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:
- C OOLHAND: 380
- Naofumi Nozaki (AHDR): 370
- Stephen Mulrine (HERD): 192
- Robin Andersson [eSRT] CRP: 191
- Michael Boardman [mTNT]: 186
- Gregory Whitehead: 184
- Ben Dusinberre: 181
- . # Zwift_drafter: 179
- D Macca: 177
- Michal Satura: 168
- Henry Li-Zwift Fighter: 168
- Todd Sheaman (DIRT): 167
- L Tait Age 68 WWCC: 158
- Head Wound: 158
- Matt Hold: 156
- Chris Keogh: 156
- Berk Kayin: 151
- Douglas Cameron: 150
- Noheya MONIO [TMR]: 146
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
Haven’t raced the Tinies yet? Sign Up Here!
Questions or Comments?
Did you find any of the data above particularly interesting? Got a Tiny Race question or comment? Share below!
Chapeau to the CatA riders Michael, Stephen, Robin and Nozaki-san who I duke it out regularly with on the Advanced Tinies. Let’s see how we get on this time next year!? GLHF to everyone on this list! 💪💪💪💪
How do I subscribe only to stuff that interests me? Tiny races data is not one of those things.
I enjoyed the tiny races. It was a little like a vo2 max or FTP test kind of race for me. Definitely felt the fatigue. It is too hard to sign up for all 4 so your feature request is great. I wanted to try your Tuesday night pure VO2 max races but the time aren’t very good for me (USA Eastern time zone). While you thought the “snipping” was bad wasn’t – it’s only bad if you are a racer. If you are trying to improve your skills – then it is fine. I wish you would offer the both the tiny race in the Vo2 max races as a standalone set of 2 (not the 4pack your push). Sign up once, get 2 “races” in one with a 4 minute recovery interval [that the new feature for Zwift to built in], at the end you can see your results versus the two previous weeks of the races. This way the rider builds up to the race format you wanted but my score card shows the rider improving their week to week strength/endurance.
Love the tiny races. Always a great challenge and nice suffer fest for me.
The only thing I “dislike” is the fact that once your racing score improves your are banned from racing a certain bracket and have to move one up, and you no longer compete for the full series win.
I’ve experienced this myself, where I was doing so well in first 3 races – podium or top 10 finish. I had to race in higher bracket for the fourth because of my racing score increase, finished in the lower end of the pack in the fourth race to see my score drop to the lower bracket eligibility. I lost out on the fun of competing for the overall in both brackets.
Maybe the first feature could also allow you to complete the series within the bracket you were eligible for when signing up.
thats the point. your too good for you group. its the same IRL. you get results and go from Cat 4 to Cat 3 and you dont get to beat up on Cat 4s anymore
I’d go further on the sniping – be able to permanently block the known repeat offenders from being able to sign up to any of the events that you organise (assuming you don’t already have that option of course!)
I love the Tinies, mostly for the unique challenge they offer, the option of pushing all 4 races or tactically prioritising some races… And if it goes horribly wrong, then less than 15 minutes until the next one! No dragging yourself around the rest of a long course, solo!
Keep at it Eric!
I only did my first Tiny last week and loved it. I’ll be back for more (but not this week, as I’ll be riding *gasp* outdoors…)
A big warm Ride On! from Berlin.
Great article! I will say Tiny Races are the best workout on Zwift! The only issue I have is how much it can increase or decrease your ZRS. It should be 1/4 the normal change, not a full value every race.
I would say that Tiny Races are in decline, and the charts support that. Winter peaks are becoming shorter and sharper each year; the decline starts earlier and lasts longer. Summer lows are also getting deeper.
This may correlate with fluctuations in the overall Zwift user base, but we would need to see whether other race series show the same trends. My wild guess is that Tinies suffer from two issues: ZRS and a lack of variety.
ZRS moves riders between categories from race to race, which goes against the concept of this series. Secondly, the ZRS brackets rarely change, which may discourage riders in the lower categories.
And then there is the uniformity. I understand that setting up this race series is not easy, especially given Zwift’s lack of serious tools for race organisers. But relying on the same templates at regular intervals does not help.
What I would love to see is more variety in race formats: individual time trials, draft-free races, extra sprint banners that reward the first ten riders with power-ups or time bonuses, and very short races—perhaps 2 km—to simulate velodrome sprints.
Well done Coolhand, Stephen, Todd!!!! That’s a herculean effort!
Thanks for all the work you do to sort out these events and results, fingers crossed Zwift will (finally!) update their systems and processes to make ‘sniping’ impossible, sign-up easier for noobies, and results and data collection easier for you
As a long term Cat D rider I am interested in the Category breakdown. Surprised how in some weeks Cat D had a very high proportion of participants. Was there any common factor(s) in the weeks where Cat D was in the top 2 of participants e.g. average distance of races, elevation etc?