On 6/7/2024 I raced " Team CLS Racing - Fast ‘n’ Furious - Get Summer Started Series (June '24)" (Volcano Climb). At the start there were 5 other D-category riders. After the start only 1 other rider was shown on the leader board or on the course map. The following was posted at the bottom of the leader board, “+4 other riders in your group”. (I don’t remember the exact wording but this is close.) I kept looking for time gaps for these riders but didn’t see anything. Near the finish I needlessly sped up, thinking that they might be somehow closing on me. The final result in the app showed me finishing just behind the one visible rider. No results were shown for the other riders.
During a race, what exactly does the above message mean? Does it mean that those riders dropped out? If so, it does seem odd that all 4 dropped out either in the starting pen or immediately thereafter.
Thanks,
Don C.
Looks like the other 4 did not finish, and since the first finisher is not on ZwiftPower, the trophy is yours. 
None of the other 4 are on ZwiftPower either, so we don’t have visibility into how far they rode. If they were on ZwiftPower, we would see them on the LIVE tab in the ZwiftPower results.
Looking at the results after the race I can see that these riders didn’t finish.
The problem is, when I see that message during the race I don’t know what to make of it. Does it specifically mean that the riders have dropped out? If so, why doesn’t it just say so explicitly; then I wouldn’t have to worry about these riders. If it means something else then what?
Now that Zwift includes their own full results in the past event listings (outside of zwiftpower), the old request for them to include DNFs in the results should be resurrected. There’s really no reason to omit them.
It just means there were that many riders behind you at some point. When you don’t see any names in the list that means they are “gone” and DNF is the most likely reason, however sometimes a rider will disappear because their Internet connection was disrupted, and in that case they may reappear later.
As for they “why” question, only Zwift can answer for their UI design. In some cases Zwift may not know what happened to a rider since an application crash won’t look different from a rider whose Internet connection temporarily crapped out. They would know if a user ended their ride though, and it would be possible to communicate that to the other participants.