MECHANICS: Adjust ranking logic to limit impact of frequency
The current ranking logic used for pen placement is not working well, as racers with relatively low physical capabilities can end up in pen 1 for most events by virtue of racing frequently.
This may not be a flaw of the ranking logic per se, and more because bots are easy to beat despite their high rank because they are not such clever racers. Regardless, the problem is there.
One way to resolve this, which also protects against a number of other issues inherent in many Elo based ranking systems, is to anchor a rank to a specific physiological metric.
For example - climb ranking could be anchored to w/kg. 4 w/kg FTP is anchored to 1200 climbing rank, so with a 4 w/kg FTP the highest your rank can get is 1200 + 20% (1440).
TT rank can be tied to pure watts FTP, sprint to anaerobic capacity, etc.
James Eastwood
shared this idea
Many thanks for the suggestion and support for TrainingPeaks Virtual.
Whilst it's unlikely that we'll do exactly this as there are a number of drawbacks from anchoring, the general point you make about ensuring that the rankings are a useful way of categorising humans against each other (as opposed to it being more of a reflection of humans against bots) is a good one and we'll take a look at how best to do that.