They are quite a few posting on the ZRL fb looking for teams. bit of a bun fight as i said as the biggest teams on zwift are instantly jumping on posts to try recruit more but might be best method.
But i do agree recruitment for ZRL is far from perfect.
The other thing is looking at races that race but are not assigned to teams. I purposely always avoid trying to poach/recruit riders that are in teams. 1 its a bit disrespectful to other teams and mainly its just a waste of time look for riders that are unattached
I wish there was some way to restrict big teams expanding further as it would lead to a better ZRL if the smaller teams were more competitive. I did a couple years ago suggest that team size should be capped but whether that is in any way feasible is another question as they will just split into sister clubs and effectively be one team anyway
ZRL has been fun in the past when I’ve been able to do it, but it’s not easy to organize. I’m on a small team who all ride about the same time of day that will never be able to field a ZRL team even if there were interest because we wouldn’t get six people in the same division. Even the bigger team I’m part of probably won’t have a B- (or even regular B) team that fits my schedule (side note, I’m not offended or upset about being a B- and I hope no one wastes more time coming up with a nicer way to phrase it than they already have) because there’s so much of a split in times, categories, etc,
I like the idea of team competitions where people of different abilities can all race and contribute beyond low-tier finisher points. Maybe they come up with something similar to the TTT coffee class system and a scoring system that lets the lower end people not just be pack fodder.
One of these rounds.. shoot maybe it was 2 years ago now
I won’t say the team/club name, but I think they had 3 entire teams from the one club racing together…
Like I get it could be kind of fun and perhaps funny, but… when literally half the field has the same club name, and they’re working together, which at the time the meta was to Z1 sprint races to soak up the points, which is exactly what these teams did, together, was… a mood sourer.
Honestly, even if WTRL had a “open” club like FRR does, where if you aren’t assigned to a team, it puts you in the “FRR team”. Even a simple solution like that would be nice; auto assigning people.
It could allow legitimate teams to form if the bond is good from a season, or allow others to perhaps find a team just via racing. It’s such a good solution with so little work.
We picked up someone that way on FRR who joined our team, just because they were team-less and we were racing with them day in day out.
Have you considered ignoring ZRL and doing team races that are good? Works for me! I understand the desire to see a better ZRL but I don’t see it happening.
First, there might be a dead time but FOUR hours between events followed by events every 15 minutes is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Literally it defies comprehension. If you don’t have start times EVER in those time slots, you’re NEVER going to figure out if there’s going to be racers who want to race then. Didn’t happen in ‘21 and it’s not happening in ‘25.
Second, the TTT is a timed event and your finishing time is same whether there’s 2 or 20. Don’t the times get put into the entire ZRL event? It doesn’t matter how many teams show up for an event. You just need one. Maybe the rest of the events have a requirement for more teams; See Above…
And then the team thing: I have enough trouble making it to events I want to do on a regular basis. I don’t want to have the responsibility for making a group be able to compete. Clubs is the answer for that but WTRL is NOT interested in hearing alternatives to what they believe is the only way to do things. It is very unlikely I will ever participate in one of their events.
This doesn’t speak to the inclusion of a team who was caught cheating and not punished for it. That happened four years ago and WTRL continues to ignore it.
Well, we’ll have to see about that. Start times is a real issue for me. The responsibility for making sure I’m there is another issue. I’m retired and I’d rather make time for what I want to do when I want to do it. Getting slotted into specific event times has become a problem for me and I don’t want to make this a problem for the rest of my “team” when it should be a problem for just me.
Any news on why there are no ZRL results from yesterday yet? Maybe there’s something on their FB but I’m still banned from there
Edit - I understand that there is indeed something in their FB group about it. Would be nice if WTRL didn’t assume that everyone’s on FB and put important news updates on their website.
Here is the update from WTRL. Ironic that they “don’t want to leave anyone in the dark” but posted this important update on a platform that not everyone uses
zwift needs to rethink its strategic partnership with wtrl, wtrl simply do not have the manpower to be able to run these large events without issues cropping up every single season, Martin needs more staff to be able to handle events of this size or zwift do it themselves (although they don’t like racing so we know that this wont happen)
Odd how there is no apology in there anywhere for teams that were unable to race and didn’t know why. Properly crafted apologies work and cost nothing.
there isn’t an apology at all, not that I would expect one from Martin, his idea of customer service is usually to respond with a snarky “why don’t you do all this yourself then” type of an attitude. He clearly bit off more than he can chew this year with the website revamp.
