Over the past three weeks, I’ve hammered home the brutal reality: ZRL’s rigid w/kg categories don’t just ignore the physics of smaller bodies—they actively penalize them. As a lightweight rider, you’re not just battling the course; you’re up against a metric that treats you and a 70 kg rider as identical if your ratios match, ignoring the 40+ watt deficit that makes your racing life an uphill battle.
In my last article, I laid out an alternative system: shifting ZRL categories away from w/kg and onto a scale of absolute watts. It’s a fix that respects the physics of cycling and levels the playing field for lighter riders. But let’s be honest—that’s just one path. There are many ways to solve the inequity baked into our current system, and we need to be open to exploring all of them.
Change in Zwift-land doesn’t always move at the speed of light. While we push for the ideal solution, we need a bridge—something that stops the bleeding right now.
Today, we’re exploring another potential fix that’s already sitting in our back pockets: the Zwift Racing Score (ZRS).
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not standing here singing the praises of the ZRS as the perfect, flawless future of racing. As I’ve discussed before, the system is currently plagued by combined gender rankings that render women’s achievements invisible and discourage women-only participation. I remain deeply skeptical of ZRS’s “black box” nature and its failure to prioritize gender-separate leaderboards.
But here is why I’m proposing it as a necessary short-term fix for ZRL: It’s a far more equitable sorting hat than the current, broken w/kg system.
From w/kg Trap to Performance Reality
The current w/kg system is a trap because it tries to categorize us based on a static snapshot of power relative to weight. But as we’ve seen, that ratio hides the reality of your absolute power ceiling.
The ZRS, however, shifts the focus from that rigid, one-size-fits-all calculation to how you actually race. It factors in your results, your finishing position, and your competitive performance over time.
Think about it:
• w/kg says, “Your static ratio fits this bracket, so you belong here”—even if you’re a 50 kg rider who gets toasted by the raw power of the field because your absolute wattage can’t compete with the heavy hitters in your bracket.
• ZRS says, “You’re consistently placing near the front of your current races? Let’s nudge you up.” Or, “You’re struggling to hold the pack in your current category? Let’s move you where you can actually compete.”
It’s not perfect. But for lighter weight women, it’s a move toward a field where we are categorized by our competitive reality rather than a metric that fails to account for our power limits.
Why ZRS Beats the w/kg Thresholds
I know the ZRS can feel like a bit of a mystery. But it solves the most glaring issue we face in ZRL: the “category cliff.”
Right now, you hit a certain w/kg number, and bam—you’re bumped up. There’s zero nuance.
The system unfairly elevates lighter riders who have the fitness to achieve a high w/kg, while heavier riders who are true powerhouses—but sit at a lower w/kg—remain comfortably in lower categories.”
It creates a scenario where a lighter rider is forced to redline just to stay in a pack, while heavier riders with significantly higher absolute power output can maintain a steady, lower-effort tempo in that same category.
ZRS doesn’t care about your ratio in isolation. It cares about how you fare against the field. If you’re a lighter rider who is tactically smart and consistently performs, your ZRS will reflect that. If you’re being unfairly bumped into a higher category because your w/kg is “too high”—even though your absolute power output is actually keeping you at the back of the pack—the ZRS is designed to see that performance disparity.
It’s an imperfect, results-based correction for the current deeply flawed, assumption-based system.
A Bridge, Not the Destination
To be clear: I am not asking for ZRS to replace the need for meaningful categories long term. I’m asking for it to serve as the immediate, pragmatic “bridge” to a fairer league classification system.
If we want ZRL to remain the premier Zwift racing experience, it cannot continue to alienate a massive chunk of its ridership—especially women and smaller riders who are simply being categorized out of contention. Implementing ZRS as the primary sorting mechanism for categories would:
- Stop the immediate exodus: Riders who are tired of being crushed by unfair category assumptions get a fighting chance.
- Reward race craft: It brings tactics, positioning, and actual race results into the fold, rather than just raw power tests.
- Provide dynamic adjustment: It’s a living, breathing metric that updates as you improve (or as you find your true level), unlike the static, one-and-done w/kg threshold.
The Elephant in the Room: Why the Delay?
Here is the frustrating part: the majority of races on Zwift have already migrated to the ZRS. The platform clearly recognized that the old A-D category system had hit its expiration date. There is an obvious, data-driven reason they moved away from it.
So, why hasn’t WTRL—the organization that manages the ZRL—gotten with the program?
By sticking to the outdated w/kg categorization, ZRL is actively resisting the shift toward more dynamic, performance-based racing that the rest of the Zwift ecosystem has already embraced. We are effectively racing under a “legacy” system that ignores the very tools Zwift has developed to make competition fairer. If the majority of the platform has already made the leap, it begs the question: how much longer can ZRL ignore the reality of its own metrics?
The Bottom Line
I’d take a slightly ‘black box’ racing score over a system that I know—with 100% certainty—is rigged against the anatomy of lighter-weight riders.”
Is the ZRS the holy grail? Absolutely not. I’ll keep pushing for categories that respect absolute wattage, the nuances of cycling physics, and—most importantly—the necessity of separate gender rankings. But if ZRL is serious about being “fair,” they need to act. Using ZRS as the short-term fix isn’t about being perfect; it’s about being better than the status quo.
And for those of us who have spent years fighting on behalf of all riders for a fair shake in Zwift racing, “better” is a great place to start.
What’s Next?
Last week we covered the “Watts Solution” and in this post, the immediate, pragmatic bridge of the Zwift Racing Score. But if you think we’ve reached the limits of what’s possible for fair play, you’re in for a surprise.
Next week, we’re closing out this series by tossing the rulebook out the window. We’re moving past tweaks and metrics to explore some truly “out of the box” thinking—ideas that could completely redefine how we race, how we’re categorized, and how we finally secure a future where physics is an advantage, not a hurdle.
What do you think? Are you a fan of the ZRS, or do you share my skepticism? I’d love to hear if you’ve noticed your own racing experience improve (or decline) since the move toward racing scores. Let’s get the conversation going in the comments!
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