Zwift Insider Tiny Race Stats: Rider Counts, Naughty Countries, Prolific Racers

With another year of Tiny Races under our belt, it’s time to crunch some numbers and share fun Tiny Race stats. How would recent numbers compare to last year’s stats? What do the week-to-week participation trends look like? Which country is home to the most well-behaved riders (and the naughtiest)? And who completed more Tiny Races than any other rider on Earth this year?

Let’s dive in and find out!

Overall Data

With Tiny Race results saved since October 2022, we’ve got 147 weeks of data to work with. Here are the total number of races finished each week since I began saving the data. This is broken down by time zone into the three event timeslots we run (Zone 1 at 2am, Zone 2 at 8am, and Zone 3 at 2pm Pacific time, although these times may shift by an hour when clocks change):

January 3, 2026 saw the most race completions ever from a single zone: 2069 in Zone 2! That’s fun.

Zones 1 and 2 track closely to each other, with zone 1 being popular with UK/Europe riders and Zone 2 being popular in the US/Canada. Zone 1 used to be more popular than Zone 2, or at least it was neck-and-neck. But in the past year or so, Zone 2 has been more popular.

Zone 3 is always much smaller. While Zone 3 mostly exists to cater to Australia and New Zealand, it’s interesting to note that Zone 3’s numbers follow the same trend as Zones 1 and 2, indicating that a good portion of Zone 3’s racers aren’t in the southern hemisphere, where you would expect traffic patterns to be inverted from the northern hemisphere.

Next, we examine the number of unique riders who participated each week, combined across all three zones. We see a similar trend to the chart above, with numbers decreasing in summer months.

A few trends/data points that stand out to me:

• The huge peak of 1636 riders on February 18, 2023, which was the second week of our special Worlds Experience races.
• “Peak Zwift” season this year was down a bit last year. November 2023-February 2024 saw 14,169 riders, November 2024-February 2025 saw 16,431 riders, and November 2025-February 2026 saw 15,659 riders (if I remove the last race in February, so each year includes an equal number of Saturdays).
• Our lowest numbers ever in recent months: May 23 and July 11 2026 are both lower weeks than we’ve ever had in the history of Tiny Races.

This Year’s Data

If we narrow our scope to the past 12 months (August 2025 through July 2026), we can simplify the charts and concentrate on more recent trends.

The only major change we’ve made to affect this chart is moving from three categories to five on September 13, 2026. That’s why categories E and D are zero for the first few weeks of the chart.

Next, we wanted to break down participation by location. Which countries participate the most in Tiny Races?

It may appear that the USA is way ahead in first and Great Britain firmly in second, but if we look closer, Zwift breaks out England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as separate country flag options. If you add their numbers to those riders who select “United Kingdom” as their flag in Zwift (which is coded as GB in ZwiftPower, where the above data comes from), GB is essentially tied with the US (26,356 race completions for GB vs 26.367 for the US).

The Naughty List

The intention of the Tiny Races is to complete 4 back-to-back hard races in one hour, but early on we found some riders were jumping into later races in the set so they could get a better result against fatigued riders. Therefore, we developed a unique “no sniping” rule that basically says “You can’t skip a race then return.”

How many disqualifications do we issue to snipers? A lot, sadly:

We’ve noticed a trend over the years: Zone 1 typically gets less DQs than Zone 2, who gets less than Zone 3. Why? We’re not sure. But the good news is, the DQ rates of each zone have decreased in the past year. Nice!

Disqualification rates by zone for the past 12 months:

• Zone 1: 6.57% (down 0.36% YoY)
• Zone 2: 7.25% (down 0.66% YoY)
• Zone 3: 7.75% (down 1.24% YoYo)

Going further down the rulebreaking rabbit hole, here’s a list of countries whose riders participate in the Tiny Races, sorted by who is naughtiest (or nicest, depending on how you look at it) in the past 12 months. This shows the percentage of race finishes which end up being disqualified for sniping. (Keep in mind you have to be registered on ZwiftPower to even show up in the results, so this chart – and all of the charts on this page – leaves out data from riders who aren’t on ZP.)

Brazil makes a surprise appearance at the top of the list. And in second place we have Italy, who is typically the first major participant (2000+ race finishes) with a bad score.

Kudos to Turkey for having the lowest overall DQ rate by a good margin for the second year in a row. Also, a shout out to the good people of Sweden, who just like the last three years have the lowest DQ rate of any major participant, coming in at 4.8% with over 6000 race finishes.

Most Prolific Riders

Lastly, we wanted to see which riders had raced the most Tiny Races over the past year. The results are impressive, with the top two riders from last year greatly increasing their total races, and C OOLHAND moving up in 1st place after Nozaki holding the position for the past two years:

1. C OOLHAND: 380
2. Naofumi Nozaki (AHDR): 370
3. Stephen Mulrine (HERD): 192
4. Robin Andersson [eSRT] CRP: 191
5. Michael Boardman [mTNT]: 186
6. Gregory Whitehead: 184
7. Ben Dusinberre: 181
8. . # Zwift_drafter: 179
9. D Macca: 177
10. Michal Satura: 168
11. Henry Li-Zwift Fighter: 168
12. Todd Sheaman (DIRT): 167
13. L Tait Age 68 WWCC: 158
14. Head Wound: 158
15. Matt Hold: 156
16. Chris Keogh: 156
17. Berk Kayin: 151
18. Douglas Cameron: 150
19. Noheya MONIO [TMR]: 146
20. Michel LAURENT: 144

Looking a bit deeper, 68 riders have successfully completed 100 or more Tiny Races in the past year. Awesome! Thanks to all who have participated in the Tiny Races this year.

Three Requests for Zwift

The Tiny Races have always pushed the boundaries of Zwift’s race events. For example: did you know we had to customize the events to only remind you of the next race 1 minute before it starts? This avoids riders getting reminders popping up as they near the finish of an earlier Tiny Race, or worse, being taken to the next race before they finish the current one.

There are three features I’d love to see from Zwift because they would simplify the signup process, greatly reduce sniping, and help me improve the experience for everyone:

1. Sign up for all 4 events at once: I get it, the idea of signing up for 4 race events isn’t exactly intuitive. I’d love it if Zwift could design it so you do one signup, and you’re signed up for all 4 events. This would reduce confusion and reduce the number of snipers.
2. Don’t automatically move riders to an event when they’re already in one: if you do get within that 1-minute time window, Zwift might pop up the reminder of your upcoming Tiny Race then take you out of your current race and into the next one before you’re finished. That’s not ideal. It seems like an easy fix: if the rider is currently in an event, don’t automatically take them out to the next one. Force them to choose that option. This is how it should work throughout Zwift.
3. Give me participation data: It’s painfully difficult to extract useful event data from Zwift’s systems. (I’m only able to generate the data above because I have it stored in a custom database which I use for crunching numbers and disqualifying snipers.) As an event organizer, I would love to have access to a portal that displays participation numbers, rider satisfaction scores/comments, and other relevant statistics from my events. This type of actionable data would help me create a better experience for racers, which would be a win for everyone involved.

Wrapping It Up

The Tiny Races have always been about trying something different. I’m not interested in holding “just another Zwift race,” which is why these races have such a unique setup. It’s also why I jump at the chance to test beta features like pack dynamics and custom category boundaries.

Thank you for trusting me enough to race the races and share your feedback. It means a lot.

As we head into peak Zwifting months, we’ll continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in Zwift racing. This includes some test races on Gravel Mountain, once Zwift releases it again. See you on course!

Questions or Comments?

Did you find any of the data above particularly interesting? Got a Tiny Race question or comment? Share below!