The Zwift Games wrapped up on March 31, and Zwift just released some fun community stats along with the final results of the elite races. Let’s dive in!
Record-Breaking Community Racing
Simply put, Zwift Games participation numbers broke all of Zwift’s previous records for race events!
- Over 80,000 people participated in the Games
- Zwifters completed over 215,000 races
- The races themselves broke records in terms of field sizes, with almost 50 races attracting over 1000 starters and an average race attendance of over 250
The Zwift Games truly became the meeting place of Zwift’s racing community for the month of March. Zwift says, “Following the unprecedented success of the inaugural event, the Zwift Games is set to become an annual fixture and highlight of the Zwift racing calendar for years to come.”
Elite Results
Alongside the community events, elite races were held for a much smaller number of top riders who jumped through a number of qualification hoops designed to ensure fair competition.
Winners of each stage (Sprint, Epic, and Climb) took home $7,000 and won the gold Concept Z1 bike in game!
Sprint Championship Results
Men (see full results)
- Michal Kamiński (Poland)
- Vidar Mehl (Norway)
- Teppo Laurio (Finland)
Women (see full results)
- Kathrin Fuhrer (Switzerland)
- Liz Van Houweling (USA)
- Mika Söderström (Sweden)
Epic Championship Results
Men (see full results)
- Neal Fryett (USA)
- Lennert Teugels (Belgium)
- Ollie Jones (New Zealand)
Women (see full results)
- Kathrin Fuhrer (Switzerland)
- Gabriela Guerra (Brazil)
- Lou Bates (Great Britain)
Climb Championship Results
Men (see full results)
- Freddy Ovett (Australia)
- Lennert Teugels (Belgium)
- Thomas Perren (Great Britain)
Women (see full results)
- Illi Gardner (Great Britain)
- Emma Belforth (Sweden)
- Gabriela Guerra (Brazil)
Overall Results
Men (see full results)
- Freddy Ovett (Australia)
- Lennart Jasch (Germany)
- Thom Thrall (Canada)
Women (see full results)
- Kathrin Fuhrer (Switzerland)
- Gabriela Guerra (Brazil)
- Lou Bates (Great Britain)
Each overall champion won an exclusive and unique gold-painted Wahoo KICKR Bike, $10,000, and a Golden Concept Z1 bike in game.
Your Thoughts
What did you think of your Zwift Games experience? Share below!
When I looked at the pen D final standings, from what I recall most of the first page at least we’re either riders who had been promoted to C, or they were riders who exceeded the zMAP and/or zFTP thresholds (3.2 / 2.625 W/Kg respectively) and were still in D because their zFTP was supposedly under 150W.
Including the winner who had 4mins over second place.
It wasn’t a terribly hilly course selection either, besides Mountain Mash.
Probably similar story in pens B and C.
What more proof is needed to show how broken Category Enforcement?
While Zwift Racing Score V2 is in purgatory, after Flint and others were laid off recently.
And ZwiftHQ smother the event schedule with mostly unimaginative/repetitive route selections, killing participation in most of the community events.
I gave up racing events on zwift years ago due to sandbagging etc. I thought the category enforcement would make a difference but it seems not:(
Category enforcement has made a HUGE difference. I’d say 90% of the old sandbagging is now gone.
Zwift now has two problems to solve: how to properly “seed” racers without a race history, and how to rank riders so you can’t just sit at the top of a category and keep winning.
It’ll happen.
Really the only category where results are meaningful is A. If you’re not an A then you’re in it for the fun competition, and maybe to eventually reach A. First, the category limits are completely arbitrary — if you assume riders have a well-defined order, then if the line gets drawn right above your ability, you’ll win, but right below and you won’t. Second, there’s lags. It takes a few events for riders to realize they’re in the wrong category, due either to being new on the platform, or due to changing fitness or ability. So this means they’ll always be people in the wrong category, one way or the other. The same is true with the IRL performance-based category system in the US. The top cat 3 could race cat 2, and the top cat 4 could race cat 3 (actually probably cat 2). So stop worrying about who wins, and just worry about how well you did relative to those around you.
I managed to get third in GC in the B category (debatably, second as the first overall showed some significant swings in weight that seemed a bit sus).
This format really favored my riding style which is high-end steady state, but terrible sprint. The difference between first and 20th in the Sprints, and even the Epic was negligible as long as you were in a fast race, and since I worked with a bunch of DIRTs to push the pace of each race, I was always near the top of the GC despite not getting close to winning any individual race. Then it came down to the Climb and I had an amazing effort (that caused me to upgrade and disqualified me from participating in the ZRL finals).
I don’t normally participate in the monthly racing series because I can’t sprint, but having an organized effort to have multiple people place in the GC made for a really compelling and fun series.
It worries me that zwift think that the games was a massive success. Sure if you look at top level figures lots of people took part as with any big headline event zwift publish.
But look at a little deeper around 50% of riders didn’t do more than 1 race which is very telling statistic that zwift games was not appealing to a lot of riders.
(i suspect some just did it for route badges and could not care about the racing)
Along with zero innovation over the zmonthly regular racing series and the silly power floors with kids winning D/C/B categories zwift games shows up all that is wrong with zwift racing.
Numbers wise how did zwift games compare to zmonthly series?
What we need is innovation, allow organisers to innovate and racing will grow. Churning out the same monthly racing month after month is not going to grow anything
Allow organisers to fully manage events, velodrome? in game points and modes. Allow trusted 3rd parties access to deliver better competitions…..plenty that could be done if there is a appetite to improve racing on zwift.
I couldn’t agree more. For me, the lack of a proper GC was disappointing. Having to wait for someone (bless them) to press an update button on ZF is quite silly. Category promotions also need to be handled better. When you are having fun finishing in the top 25% of C races and that you are bumped up to B because of your low weight, it’s hard to swallow (especially when most, if not all, guys who finished ahead of you stay in C). Race performance needs to be taken into account when promoting riders.
As a fairly new Zwifter, I can only provide a little personal perspective. I was also one of those top 25%’ers and was really enjoying the close competition in Cat C. But, as a 102 kg guy, I have to push over 325 watts just to stay in the front group (which I am more than willing and able to do). I got third place once and when I did win a race, I was rewarded with a Cat B rating and now have no change of winning.
How about a “Clydesdales” division. I bet nobody will sandbag to get into that 🙂
It’s called ‘spin’.
Also it’s ‘the inaugural Zwift Games’ not the ‘Zwift couldn’t get a deal this time Games’. If UCI came back and there was any resourcing issue, guess which would be staying.
the distilled vinegar bitterness of the people that post on this site is hilarious and pathetic
I agree, I am just barely a “B” racer, and my results showed that fact. I think there were 100 racers below me in the standings who finished all 5 events. In a couple of those events I saw numbers that just made no sense. The thing is, did I have fun? Yes, I did. Do I care about the results? Not at all.
Yep. It’s a game. Outside of the top events, plenty of people lie about their weight. The leveling up system is odd. Just have fun. Push yourself.
I think its fair enough to complain when zwift bills its racing prowess yet does zero to fix an obviously broken system, filter by metrics on just about any zwift parameter from racing or power curve and all you find is 99% cheats and misreading trainers. Genuine top performance is even rarer than it is on the road.
Personally, I loved it until after the fourth race. I was enjoying the fight in D category with someone of my group but just before the fifth race I was promoted to C. So no GC in either category. I don’t have a problem being promoted when you deserve it but I never ended in the top 10-20… Strange thing is, one guy, while being honest about all his wins in D the last months, is still D…
In a multi-stage event, the category you start in must be the category you finish in.
That being said, I’m an upper C rider at 3.15-3.2. Why are 3.5 riders in the C race? Zwift needs better category enforcement across the board. But not mid race!
Zwift is in a no-win situation here. For example, a very good rider who races on ‘Rouvy’ decides to join Zwift for the ZG. As he has no power data on Zwift, he gets put in D Cat.. Is it really fair for him or other D riders that he stays in D for the the whole multi-stage event?
I completely understand your frustration. This is the problem I encountered as well. I suspect you are a lighter rider, whereas the guys that are still in D are heavier. Imho the current cat system is broken. For instance, it is quite silly to have a 5-min workout effort affect your racing category. Like you said, if you never finished in a top 10/20, that should be enough to prove that you are in the right category. Unfortunately, race results are not taken into account. Hopefully this can be addressed soon.
I get your frustration but a few points to consider. 1. shouldn’t you be happy you’re improving and being promoted to a higher category? 2. Maybe the guy who keeps winning in D just uses better racing strategy than you? 3. Is doing well in D category really better than being challenged in C category? 4. Have you noticed that there is not a single post from riders who dropped category during the ZG?
I thoroughly enjoyed it and the hype got me motivated to participate and try and get as best a time as I could in the GC. Definitely would enter again next year. The next step for Zwift needs to be making the GC matter. I genuinely don’t think that most people are that interested in the elite competition, and the real test of interest/engagement is participation. The participation needs to mean something though and unless I’ve missed it, Zwift haven’t recognised the community GC winners in any way. Even the article above doesn’t. I suspect because there are doubts as to the reliability of the results. Nathan’s got it spot on in the Wrap podcast- the community needs a trusted competitive space. And zwift needs to open up the game to let the community deliver it!
but I had a lot of fun anyway.
Wow. The games with over $100,000 was more popular than a version with $10,000.
Who would have expected that?
lol. Next year prizes for every winner!
The numbers may indicate that the Zwift Games were a success, but that doesn’t mean they were as good as they could have been.
On the elite side waiting so long for full results is simply unacceptable. The full provisional results should be available as soon as the riders cross the line. If they need further verification then that can happen before the results are made official, and zwift could include a penalty clause to further discourage any cheating. But generally good race formats, good coverage, and apart from the Epic event good racing.
The community races were better than the usual monthly series in some ways, the same or worse in others.
The GC is still practically irrelevant when it’s based on raw time. If you can’t join the fastest events you have no chance, and for many people those events are in the middle of the night or the middle of the working day.
The course selection finally had something that actually tests the same metrics that category enforcement is based on, so many people got upgraded to their appropriate category. But that was the final event so they could have already disrupted the rest of the series.
Certain events being only available on weekends or weekdays, even during make up weeks, and only by the UTC time zone, would have prevented people from completing all stages.
The timing of the event, and the communication regarding it, was terrible. Cutting off the end of February racing series, even if the badge was later awarded, was again unacceptable. And pushing the ZRL finals back a month, to after daylight saving time changes, has killed the momentum of that event. Once again showing that Zwift either doesn’t understand how time zones work, or doesn’t care about customers outside Europe and the US.
Agree on the ‘raw time’ point about the GC- it would improve things if you could select a region, ZRL style, which then gave you the same pool of riders for every event. That would enable community to get the elimination style events and regional winners. We never get the elimination events!
There could still be a raw time GC overall so that there’s something for those who can’t enter a regular slot.
Eh? I turned up to a couple of the “races” to unlock the new course badges and cruised round. I was far from being the only there just for the courses so Zwift is overrating the success of the Zwift Games as an event
Not sure what you mean by ‘overrating the success’. I can’t see what they overrated 🤔.As a regular Zwift racer, who has competed in almost 400 Zwift races, I respectfully disagree with you. This was the most competitive and well attended series I have raced to date. I was pushed harder than in any previous Zwift series and enjoyed the series greatly. As a bonus, my zFTP improved as has my race results post ZG. So, for me, the ZG was an overwhelming success.
Because the Zwift news headline was “record-breaking-zwift-games-delivers-biggest-esports-event-in-history” participation numbers is what Zwift trumpeted but that is over-rated because a lot of us were not racing and not actually participating in the event. I have every Zwift route badge unlocked apart from the Zwift Games courses and I was only there for them. If Zwift had the courses available from the general menu I would not have had to ride in a “race.” Good for you if you raced and enjoyed it but that wasn’t Zwift’s success metric.
Headlines of any kind are a form of marketing. If you are depending on Headlines to guide your opinions of other topics, you are under-informed and acting foolishly.
Indeed so here’s hoping that Zwift does not get any traction using participation numbers as a headline so for subsequent Zwift Games in the future Zwift does not make any race courses Zwift Games exclusives. If Zwift does do that again it would be better if Zwift did not release the course completion badge until the later time that the route is open to general riders from the map menu.
D Cat was like the wild west with out of Cat and non categorised racers. It was best to treat these events as group rides rather than races. I really wish there was a way to categorise people in some uncategorised race events before allocating them a race Category.
D cat riders like fair racing too and are as passionate about it as anyone else in higher categories and we dont want our races to be used as FTP tests for first time racers who end up in higher cats.
I’m wondering if interest and participation dropped off a cliff after the second week when the Big Spin started.
The custom painted Wahoo Kickrs should have been random drawing prizes offered to anyone who completes all stages.
I had fun doing this, but now with all this data, Zwift definately needs to come up with better seeding algorithms for future events.
80,000 racers and zero racing infrastructure in Zwift. What a shame.
Yes — compare and contrast with Indie Velo, which is basically one ex-Zwift employee doing all of the coding. I much prefer Zwift overall but it’s not a racing platform.
My takes:
Definitely right on UCI- I don’t think any other e-sports have an equivalent, or ‘national federations’ as gatekeepers to events.
when is the penny going to drop that Zwift is a game, and not a ‘sport’ ? shouldn’t be a distinction between ‘community’ and ‘elite’, should just be a contest as to who can play/race the game the best.