Justice for the leaderboards! Strava has announced a new algorithm that will automatically flag activities with “too much erroneous data”, so you don’t have to wake up to that dreaded “Uh oh” email just to find that your crown has been stolen by someone going over 120km/h on a ‘bicycle’.
In a post this week, the popular platform for sharing any activity, from rides and runs to skiing, has revealed that it is “updating its algorithm to make leaderboards more credible, and taking steps to proactively prevent suspicious efforts from appearing on leaderboards”.
“We know. There’s nothing worse than scoping out the leaderboard for a segment you want to tackle only to see the CR, KOM or QOM is 65 MPH and thinking to yourself, ‘That must have been a car’,” said the company.
Strava also announced that it will be withholding from leaderboards any activities that have faulty GPS data or appear incorrectly labelled (we’ve all gone for a run and forgot to switch the app to a bike ride…).
Strava said: “With these and other ongoing changes, we can better ensure your efforts will get the ranking they deserve and you can trust that the CR, KOM or QOM (plus all the other times on the leaderboard) are the real deal.”
Spurious data and counterfeit activities have long plagued people using the app. road.cc has in the past has received a number of emails informing us of people losing their KOM/QOMs to seemingly impossible rides.
Last year, on our live blog we told the familiar story of how a member of the road.cc team lost a KOM to someone who ‘cycled’ from Newcastle to London in six hours, with an average speed of 90km/h and hitting a max speed of 157km/h.
> I lost my Strava KOM to someone who ‘cycled’ from London to Newcastle in six hours
And just a few months before that, long-distance cyclist, world record breaker and road.cc contributor Matt Page spotted a trend of losing his KOMs to ‘riders’ hitting law-breaking speeds on motorcycles on the roads of Wales.
“Perhaps Powys Police should start checking Strava for those who flout speed limits. Multiple times each weekend I get ‘Uh Oh’ emails, so far the record is 180kph. I have no idea why motorcyclists have started using Strava, but I hope Mr Horton will sometime get what he deserves,” he wrote on Twitter, with the screenshot of the new KOM holder with a motorbike as their profile picture, and a max speed of 161km/hr on the ride.
Perhaps @DyfedPowys should start checking @Strava for those who flout speed limits. Multiple times each weekend I get “Uh Oh” emails, so far the record is 180kph. I have no idea why motorcyclists have started using Strava, but I hope Mr Horton will sometime get what he deserves. pic.twitter.com/0Qhio77dKy
— Matt Page (@mattpage24) September 19, 2022
Back in September, we had asked Strava what more could they be doing to stop people from using the platform in this way, and they said: “Being part of the Strava community is a commitment to respect: we respect each other, ourselves and the rules. When we all share mutual respect, we all win. Read our community standards here.
“That means that we rely on our global community to help us monitor the integrity of our segments and leaderboards. We ask our athletes to flag anything that doesn’t match our community standards – including mechanical cheating – which will be addressed.”
“Strava values sportsmanship and fair play, and we want members of our community to earn spots on the leaderboards through clear and safe competition.”
> Strava KOMS are being hijacked by motorbikers going as fast as 112mph
If Strava gets its algorithm right, cyclists who swear by the app could finally breath a sigh of relief. According to its new policies, there will be a new threshold for flagging and if it deems an activity to be suspicious enough, all segment efforts from those activities will be withheld from leaderboards until the activity gets verified.
Strava also said that it is “doubling down on catching bike rides (or downhill ski runs, car rides, etc.) marked as runs with new run-specific parameters that will flag activities based on their distance and pace data”.
But what if I’m actually that good, you ask? Well, Strava says that it will do its best not to automatically flag you. The company said that it’ll make sure that none of Tadej Pogačar’s efforts at the upcoming Tour de France get flagged automatically, although his ridiculous showing at the Oude Kwaremont KOM at this year’s Tour of Flanders, smashing the previous record by 11 seconds, did get flagged.
> Tadej Pogačar uploads Tour of Flanders win to Strava… gets flagged
If you’re secretly the next Merckx and one of your ‘true’ activities does get flagged, let us know…
41 thoughts on “Strava to automatically flag suspicious activities in hopes to improve leaderboard accuracy”
glad this is happenign – i
glad this is happenign – i think the error has always been the way around flagging worked – asking others to flag an erroneous ride ratehr than flagging and proving it is correct as this seems to be.
There will be far less data sets that are flagged that are actually correct than vice versa. Same goes for the climbing/riding challenges where the top spots are held by people who have ridden 150,000m elevation in 8 days. I’m never going to be near the top but would like an honest measure of how far off i am and also be able to see the really outstanding people who do unbelievable things.
Good to see Strava have
Good to see Strava have finally got round to this. More value on the core product for subscribers than adding extra add-ons.
They could have rolled out a simpler version much earlier to catch rides that average 90kpm or runs that are way faster than the world record for that distance which dominate some leaderboards.
Disallowing segments attempts where there is a big jump in GPS data will also help clean up some of the leaderboards (this seems to be a particular problem with activities recorded on phones).
Will be interesting to see the affect on some leadboards after they roll this out.
I thought they did this
I thought they did this already? They used to state they did.
Some might not think this is a big issue, but when you consider what Strava’s basic concept is (without all the extra analytical stuff you only get through a subscription) its a leadboard for user created segements. If that can’t be seen to be authentic what is the point? If you subscribe to it then you expect the product to be accurate in this basic function at the very least.
Personally, I would only have top 10 times allowed if they conform to a strict criteria. ie, having at least 2 measurable dynamics – power, heart rate, cadence to show its not in a car or on a scooter etc and these have to be obviously human powered – So, you did 25mph for 10 mins up a 15% incline and your heart rate was only 90bpm. Really?
And lets get rid of segments that have an overall negative gradient. How can you be KOM of going downhill at 30mph? you could feasibly have a fastest time without even turning a pedal.
One issue I think will be much harder to solve is for womens leaderboards. Its much easier to have a QOM than a KOM and in many cases an average male rider could masquerade as a female (Send your Gender Identity complaints here…) in order to sit on top of the fastest times.
Last , but not least, I want group rides have an asterix next to them so we can see who actually earned their times and who sat in a bunch tapping on to get a leaderboard place. If Strava can see its a group ride it should state it.
Is this an implicit admission
Is this an implicit admission that they were lying the whole time when they claimed they were already doing this? Not that we needed any more proof…
With more and more ebikes on
With more and more ebikes on the road the KOM/QOM (as in going uphill – none of the flat pish) is pretty much pointless now.
Why I would say you must have
Why I would say you must have 2 measurable dynamics. An ebike might get up a hill fast but youre power and heart rate would most likely give you away
Off the back wrote:
Even that wouldn’t stop a determined cheat. I did some experiments on a local 18% hill with my road bike and my (legal 250W) road ebike using my HRM and power meter: climbing at the same pace my heart rate was around 170 on the road bike and 150 on the ebike and my power output was around 450W on the road bike (it’s a short climb!) and 250W on the ebike. The power difference would seem to seem a good way of spotting a cheat but I could, if I wished, simply change my weight on Strava to make the watts per kilo look realistic. I could also, if I wanted, turn the power assist down to the level of a strong tailwind so it would look realistic but still give me the extra 50W needed for a KOM.
Asking for heartrate and power data would weed out people zooming up hills on illegal 1000W fatbikes on the throttle but identifying people using legal PAS bikes would be a lot harder. Besides which it might not be a good commercial decision for Strava: the main reason a lot of people have paid accounts is to participate in the leaderboards and go for KOMs, faced with a requirement to buy a power meter and an HRM one suspects many might decide it wasn’t worth it.
A lot of bikes come fitted
A lot of bikes come fitted with power meters these days. It isnt the ultra expensive item it once was. HRM can be picked up for a few quid. An apple watch or similar can also do the job so its not a big ask.
You will still get the determined who go out their way to cheat. Thats never going to change and that can be tackled later down the line but to dismiss doing anything just because of them is a bit dumb when the vast majority of fake KOMS are taken by cars or motorbikes. It wont get everyone but it will sort out the vast majority.
If anyone is still suspicious of those other possibly ebike rides you can can flag it yourself still. Sometimes they are easy to spot if the rider has a sudden super human burst of accleleration or 99% or previous rides are not in line with this new found athletisim where before they were taking twice as long. Things like that are taken into consideration when Strava looks at flagging rides. Did they do the same ride 20 times before and this is 200% quicker than anything they did previously for example.
Off the back wrote:
I agree it’s not the expensive item it once was (a 4iiii Precision single side for R7000 105 can be had from Wiggle right now in 170mm for less than £200), but it’s a bit of a stretch to say “a lot of bikes come fitted with power meters these days.” A few bikes do, a lot don’t.
I did say at least 2 dynamics
I did say at least 2 dynamics, of which power is only one. Cadance and Heart Rate were suitable for many years before Power became available to the masses. SO dont get too hung up on that. Its really just to show it isnt somone in a car or on a motorbike. If you have a regular data stream alongside the route recording something that shows you were most likely on a bike then it will help stop a fair chunk of fakes. IT won’t get everyone – nothing will, but thats no reason to do nothing at all.
And it isnt to wrong to say a lot of new bikes come fitted with a PM, If you buy a Sram fitted bike. All the way down to Rival you can get a PM. Giant were fitting them as standard 3-4 years ago on certain groupset levels. They are becoming more likely to be fitted. Not all but certainly a lot – If you want to quantify what ‘a lot’ is be my guest but its fair to say they are not a rarity in 2023
Off the back wrote:
The power meter isn’t standard on Rival, it’s a £200 add-on and Rival itself is around £1300 for the groupset and is generally found on bikes around £4000 plus, so that’s still excluding a lot of people.
Did I say STANDARD? No! I
Did I say STANDARD? No! I said a lot of new bikes come fitted. Again, if you want to quantify a lot be my guest, but fact is you can get a power meter fitted on a bike for sub £5k which although expensive is still pretty middle of the road pricing these days unfortunately.
It is excluding a lot, but as previously mentioned you can get a power meter for less than £300 or even cheaper used on ebay etc. If you want one you can get one without breaking the bank.
Not everyone subscribes to Strava, but for those that do and ride regularly and are likely to be putting good times on leaderboards they may be more likely to have one. If you dont have a pm and dont subscribe then thats unfortunate but dont expect your rides to place on leaderboards. IF you are using the free to use part then you can have no complaints
I don’t think it’s quite
I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say “a lot of bikes” come fitted with power meters, as far as I have seen that’s pretty much the preserve of the £5000 plus bike, isn’t it? Also, there’s nothing to stop people fitting a power meter to an ebike, I have at times, as above, fitted my single crank power meter to my road ebike in order to calculate what level of exercise I’m getting (no I did not submit any of the times to Strava!).
I’m not sure “you weren’t this fast before” is a great metric either, at one time I was 2/1900 for my age group and 41/15,000 on Oakley Street in Chelsea, which is a road I regularly ride down in the morning and evening rush-hour fairly slowly and carefully, one day during lockdown I was out getting my daily exercise and seeing that the street was completely clear end to end I opened up to see what I could do, with your suggestion that legitimate ride would be flagged for being much better than I’d done previously.
I do agree that they could do a lot more automatically to remove obvious car/motorbike records, i.e. ones that even a pro wouldn’t manage. Maybe they could even remove the aeroplane records, quite a few segments in London that are underneath the Heathrow flight path have KOMs of 400kmh+ where people have (hopefully accidentally) left their Strava on for their flight home!
You can get a bike for less
You can get a bike for less than £5k with a power meter fitted – see link below for example. And a lot isnt the majority, again if you want to quantify it go ahead, but you can pick up stages, 4iiii, Garmin pedals (and other alternative pedal based meters) for under £300.
One might say, that if you subscribe to Strava and are the sort who troubles the leaderboards on Strava on a regular basis you are quite likely (not guaranteed) to have a power meter or a hrm etc. And if you don’t then sorry, you can have your time on Strava but dont expect it to appear on a leaderboard top 10. Thats fair imo.
And Yes there are still ways to cheat it, but that a minority of cases. It isnt as bad as the 100kph KOM in a car. Most of the time they are people just forgetting to stop their head units after they put the bike in the car. Some are blatant cheating, its all about minimising what we can right now.
https://www.sigmasports.com/item/Trek/Emonda-SL-6-eTap-Disc-Road-Bike-2023/U2JF
Rendel Harris wrote:
I think there are a great many strava users who are not likely to trouble any KOMs
Except that KOMs can also be
Except that KOMs can also be downhill! Beyond a certain gradient/over a particular type of segment, e-bikes are of little help.
I gave up flagging the e
I gave up flagging the e-MTBers in the top ten on one of my local climbs, if you flagged one activity the preceding activity with 4 or 5 top ten worthy efforts would just pop up instead.
It might be better in future if riders were forced to select road/MTB/eMTB etc. because at the moment I think it just defaults to ‘ride’? I don’t really believe the e-MTBers around me really care about taking top tens on a road climb ?
KOM, QOM? Better just call it
KOM, QOM? Better just call it MOM, monarch of the mountain / motored up the mountain.
rookybiker wrote:
I think the ‘mountain’ bit is the really dodgy bit of the name.
LGBTQOM too then if we’re
LGBTQOM too then if we’re getting all woke
Off the back wrote:
Wot no Furry of the Mountain?
What does ‘woke’ mean?
What does ‘woke’ mean?
I don’t like something but I
I don’t like something but I can’t be bothered to explain or can’t explain why.
Or in your case IDIOT.
Or in your case IDIOT.
You come on without knowing
You come on without knowing me and throw abuse about. And you call me an idiot ??
Never ceases to amaze me how
Never ceases to amaze me how ironically thin skinned people who think it is hilarious to chuck LGBT around thinking it is funny or call everything woke are.
If i was being abusive I would have called you far worse. Your post is idiotic, ergo you are an idiot.
And if I am gay would that be
And if I am gay would that be ok? If I see it all as silly nonsense having all these things being so PC even if I’m gay and proud to be so?
Are you?
Are you?
Steve K wrote:
Indeed.
Well, care to tells us “off the back” because I am.
Yes. Are you? Or are you the
Yes. Are you? Or are you the im offended by proxy type?
Er… I think he already said
Er… I think he already said that…
People take Strava far too
People take Strava far too seriously……I suspect a lot of top times are dodgy, so what? It’s not an official competition, so lighten up…..
Very true. If they wanted a
Very true. If they wanted a real compition they would enter a Cat 4 race and understand where they really are in equal conditions. Blatant cheating by riding in, or on, vehicles which aren’t human powered aside, there are also factors such as bunch rides, wind/ gale direction and motor pacing to consider.
People subscribe to Strava,
People subscribe to Strava, so if they are paying for a product is it not fair to expect it to be fit for the purpose in which its designed?
There are so many more important things in the world right now (so people like to bang on about) So why cant people also enjoy things which make them feel better or are we all expected to just continue living with the woes of life eating at us instead?
What an utterly strange take.
What an utterly strange take. Strava has all these things because people like them and clearly care about them. If you don’t thats fine but others do and they are paying for a service that doesn’t even do basic stuff to stop cheats.
You can apply your logic to almost anything in life. Made a shit cake? Don’t worry, you’re not on bake off so lighten up. Crap day at work? Don’t worry, there will be another one tomorrow that might be better. Lighten up.
I don’t really care about Strava but I don’t have any issue with those who do and I don’t think its massively unfair for them to expect them to take some simple precautions to improve it.
I’m a saddo that does a bit
I’m a saddo that does a bit of this because I can’t be bothered to take the juice to be competive racing. When I tried to get a local KOM, I found that after about an hour of posting the ride hat I had been ‘flagged’. Most disgruntled after my effort, I took to messaging the person whom I had taken the KOM from, as it can only be them right?, but to my surprise he knew nothing about it. So Stava must of flagged it, although it doesn’t actually say who did or why. I thought to myself that if can do it once, I’ll do it again, i tried the next day and am now second!!. ?
If your ride and KOM was
If your ride and KOM was genuineyou can appeal and send Strava your GPX file to prove it was not fake
Off the back wrote:
Why would you need to send it to Strava, they will have already had it in order to flag it in the first place?
They request it. I have done
They request it. I have done this when I had a KOM flagged, I appealed and they asked for the original file taken directly from my Garmin. I don’t know if thats to prove you havent manipulated the data which is possible with a text editor in windows.
Will this work? I am an
Will this work? I am an overweight and unfit forty something and strava has asked me if some of my rides were e-bike rides, and those are just me tracking rides/mileage while commuting.
It’s about time they made an
It’s about time they made an effort to clean up the leaderboards. I’m no KOMer (though it’s nice to get a trophy every now and then), but if you look at the top 10 of any segment they are usually full of trash – it would be a full time job to clean them up. It’s often not even intentional – people do a casual bike ride then drive off in their car picking up KOMs as they go, somone on our club ride got a bad GPS track and did 120kmh up a hill … these are all so obvious it’s shocking really they’ve never done this automatically (given segments were the original point of the app!)