MyWhoosh explained: Is it a legitimate free alternative to Zwift?

As many of us in the cycling world predicted a couple of years ago, the phenomenal growth of indoor cycling and the skyrocketing sales of the best smart trainers have led to a surge in the popularity of e-sports and virtual bike racing.

It’s no doubt a space that's dominated by Zwift, with Rouvy snapping at its heels. But there’s another player making waves in the world of e-sports: MyWhoosh.

While Zwift now costs £17.99 or $19.99 a month to use, and Rouvy costs £17.99, MyWhoosh remains a completely free-to-use app, which goes against the rest of the leading players among the best indoor cycling apps.

Like its competitors, MyWhoosh offers a broad package of workouts and training programs, including workouts designed for Tadej Pogačar by his coach, Javier Sola, plus new features such as Live Coach.

The app has a particular focus on e-sports racing and offering cash prizes. It's the partner platform for the UCI Cycling Esports World Championships until 2026, displacing Zwift and is looking to mix up the racing format too.

While Rouvy uses real-world video as the basis of its app, MyWhoosh runs on rendered simulations of real places and imaginary worlds, similar to Zwift. It has expanded its collection of routes from its initial desert focus to 12 worlds and more than 80 routes, including in Colombia, California and Australia.

Based in the UAE

Founded by CEO Akhtar Hashmi in 2019, MyWhoosh's over-100 employees are primarily based in its Masdar City, Abu Dhabi headquarters. It's a team sponsor of the UAE Team Emirates WorldTour men's team and the UAE Team ADQ WorldTour women's team.

The MyWhoosh team comprises an impressive contingent of experience, counting former Zwift employees, as well as e-sports competitors and WorldTour-level coaches. Unlike Zwift, which describes itself as "non-esports focused" where only around 20% of the user base competes, MyWhoosh is actively embracing the evolution of cycling esports as a legitimate, distinct cycling discipline, and even making it a viable career.

Building a league of e-racers

MyWhoosh hosts a weekly racing series called Sunday Race Club with a monthly prize purse of $96,000 spread over three categories, two genders, and team and individual classifications. The prize pot for the MyWhoosh Championship series in 2023 was set at $1 million.

The elite-level competition and big money attract top esports professionals from across the globe, even leading Jason Osborne to quit life as a WorldTour pro with Alpecin Deceuninck to pursue an esports career.

Performance verification

As part of its attempt to legitimise cycling e-sports, MyWhoosh automatically runs each racer through a proprietary performance verification system for every race.

Performance on the platform is analysed against a multitude of tests to answer MyWhoosh's three questions of performance verification. These are:

• Is the performance technically legitimate? Is the data clean, accurate, uninterrupted, and without anomaly?
• Is the performance humanly possible? Does it align with historical trends of human capabilities for aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, and does it fall in line with the expected outputs of world-class riders?
• Is the performance achievable by this specific athlete? Does this performance align with historical data, training loads, expected power-to-HR ratio, etc?

This is determined via testing conducted by the athlete, ensuring that they use power meters that are permitted for use and normally within a 1% tolerance for accuracy, as well as dual-recording to ensure that equipment is calibrated correctly.

Weight and height are then verified for W/Kg measurements, and test data is compared to historic data. Similar to the UCI biological passport, MyWhoosh wants to check that any performance increases are realistic and achievable. A 300-watt threshold power becoming a 450-watt one in the space of a year is not happening legitimately by most accounts.

Dynamic race categorisation

MyWhoosh also uses a dynamic categorisation model, which matches up each competitor with a field of other racers of similar abilities to create a fair and fun racing environment. The categories do not have static limits that remain constant.

The race commission at MyWhoosh sets the limits based on registered participants and their historical data to prevent accidental miscategorisation.

As for results, MyWhoosh calculates everything server-side and accordingly has the same delay and visuals that all online multiplayer video games have.

MyWhoosh is looking to lead the way in this regard by verifying every single performance in high-level racing and bringing the strength of robust data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) into the equation in an attempt to create the most legitimate racing available online.

The ultimate goal

For the team at MyWhoosh, performance verification is just half of the equation. The company plans to evolve the racing product through new and innovative racing styles and structures in the future.

Beyond the race

It's not just the racing, however, where MyWhoosh is placing its focus. The training system has evolved massively over the years to now have a workout and training plan library that exceeds what the likes of Zwift offer.

There are now a total of 70 VO2max-focused sessions, 99 Tempo, 68 Anaerobic, 88 Endurance, 47 Sprint, 55 Sweet Spot, 10 Taper, 47 Beginner, 80 Under 35 Minutes, 50 Fast Fitness, 14 Testing, 88 Threshold, and 13 Pro Team workouts at present. That's in addition to 13 Training Plans.

You also have the option to create your own workouts to put in your calendar. This workout builder is similar in many ways to the one TrainingPeaks offers, allowing a good level of customisation to sessions with written prompts to get you through efforts.

Another new feature is the Live Coach, which allows you to complete coach-led sessions as part of a virtual group. Sometimes special guests, such as sponsored riders, will also complete these workouts alongside you.

Gamification elements

Similar to Zwift, MyWhoosh also includes various challenges and unlocks to bring an element of fun to the platform as well.

You can complete tasks to unlock virtual currency, which you can use to purchase faster bikes or wheels in-game. You can also purchase gems using real currency or unlock them at a slower rate by completing challenges.