Prediction Redux: What I Got Right and What I Got Wrong This Season
Blog #21
The virtual cycling season ended1 this past week with the final stage of Zwift World Series. As expected, Ollie Jones and Kathrin Fuhrer took home the GC titles for the men and women, respectively, while Lennert Teugels finally broke through for his first pro win of the season and Gabriela Guerra continued her recent run of success by each winning the stage.
Those results were… exactly what I predicted last week.2 But let’s be real - that was a pretty boring prediction. The GC was basically over before the final stage, so I wasn’t exactly going out on a limb by taking Jones and Fuhrer.
But one of the fun things about writing a virtual cycling blog is that, throughout the year, I do make a lot of predictions. Some of them are pretty easy, but some of them are really tough. And because I like to hold myself to account, I’ve decided to do an annual “Prediction Redux” column where I look back on all my predictions from the prior season and grade myself on all of them.
So below are all the predictions I made this season, along with the articles in which I made them.3 And because I know you are most interested in my monumental f*&% ups, I’ve started with the best in the hopes that you’ll stick around and read to the end 😁
1. Zwift Games Overall Championship (Heading into the Final Stage)
Grade: A
Heading into the final stage of Zwift Games, the women’s race was already decided. The men, on the other hand, were the complete opposite. There were seven riders with a legitimate shot to win GC, and doing the math on the possible outcomes required some college-level calculus.
Heading in, I noted that Neal Fryett probably wasn’t the favorite on a course that favored pure climbers, but still picked him to jump from second to first and win GC. I also picked Lionel Vujasin and Ruben Dhondt to leapfrog from fifth and sixth, respectively, to finish on the podium.
Those predictions turned out to be spot on, with the exception that Dhondt finished second and Vujasin third, rather than vice versa as I’d thought. Still, getting the podium right in a race where the top six finished within nine points of each other was pretty good. I was a little bit off on the results beyond the podium, but I’m not going to beat myself up about that too much. This was one of the tougher races to predict this season.
2. U.S. National Championships
Grade: A-
On the men’s side, I was right with my Hayden Pucker pick (which, at the time, felt inevitable). For the women, I had Kristen Kulchinsky and Liz Van Houweling as co-favorites, the latter if it came to a sprint.
Those picks ended up being right, but I’m still giving myself an A- because I gave Neal Fryett and Nicole Meyer short shrift. We’ll talk more about Fryett below, but Meyer was an under the radar breakout star this year. I missed it.
3. The Top of the Women’s Peloton
Grade: B
In one of Pro E Cycling’s first posts, I wrote about the trio of women dominating the sport - Kate McCarthy, Guerra, and Fuhrer. I actually think that piece holds up pretty well. But towards the end I said I didn’t have any clue how things would play out moving forward, and implied throughout that on any given day, it was pretty equal across the three and a toss up as to who might win a particular race.
That proved to be wrong. McCarthy has emerged as the undisputed #1, with Guerra on her heels as #2. I think there’s still an argument that Fuhrer is #3, but the Maria Holdcrofts, Kulchinskys, and Merle Brunnees of the world have a legitimate claim to that spot as well. Back in January, I thought the divide between McCarthy, Guerra, Fuhrer, and the field would remain clear throughout the season. But that didn’t end up happening.
4. Zwift Academy
Grade: C+
Now we start to get to the 😬 😬 😬 predictions.
Halfway through Zwift Academy (i.e., after two of the four episodes), I wrote a column predicting the winners. I was right on the men’s side - Noah brought it home - but wrong on the women’s. I took Anabelle, but it ended up being Emily.
I’m giving myself a C+ here because the Noah pick was sort of obvious. Mattia (the only actual pro virtual racer in the finals) gave him a run for his money at times, but the drama GCN tried to stir up around the men’s competition always felt contrived. On the women’s side, it was clear that the race was between Anabelle and Emily, and I picked the wrong rider.
5. Zwift Games Overall Championship (Pre-Race)
Grade: D+
If you missed the prediction game we did prior to Zwift Games, here were the rules: I picked the top ten riders, male or female, in order of the total amount of points I thought they’d score in Zwift Games.
So for example, [in 2023] Fuhrer won on the women’s side with 295 points, followed by Guerra in second with 293; Lou Bates in third with 290; and all the way down to Kulchinsky in sixth with 283 points.
On the men’s side, Freddy Ovett won with 280 points. So in this prediction game, the correct bingo card last year would’ve had Ovett - the men’s champion and proud owner of a freaking golden KICKR bike - in seventh.
The important caveat to this game was that if a rider I picked didn’t complete all the stages, that didn’t count as a “loss.” We’ve discussed this at length, but Zwift has really had trouble competing with MyWhoosh to bring top riders to the start line, and so I didn’t think it made sense to punish myself if a rider I picked didn’t show up. Anyway, here were my top ten, with riders that didn’t compete in all three stages crossed out:
McCarthy
Guerra
Fuhrer
Bates
Teugels
Ovett
Mika Söderström
BrunneeJonesKulchinsky4
These picks… didn’t turn out great.
The Good
I was right that, because of how top-heavy the women’s field was, the top scorers would be female. I did overcorrect by picking women for seven of the top 10 spots though: in reality, the top five were all women, and six through ten were men. Still, I’m grasping at straws here so counting this as a win.
My top four were also pretty good! McCarthy and Guerra indeed finished 1-2, and Fuhrer and Bates were 4-5 instead of 3-4. But still, that’s not bad.
Unfortunately, that’s about all that was good here.
The Bad
Neal Fryett: Didn’t even mention him in the preview, other than to call his win in the 2023 Epic “the biggest upset of the inaugural Zwift Games.” And then he goes and wins the darn thing 😁
Ruben Dhondt: I came around by the end, picking him for the podium before the final stage and calling him “the breakout star of Zwift Games on the men’s side.” But he was another rider I didn’t mention in the preview. And he finished second.
Maria Holdcroft: Noticing a pattern here? Podium finisher. No mention of her in the preview.
Teugels, Ovett, and Jones: My predicted podium finished 7th, 10th, and N/A, respectively, in the men’s standings. And it’s not like I got unlucky with Jones either - he started strong with a fourth place finish in the Sprint before missing the Climb, but finished 35th in the Epic. So even if he had qualified for the Overall,5 he wouldn’t have been close to the top ten.
Yes, yes, we still have SRC.
Although I punted on picking the stage winners because it wasn’t clear who would be racing.
Besides for the ZWS one discussed above. Too boring to include.
I also named the following riders as honorable mentions, i.e., the best of the rest: Lionel Vujasin, Cecilia Hansen, Marlene Bjärehed, Lucy Charles-Barclay, Illi Gardner, Emma Belforth, Michał Kamiński, Martin Maertens, Daniel Turek, Mickael Plantureux, and Pucker.
A rider needed to complete all three championships to qualify for the Overall standings.