News and Hot Takes: TDFF, Rouvy Acquisitions, Zwift Pro Esports Racing, and More
Blog #32
It’s been a newsy week in the world of professional cycling esports. So to get through it all, I’m debuting a new column format called “News and Hot Takes.” The idea here is that I’ll start with just a straightforward description of what the hell happened, and then offer some brief hot takes on the topic. Let’s get started!
1. The Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift Begins
What Happened?
The fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift kicked off on Saturday. Sponsoring the TDFF is probably the coolest thing Zwift does, and whenever there is a connection between an IRL race and the virtual space we always provide at least some coverage.1
The first three stages were exciting in their own right, but as expected have been mostly an amuse-bouche for the main GC action starting later this week. The one GC shock was the Demi Vollering crash earlier today towards the end of Stage 3. I’m not going to say much about that here, since we still don’t know a ton about her condition, but she was able to (slowly) finish the stage and the 5 km rule saved her any time loss on GC. I really hope she’s able to continue, since as we’ve discussed before I’m fully on board the Vollering revenge tour bandwagon after the chaos of her GC bid last year with SD Worx.
But anyway, setting that aside here is a brief recap of the three stages thus far:
In Stage 1, Team Visma | Lease a Bike put on a elegant show of team tactics on the final climb. This has been my favorite moment of the TDFF so far, since the synergy between Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Marianne Vos as they toyed with poor Kim Le Court and defending champ Katarzyna Niewiadoma was just brilliant.
On the final kicker, Ferrand-Prévot attacked about 700 meters to the line. The response from the (fractured) peloton was muted - you can see Anna van der Breggen trying to lead a group back to her wheel, but it’s futile. As Ferrand-Prévot crosses the 500 meter mark, there isn’t anyone else in the screen, and the NBC broadcast more or less calls the stage for her (I can’t blame them, I thought it was over too!).
Meanwhile, as van der Breggen is trying to close, Vos is relaxed and glued to her wheel. But with around 400 meters left, there’s a surge to their right as Le Court tows Niewiadoma past an exhausted van der Breggen. Vos initially hops on Niewiadoma’s wheel, but Niewiadoma falters, and Vos is able to move past her and close Le Court.
At this point, Visma is in a perfect position. I still thought Ferrand-Prévot had enough of a gap to win it, but if Le Court is able to catch her she’d be doing so by giving Vos a free ride to the win.
And that’s exactly how it played out. As the finish line approaches, Le Court has closed to gap to Ferrand-Prévot to a few meters. This is where the teamwork between Ferrand-Prévot and Vos was so joyful to watch. Both Ferrand-Prévot and Le Court are just absolutely wrecked at this point. Vos is the only one with working legs. So with about 75 meters left, as Le Court is about catch Ferrand-Prévot, Vos puts in a mini surge to come around and box Le Court off of Ferrand-Prévot’s wheel.
I just love this so much, because I think you can tell from Vos’ reaction here that the initial goal wasn’t to go for the stage win herself.2 She’s protecting Ferrand-Prévot from Le Court (maybe) sitting on her wheel for 25 meters, resting, and then surging past her at the line. You can see Vos hesitate for a fraction of a second and turn to see if Le Court is still there, if she is still a threat to eke out the stage win. And from that hesitation you kind of know that Plan A is for Ferrand-Prévot to take the stage.
But of course, Le Court isn’t stopping. And at that point Vos doesn’t really have a choice. She takes the stage win, and she and Ferrand-Prévot finish on the same time with their hands in the air.
In Stage 2, Mavi García launched from the peloton with a little more than 10 km remaining and somehow managed to hold off a charging peloton at the line. I’m not gonna lie, I thought García’s attack was doomed from the start. Add it to the list of predictions I’ve gotten terribly wrong.
Stage 3 was a predictable sprint win for Lorena Wiebes, marred by the big crash that took down Vollering and several other riders. There isn’t much analysis to do here - Wiebes is the best sprinter in the world right now, and it’s not even close. Remove the rider who is arguably her closest competition (Elisa Balsamo) and there wasn’t much drama at the finish.
Hot Takes
None, really, other than hoping that Vollering and the other riders caught up in the crash today are okay and can continue. Other than that, I’m just excited for the rest of the race. I’d recommend you follow folks more knowledgeable than me for analysis though. Some (non-exhaustive) recommendations here include Women’s Cycling Weekly, The Escape Collective, and the Lanterne Rouge Cycling Podcast.
2. Rouvy Acquires BKOOL
What Happened?
Rouvy announced that it has acquired BKOOL, the virtual cycling platform with a large presence in Spain, France, and Denmark. BKOOL used to be an industry leader in the pre-Covid days, but the rise of Zwift and an ill-fated foray into the hardware side of virtual training weren’t kind to its financials.
The announcement comes after Rouvy acquired another platform, FulGaz, earlier this year. The FulGaz acquisition was a bit of an operational and PR disaster for Rouvy: initially, all the FulGaz employees were laid off, and Rouvy announced it planned to migrate the entirety of the FulGaz platform and its users over to Rouvy. But that didn’t happen, and Rouvy now operates FulGaz as a separate platform independent from the Rouvy.
Lessons learned, for sure. In announcing the BKOOL acquisition, Rouvy has been clear that BKOOL will continue business-as-usual operations for the near future as part of the “Rouvy Group” that now includes Rouvy, FulGaz, and BKOOL. From an email Rouvy CEO Petr Samek sent DC Rainmaker:
“We definitely want to keep BKOOL brand/product and team dedicated. Of course, some changes has to come because we need to start the BKOOL growth again, but we believe in the team and their knowledge. BKOOL will focus on Spain, France, Denmark (there is already strongest). In the future maybe [Latin America].
I would also like to highlight that the same is true for FulGaz. We want to keep both platforms FULGAZ and BKOOL) active (including development and marketing). Every platform in the ROUVY Group has a specific community and product portfolio.”
Hot Takes
Rouvy has quietly been making some really interesting moves this year. They’ve poured cold water on holding any professional cycling esports events any time soon, but I think their subscriber numbers would be surprising to some readers: at the moment, Zwift has somewhere north of one million subscribers. But Rouvy is second at 250,000.
That’s really not *that* bad. I’m assuming the 250,000 number includes the FulGaz subscribers (their peak was 20,000 at some point prior to the Rouvy acquisition), but that’s not entirely clear. I’m not aware of an up-to-date paid user number for BKOOL, but they were around 50,000 paid premium users in 2019. I have no idea where that number is now, but Rouvy, slowly and surely, is continuing to build up its subscriber base.
We’ve also discussed previously how Rouvy has been commercially smart in not trying to build a Zwift 2.0 competitor. Instead, they’ve focused on providing value to customers where Zwift falls short - the ability to upload and ride “real” roads, triathlon training, graphics that mimic real life rather than video games, etc. The BKOOL acquisition continues this focus.
All that being said, I’m super interested to see where Rouvy goes with this. I’m completely speaking out of my a$$ here, but running, maintaining, and continuing to update and improve three platforms has got to be wildly expensive and inefficient. It seems to me like consolidation is inevitable, if only just to streamline programming and resources. The flipside of this is that, if I had to guess, Rouvy has run the numbers and knows that a *significant* amount of subscribers would just cancel if they suddenly phased out FulGaz or BKOOL and migrated users over to Rouvy. So there’s a balance to be struck here, and I’m not really sure what the right answer is. Maybe it’s consolidating slowly, but I’m not sure how you do that well.
Anyway, it’s a real pickle, and I’m happy I’m not the one that has to solve it!
3. SRC July Monthly Finals
What Happened?
As predicted, Jason Osborne and Kate McCarthy took home (yet-to-be-verified) wins in the July Sunday Race Club monthly final.
For Osborne, it’s his 13th monthly final win and fifth straight. For McCarthy, it’s her 10th overall and sixth in a row. That 10th win puts her in the all-time lead on the women’s side, breaking the tie with Kathrin Fuhrer at nine.
Hot Takes
These two are just unbeatable in SRC right now, and are the heavy favorites for the MyWhoosh Championship next month. Going beyond just the monthly finals, both Osborne and McCarthy also won all three qualifiers this month. Indeed, their wins this week take them to seven straight SRC wins each. Last time they lost was on June 8, when Michael Vink and Gabriela Guerra managed victories on a rare, mostly flat (in SRC-adjusted terms) course.
So, TL;DR, the first and third best virtual cycling seasons of all time roll on.
4. In the Draft is Back!
What Happened?
Nathan Guerra dropped Episode 2 of the In the Draft podcast after a four month hiatus. In the Draft is the successor to the ultra-popular The Wrap podcast that virtual cycling fans mourned when it went offline a little over a year ago, albeit without Anna Russell as the co-host. I’ve written before about how much I loved The Wrap and how it was a big part of what got me into the sport, so it’s great to see Nathan back with guest Alex Coh.
Hot Takes
Nothing too major - I’d just recommend giving the episode a full listen. Two points though.
I did find it interesting how much weight Alex put on the ZWS trainer issues in the discussion about why Zwift canceled the race. It’s not like we were blind to that on the fan side - we’ve discussed it on the blog - but I think Alex’s insider perspective as a coach of multiple elite athletes and his point about the increased administrative burden those problems put on Zwift is well taken and not something I *fully* appreciated.
I’m also encouraged by Leadout’s efforts to standardize best practices for pre-race weigh-ins. I’m far from an expert on this sort of stuff, and therefore won’t pretend to have an informed opinion as to how it should be done, but evidence-based processes that prioritize, encourage, and insist on rider health are desperately needed in the sport.
5. No News from Zwift on the Future of Elite Cycling on its Platform
What Happened?
Well… nothing.
Earlier this month, Zwift announced that it would be taking a step back from elite racing by canceling the Zwift World Series for the 2025-26 season. Importantly, this news was just about ZWS - they aren’t saying one way or the other whether Zwift Games will be back in 2026.
I reached out to Zwift to see if there were any updates on this front, since Zwift’s initial comments when they announced the ZWS cancelation didn’t really inspire optimism that it would be replaced with something new.
Unfortunately the response didn’t really shed any additional light on Zwift’s plans, in all likelihood because Zwift itself is still figuring it out. In an email, Zwift confirmed that it “[does not] have anything else to add beyond what has already been communicated. At this time, the only decision made is not to run an Elite Zwift World Series this year.”
Hot Takes
See here. I dunno, I’m still very sad about this. But hopefully there is news in the coming months. And if there is, you’ll know where to find it 😁
Vos more or less confirmed this in her post-race interviews.