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You could be Canada’s first Zwift national champion

Online training platform announces new championship event series

zwift winter-cycling plan

You could be Canada’s first Zwift national champion, when the first-ever Zwift national championship event happens in living rooms from coast to coast later this month. The online training platform has made the move to step up its popular online races into a proper national championship event series this year, when riders in 15 countries will battle it out for digital dominance. There will be a separate online event for each nation, and titles will be awarded for men and women. Should you win the inaugural event, you will get to wear your pixels with pride for the following year. Hopefully you’ve been following along with our four week Zwift training plan, as the event is coming up fast. All national championships will occur on Feb. 24, with start times varying according to time zone.

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Zwift Canada

All national series races will take place on the Watopia Volcano Climb course, making for a unique situation where all national championships will be contested on identical courses. Men will race three laps of the 22.8-km course, for a total distance of 68.4 km with 1,071 m of elevation. Women will complete two laps, for a 45.6-km total over 714.4 m of elevation.

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There’s a range of Zwift specific race rules on the event web page, and all national championship races will be closely monitored by ZADA, the Zwift Anti-Doping Agency. Which is a thing, apparently. The 15 countries where the Zwift nationals will be held in 2018 were selected because they had high populations of by which country had the most Zwifters. If the event is successful, there are already plans to expand to more countries next year. Along with Canada, national champions will be crowned in USA, UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, South Korea, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Poland on Feb. 24, with the exception of Australia, which will be at a later date. Presumably during that country’s winter.