{"id":354506,"date":"2025-12-17T19:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T19:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/354506\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T19:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T19:21:14","slug":"did-the-ucis-cycling-esports-world-championship-weigh-in-policy-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/354506\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the UCI’s Cycling Esports World Championship weigh-in policy work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Did<\/p>\n

Esports<\/a><\/p>\n

Spoiler: It\u2019s on the right track, but still short of the finish.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/p>\n

As we saw on several occasions this past season, weight remains a ubiquitous and polarizing quandary in the world of cycling. Imagine if you could rock up to the startline and race at a weight lower than you are. Would it be an even more controversial topic then?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s what happened for years in elite-level cycling esports competitions, due to the manipulative performance-enhancing practice of “weight gapping.” It was even present in the sport’s only UCI-sanctioned competition, the Cycling Esports World Championship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Defined in this Escape report<\/a>, \u201cweight-gapping\u201d refers to weighing in below a rider\u2019s actual weight at the start of a race after engaging in weight-loss measures. The virtual platform calculates power based on the lower figure, producing a higher watts-per-kilogram (W\/kg) value that the velocity algorithm converts into extra speed.<\/p>\n

The 2024 edition of Cycling Esports Worlds allowed a 10-hour weigh-in window, which invited unethical, unfair, and unhealthy performance manipulation. Before the live, in-person final in Abu Dhabi on MyWhoosh, anecdotal reports of racers gapping 7 to 10 kg (15 to 22 pounds) emerged alongside images of hotel sauna “sweat out” sessions.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tragedy pushed policy reforms<\/p>\n

Now, imagine that weight-gapping could kill you. That may sound dramatic, until you consider that three perfectly healthy collegiate wrestlers in the US died in the span of a month<\/a> in 1997, doing almost the same thing: extreme rapid weight loss through dehydration to get an edge.<\/p>\n

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Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

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\n Esports<\/a>
\n Esports World Championships<\/a>
\n News & Racing<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esports Spoiler: It\u2019s on the right track, but still short of the finish. As we saw on several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-354506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}