in fairness to the subjects for this article, all described cycling in a virtual world as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, ‘real’ cycling.

Significantly, the companies involved are more closely aligned with cycling than the video games industry. Minn developed Zwift as a frustrated cyclist; Beckett governed Sky’s relationship with Team Sky and British Cycling before joining Zwift. Tacx’s involvement in cycling remains closely aligned with the sport’s top tier. And many of the sport’s top athletes – the likes of Giant-Alpecin’s Tom Dumoulin and Dimension Data’s Edvald Boasson Hagen – are fully paid-up members of Zwift.

The growth of the mega city is unquestionably fueling the rise of online cycling platforms, but for the UK cyclist at least, its greatest advantage must be an escape from the weather: an opportunity to train effectively in the warm and dry without the penalty of insufferable boredom. For this reason alone, Zwift, TrainerRoad and the ‘smart’ trainers that the likes of Tacx and Wahoo have developed, represent a significant – and growing – part of cycling’s landscape.