Just another virtual cycling app? Or does MyWhoosh pose a serious rival to the Zwift-dominated indoor space and rewrite the cycling e-sports script?
(Image credit: MyWhoosh)
As many of us in the cycling world predicted a couple of years ago, the phenomenal growth of indoor cycling and the skyrocketing sales of the best turbo trainers have led to a surge in the popularity of esports and virtual bike racing.
It’s no doubt a space that's dominated by Zwift, with Rouvy snapping at its heels. But there’s another player looking to make waves in the world of e-sports: MyWhoosh.
While Zwift now costs £17.99 or $19.99 a month to use, and Rouvy £10.75 or $14.99, MyWhoosh remains a free-to-use app, which goes against the rest of the leading players among the best indoor cycling apps.
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MyWhoosh has secured the right to host the UCI esports world championships until 2026 (Image credit: MyWhoosh)
Like its competitors, MyWhoosh offers a broad package of workouts and training programs, including workouts designed for Tadej Pogačar, by his coach, Javier Sola.
While Rouvy uses real-world video as the basis of its app, MyWhoosh runs on rendered simulations of real places and imaginary worlds. It has expanded its collection of routes from its initial desert focus to 10 worlds, including Colombia, California and Australia.
Based in the UAE
Founded by CEO Akhtar Hashmi in 2019, MyWhoosh's over-100 employees are primarily based in its Masdar City, Abu Dhabi headquarters. It's a team sponsor of the UAE Team Emirates WorldTour men's team and UAE Team ADQ WorldTour women's team.
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The MyWhoosh team comprises an impressive contingent of experience, counting former Zwift employees, as well as e-sports competitors and WorldTour-level coaches. Unlike Zwift, which describes itself as "non-esports focused" where only around 20% of the user base competes, MyWhoosh is actively embracing the evolution of cycling esports as a legitimate distinct cycling discipline.
The Sunday Race Club offers cash prizes to winners (Image credit: MyWhoosh)
Building a league of e-racers
MyWhoosh hosts a weekly racing series called Sunday Race Club with a monthly prize purse of $96,000 spread over three categories, two genders, and team and individual classifications. The prize pot for the MyWhoosh Championship series in 2023 was set at $1 million.
The elite-level competition and big money attract top esports professionals from across the globe, even leading Jason Osborne to quit life as a WorldTour pro with Alpecin Deceuninck to pursue an esports career.
Performance verification
As part of its attempt to legitimise cycling e-sports, MyWhoosh automatically runs each racer through a proprietary performance verification system for every race.
Performance on the platform is analysed against a multitude of tests to answer MyWhoosh's three questions of performance verification. These are:
Is the performance technically legitimate? Is the data clean, accurate, uninterrupted, and without anomaly?
Is the performance humanly possible? Does it align with historical trends of human capabilities for aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, and does it fall in line with the expected outputs of world-class riders?
Is the performance achievable by this specific athlete? Does this performance align with historical data, training loads, expected power-to-HR ratio, etc?
The app implements real-world physics in a unique way to virtual cycling (Image credit: MyWhoosh)
Dynamic race categorisation
MyWhoosh also uses a dynamic categorisation model, which matches up each competitor with a field of other racers of similar abilities to create a fair and fun racing environment. The categories do not have static limits that remain constant.
The race commission at MyWhoosh sets the limits based on registered participants and their historical data to prevent accidental miscategorisation.
As for results, MyWhoosh calculates everything server-side and accordingly has the same delay and visuals that all online multiplayer video games have.
MyWhoosh is looking to lead the way in this regard, by verifying every single performance in high-level racing and bringing the strength of robust data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) into the equation in an attempt to create the most legitimate racing available online.
Longterm plans include evolving the racing product through new and innovative racing styles and structures (Image credit: MyWhoosh)
The ultimate goal
For the team at MyWhoosh, performance verification is just half of the equation. The company plans to evolve the racing product through new and innovative racing styles and structures in the future.
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A physical therapist with over 25 years of experience, Christopher Schwenker is on a journey to give back to the cycling community for rewarding experiences and fulfilling relationships through the pages of his virtual cycling blog, The Zommunique’, and his cycling-related non-profit, The DIRT Dad Fund.
