JZRA (Jones Zwift Racing Association) is the brainchild of brothers Tim and Arnold Jones (read an interview with Tim here). Besides organizing races themselves, they also put together the first-ever ranking scheme forĀ a multiple-race season on Zwift, helping to transition Zwift racing from a single-race focus to a full-season focus, much like outdoor racing.
Beginning with the Zwifta Bianche on January 28, 2016 and ending with yesterday’s ZTR, the race season included 42 different race events such as KISS, ZTR, dZi Summit Races, and more.
View the first season’s results here. Results are available by rider,Ā team, and nation.
Here is a summary ArnoldĀ posted at the conclusion of this first season.
Starting by saying a huge well done to our top 3 riders, Frank Garcia (Team X) is our first champion, Quentin Lafaye (PTz/Vision 2) a worthy second place and Mark McIntosh (Team X) was Mr Consistent throughout the season to take 3rd.
Congratulations to Team X who stormed away with the team win with 4 riders in the top 5, and I say a begrudging congratulations to the USA for beating the UK for the top spot in the nations rankings! (but seriously well done USA)
Brief Statistics
3710 individual points were scored, Frank Garcia actually had 9.84% of all the points on offer. The top 5 had 26.7% of all the points.
Most wins: Lafaye: 7, Garcia: 6, Schumm: 4, Louge: 3, Little: 2, Schmidheiny: 2 and Kuhn: 2
Thanks
Huge thanks to Glen Knight for bringing KISS in and Christian Wiedmann for bringing in ZTR and Frederic Jacquemin and co for the dZi Summit Races.
Special shoutout to Alex Callejo who upgraded our spreadsheet to a super-savvy version to help us keep it all under control, without it there would be alot more errors and alot more time required to input the points.
Also James Hodges for Zwift power and his and Glens hard work on the loggerĀ And thank you to anyone who showed up to race, we like organising stuff but that’s no good if there’s no one to organise it for.
Please do check out the post in the KISS Zwift Road Race group specifying details of the KISS/ZTR league that will be filling in for us over the next 6 weeks if you need your fix of points.
Next Season
So what of next season? Well it will kick off on 1st September. With hopefully more counting events and an improved ranking system with separated categories in parts, points to all finishers and a more competitive system (we hope). We’ll reveal specifics nearer the time.
Sponsorship?
We’re open to the idea of welcoming a sponsor for the next season and put their names to the rankings. We wouldn’t ask alot in return just to supply some prizes for the overall winners. If you have a product/charity/organisation/company or anything you want to advertise please drop me a private message and we can talk about it.
Race Team
Now this one I’ve mentioned before but we’re hoping there is some interest in riders forming a race team for the JZRA (although it might not be called JZRART as that’s a bit of a mouthful). We’d be open to having any category riders hoping to build a core before the influx of new Zwifters over the winter. Again if this interests you please do send me a private message and we can talk and gauge who’s interested.
Next Event?
In the summer we think we’ll be having a “Race to the Beach” in August, a fun race without points with a different finish line: The beach on ocean Boulevard of course! Very summery, it’s always sunny on Watopia (unlike the UK I must say!)
And the next TTT we will announce now, and it will be in align with an event recent announced by Tam Burns (see Zwift riders) and if you’ve seen his post you may realise now that this means it will be a World Championships Edition! Details will follow and don’t worry there will be opportunities for everyone to race it.
Extra little bit of news
This September Tim is off to university and since he does the bulk of the work with JZRA (in the background!) it’s likely it will be going with him, I’ll still be invlolved and around and most certainly watching intently as the season unfolds but he will become the main man as he should be and I will be taking a slight step back.
Well done you made it to the bottom of the post congratulations! A special well done, I would give you a point or 2 but it’s a bit late! See you at the Race to the Beach š and we look forward to next season!
