Zwift Academy finals set for December 19

The final race of the 2020 Zwift Academy is set for Saturday, December 19.

Alpecin-Fenix and Canyon-SRAM will offer contracts to the respective winners of the men’s and women’s races.

The event will be broadcast live at 2 p.m. EST on Zwift’s Facebook Live channel.

Racing in the 2020 women’s final is Colombian racer Natalia Franco of Team Twenty20, who may be looking to follow Chloé Dygert who recently announced her move from Twenty20 to Canyon-SRAM.

Lionel Vujasin of Belgium, who finished in sixth place at the 2020 UCI cycling esports world championships, will be competing in the men’s race.

Last year, VeloNews was invited to the Canyon-SRAM team camp, in which a final selection was made from three top-performing women who “graduated” from the Zwift Academy.

VeloNews previously reported that thousands of women entered the Zwift Academy program by completing workouts on Zwift, where their power output was recorded over various durations. The Zwift Academy coaches examined these riders for power-to-weight output for 10-second, 1-minute, 4-minute, and 10-minute durations.

In 2019, the three women’s finalists were Samara Sheppard, Jess Pratt, and Catherine Colyn. Pratt now races for Canyon-SRAM and recently represented Australia at the 2020 UCI cycling esports world championships.

Drew Christensen won a contract with Team NTT Pro Cycling development squad off of his winning performance last year.

2020 Zwift Academy finalists

Women’s finalists
Natalia Franco Villegas, Medellin, Colombia
Kate McCarthy, Hamilton, New Zealand
Eva Marie Hering, Munich, Germany
Nicole Coates, Wiltshire, UK
Neve Bradbury, Melbourne, Australia

Men’s finalists
Lionel Vujasin, Sprimont, Belgium
Jay Vine, Canberra, Australia
Olly Moors, Scaynes Hill, England
Jochem Kerckhaert, Schoondijke, Netherlands
Damien Clayton, Barnsley, UK