A Heartfelt Thank You to Niteor & The Road Ahead for Muckers
As many of you in the Muckers family may have heard, the landscape of our virtual racing world is changing. We’ve recently received word that Niteor, a project that has been a cornerstone of our community data for years, will be closing its doors in March 2026.
Thank You, Niteor Before we look to the future, we want to take a moment to show our deepest respect and thanks to the team at Niteor. For a long time, they have been the “silent engine” behind our championships. Niteor was there for checking the specialized event tiles to see where you stood in the TT rankings, Niteor made our lives as racers better every single day. Their dedication to the racing community has been invaluable, and the Muckers wouldn’t be where we are today without their support. We wish them nothing but the best in their next chapter.
How Muckers Will Move Forward We know many of you are wondering: What happens to the 2026 World Championship?
The answer is simple: The Muckers are here to stay.
While Niteor provided a wonderful bridge between us and the raw data on Rouvy, we are already hard at work on the next generation of Muckers infrastructure. Our goal is to make the connection between your race efforts and our leaderboards even smoother than before.
We are currently exploring new ways to “streamline” how we gather results directly, ensuring that our unique category system (from our Elites to our A9 warriors) remains fair, fast, and verified. You might see some changes in how we display rankings or how you sign up for events in the coming months, but our commitment to high-intensity, community-driven racing is stronger than ever.
The transition in early 2026 will be a big step, but it’s one we are taking together. We are in active conversation with Rouvy to ensure that the Muckers spirit—and our data—stays on the cutting edge.
Keep those legs moving, keep the heart rates up, and let’s make the 2026 season our best one yet!
– The Muckers Worldwide Team
Neil, Kyle…thank you for this update. Speaking as a relative newbie, but a totally committed one, let us know how as individuals we can contribute. You have previously stated that you did not ever plan to require a fee to be a Mucker racer. BUT, assuming that does not preclude voluntary contributions, and assuming a lot of extra effort to replace Niteor, please have a way for those of us who do not play with euros or pounds to contribute. tx again and cheers. (Pablo1945)
Hi Paul, thanks for the message. The main problem i personally have with a fee or contributions is the person doing it changes from just being happy to be a part of it and ends up with expectations. Its just a natural way we all end up feeling once we lay out some money. It changes from “Neil’s on holiday so no race report” to “i can’t believe we don’t have an up to date race report, what am i paying for??”
With the above, I’m exaggerating a point to make a point but we don’t want peoples mind sets to change and have the added pressure of peoples expectations because they are paying for a service
we do this because we love it and i want to keep that feeling inside me.
Now if something happened and we needed to pay for NITEOR or something like that, we might ask for help but until then, just buying the merchandise as often as you can allows us to use the profits to keep it all going.
But never say never….
As the chief race organizer here at Muckers, this news about NITEOR has really gutted me. Several reasons, but in no particular order;
We spent all of last year getting to grips with the categories and i was so excited to get on with the bonus points this year and January’s World champ points looked really interesting with this addition. Once Niteor goes, so does the categories.
The Points were set for the year to hopefully let those outside the top 50 be more competitive but because NITEOR worked this all out for me, the decimal places weren’t an issue. they will be now as i’ll have to do it all manually. Worried about 0.1 mistakes
The whole blending all the start times into one big leaderboard in the right order will now be lost. Might have to just go back to my 1 start time
The filtering of our 3 rules were just a click of a button. Ill have to go back to checking each individual finishers stats. When we have over 100 finishers, this is what takes ages. Again, this is something i need to rethink from March
I can’t see us doing the HIIT sessions anymore as i am in no way working out 16 races in one night manually.
the w/kg championship can still carry on but we loose that extra decimal place without NITEOR so it will be more rounded which is a shame as those of us who have been doing it have quite enjoyed the “decimal surprise” after we finish the event and nip onto NITEOR to see if we nailed it or were just slightly off.
Hill climb should be fine, its just the extra admin now of having to add any new riders and also adding the elevation to those on the spread sheet and running the report.
People will have to wait for my blogs to see how they are doing. This means a wait for 4 weeks for the w/kg, and a wait for 5 events for the hill climb. Loosing NITEOR means no quick live/up to the minute checks. I will try and do the blog for the worlds every Thursday night but it all depends on how long that is going to take me.
This is all just off the top of my head and i am sure more will come to light as we start to have to deal with it from the first of March.
But i need these championships to give me focus and a goal. Just one off races don’t do anything for me, unless its something epic. So i will try and keep these things going, they just might have to be tweaked as we go as i won’t know the tole of it till we get going!
Don’t know where to start. Sad to hear all the troubles you will have to go through, Neil – and gutted that we are gonna lose categories …
I do wonder if there is someone who can vibe code something with AI that can retrieve some of the data for you and sort it out in a smart way. Hmm.
people are reaching out mate. We will be fine
Any contact with the creator of Niteor? Is it just the cost of running the stack, or something more complex? PM me if you like as I’m a retired CTO/CIO and may be able to assist in a few ways.
Best,
Jon
cheers Mucker, we think we have it covered, just will take me a while to get the hang of it!
Neil, your commitment is beyond words. Please let us know how we can help. I’ll hit you up on the discord channel about this too. Like Paul, I’d gladly chip in to keep Niteor – something similar – accessible. I’m mostly retired now, but I can still code a bit, so maybe could help that way. Cheers -Eric
Nice one Mucker! getting quite a few really nice messages on all platforms wishing to help as we go forward so although some things might not remain, we should be able to carry on! But i will be hitting folks up once i know what i want to do with each championship. cheers again
What’s now deemed to be the best way to find out about upcoming races? I know you send invites on rouvy but they’re a bit clunky to navigate and the list of upcoming events on your own website appears to have been abandoned a while ago. I suspect much of this stuff may happen on facebook 🤮 or elsewhere but not all of us are on those platforms. Not a big deal, but having a one-stop shop where all this information lives would be helpful, especially for other race organisers who would like to avoid clashes/duplicated routes.
I send the invites out to all my friends on ROUVY (over 2500 now) so i do hope most get them, but also i get your point that the notification part on ROUVY isn’t the best. (i get about 100 new ones every time i log in now due to all my “friends” beating me in segments lol)
Kyle tried to stay on top of my race creations on the site but its quite time consuming and he has asked ROUVY for some help with this, something to do with API’s or something technical like that which would streamline the whole thing but this is taking time.
Yes i do post on the Muckersworldwide Facebook group reminders for upcoming race and when the blogs are ready, but we don’t have a list of upcoming races on there.
This is a part of NITEOR we never though about the impact when they closed as you’d be able to see the championships on there and new routes added.
I have started to list the next weeks upcoming races as part of the Thursday championship blog
So for now its via ROUVY itself and typing in Muckers into the search bar. if you want a specific day from our Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday then type “Muckers Tuesday” for all the races i create for Tuesdays, “Muckers Championship” for the Thursday races and “Muckers Hill” for the Sunday races.
for those wanting to avoid route clashes, I do always add the route name into all the Tuesday races, all the hill climb races and the main race on Thursdays. So to check for clashes it’d be “Muckers “one word from the route name” in the search bar and you’d find it. Just bearing in mind if its being used for a Thursday Championship race, it’ll only show the main time slot but the other 6 will also be there if you for some reason need to know those as well.
Thanks; all fine!