In the restaurant of a luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi, UCI Cycling Esports Coordinator Jacob Fraser has a busy schedule this week. Proofreading equipment, dress rehearsals, coordinating anti-doping tests, and more.

He has just arrived in the United Arab Emirates from his home in Los Angeles, one day away from the first Cycling eSports World Championships.

He is no stranger to the ins and outs of cyclingesport competitions, having worked in this field for over a decade and cycled indoors most of his life.

“I've been with the UCI for almost two years now. Before joining the UCI, I worked for My Whoosh for two years as Director of Esports and Events, and before that I was with Zwift for over four years.”

“Like many people involved in cycling, I fell in love with the sport at an early age, watching the Tour de France stages whiz by on family trips. I would pretend to ride a bike in the local crit scene or whatever. But I grew up in the city of Chicago, where the weather was never good. So I remember the old computer trainers and the VHS tapes that people used to watch when we would run indoors."[9

He explains that his role within the UCI is extensive, but in some ways contradictory, but also quite specific.

“We cover four areas of esports comprehensively: we discuss the organization of the World Championships, we support everything that is part of the Olympic program, and we have commercial partnerships in the homologation of hardware.

“At some point there will be some sort of independent performance validation. I have been working with the ITA [International Testing Agency] for such an event. And finally, the focus will be on establishing sanctioned races and partnerships with commercial partners and national federations.

This will be the fourth time the Cycling Esports World Championships will be held on the UAE-based MyWhoosh platform, which took over from Zwift after a bid last year. According to him, several platforms submitted bids and several people within the UCI were involved in the decision.

The decision to offer live finals was noted as important, but he stresses that it is not essential to the success of cycling esports.

“Virtual events have always been very important for eSports. The uniqueness of our sport is that people can compete at home. Our athletes often have full-time jobs and families, so being able to not travel is very important for the discipline, and one of the more exciting things about esports is that you don't have to get in a car to go to a race or fly, so many times a week I think it's being able to race.

“Everyone who participated in the bid talked about a live final. But it was neither a requirement nor a prerequisite.

Cycling esports, like other sports that can be gamified or gain a competitive advantage, has faced cheating: just days before the 2022 World Championships, an undetectable weight change hack was shared online and Zwift banned the user.

The Zwift platform has also banned riders for data manipulation on numerous occasions, with British cycling esports champion Cameron Jeffers stacking the miles ahead of his championship-winning ride in 2019, and better in-game banned for using a device to unlock equipment.

Fraser, who was at Zwift through these early scandals, has certainly seen it all, but nonetheless remains optimistic about the sport's cleanliness.

“We as the UCI want the industry to be standardized. One example of this is working on trainer homologation, and another example is working on certified races from the publishers' side. The commercial investment and the fact that the finals are now being held live allows for a slightly more optimistic view of cheating, technical issues, accidental cheating, etc.

“In a minor way, if you take it to a live final, there are fewer variables that we face and more influence to solve those variables. So it's not that there has been some kind of cheating in previous competitions with 100 riders at home. It just makes the sport more evolved.

Having everyone in the same room can answer a lot of questions and provide something that people can't do at home as the UCI or My Whoosh. A good example of this is that all the esports are running on Internet connections. When you are at home, you rely on local WiFi. But at this venue, we can bring in local service providers. We can send a stronger signal, and we can bring in redundancy, backups, all of those things”

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However, cheating on the part of the equipment only covers a portion of the total opportunity for malicious practice.

“We have an independent organization, ITA partners here, and anti-doping controls will be in place just as they are at every World Championships,”

asserts Fraser.

“From a technical standpoint, we have elite partners who undergo the most rigorous hardware testing that has ever been done at an esports world championship. And from the athletes' point of view, we control all their equipment except their bikes, but the UCI inspects their bikes.

“We look for bike motors. Otherwise we are looking for mechanical doping and things like that. So there is going to be, for lack of a better word, greater scrutiny again of all the variables that might be available to someone if there is malicious intent.”

Of course, all virtual cycling platforms require all cyclists to input their weight so that the avatar responds according to their power. Without this, a muscular strongman like World Tour time triallist Filippo Ganna would win on any terrain, mountainous or not. To ensure fairness, however, all athletes must undergo an official weigh-in. In a virtual competition, this would involve the arduous process of videotaping oneself on a bathroom scale and proving the date and time. In Abu Dhabi, this can be done in person.

At breakfast this morning, I spoke with several competitors. One of them had been forced to get up early by the aforementioned ITA anti-doping inspectors.

Regarding the carbo loading, it was emphasized that the weigh-in is at 8:00 am. For the men, competition does not begin until almost 12 hours later. Theoretically, athletes could avoid eating or drinking before the weigh-in and spend the 12 hours before the race carbo-loading and hydrating.

Fraser explained that this is something he wants to mitigate as much as possible and even compared it to disordered eating.

“This is ultimately something we try to mitigate as much as possible,” he began.

“When it comes to weighing procedures, I think weight will always play an important role because the unfortunate reality of esports, or even virtual cycling overall, is that the simple math that propels an avatar down a virtual road is the power and the weight of how you move forward in virtual space.

“There are many ideas in the industry on how to alleviate this weighing procedure. Weighing in cycling esports is not for everyone. We need to validate weigh-ins through video or through in-person events like the one we are doing here this week. And I think it is very important to note that depending on when you weigh in, athletes in every sport on the planet are always looking for an advantage they can gain with regard to their weight. They begin to flirt with the very dangerous concept of disordered eating and eating disorders.

“From a cycling esports perspective, there are two options. You can either weigh in as far in advance as possible, a few days before the event. For example, athletes who go to extremes, such as taking a sauna or not eating, will have their performance hampered as a result.

“There are logistical concerns of weighing 40 athletes, displaying them, getting them started, and setting up the machines. So for this competition, we decided to do it in the morning. But with everyone moving here and jet lag being what it is, we are hoping that the impact will be minimal and the competition will be over soon thereafter.

“Is that the best decision we can make?” there are endless ideas about the best way to solve that problem in the long run, but for this event, it is the best decision we can make. [The long-term health of athletes is generally one of the most important aspects of sport.

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