Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist • Hacker News Board

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#61

Post by mitjam » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 8:33 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #41

jbm wrote: post #15

I loved this story but take issue with the framing. Dishonest reinvention of oneself is not a modern phenomena; my gut feeling is that this was a common occurrence. You have classic fictional books about the premise (IE the Count of Monte Cristo) which at least makes it sound like people used to feel the idea was plausible. Rather, it strikes me that the ability to determine the lies is the real story here. 30 years…

There are many example of fantasists and con artists creating fake back stories for themselves. Casanova and Cagliostro are among the most famous examples. Affecting fake noble titles was a favourite ploy.

In Germany the Captain of Köpenick is famous to this day as every child at one point reads Zuckmayers play based on this real story. In 1906 a shoemaker dressed up as a captain of the Prussian army, gathered some soldiers under his command, arrested the major and stole money from the city of Köpenick. He was arrested and served a sentence but became a folk hero and was pardoned by the Kaiser. (1) A striking parallel is the confident use of clothes and signs of authority.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Voigt

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#62

Post by kenned3 » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 8:58 PM UTC

cyberpanther wrote: post #32

I created a Strava segment in my neighborhood and started to monitor it. I quickly found a couple cheaters and flagged them. Some I could tell some were just bad GPS data, such as riding a bike in a lake. I usually take mine down if the GPS is totally off. However, some were definitely blatant cheating, such as cycling at 80 mph when the road speed is 40mph.

I gave up on Strava long ago and now only use it to "benchmark" myself. How well did i do on this ride vs the last time i took this trip?

The cheating on Strava is just shameful. you often see people with impressive KOM scores, but then check their ride history and it is pathetic and clear they cheated. Someone with 3 rides and an average speed of just 8km/h posting a 55KM climb up a 6 Degree incline? Sure...

As the other guy posted, strava's DEV's need to do more to stop this. Cross-reference the KOM with the rider's history.. or even just exclude things that are simply not possible??

I've had my GPS mess up, and sometimes post that i was traveling hundreds of KM/h and flagged those trips myself.. I would think that an average speed of 833 km/h should be a red flag for strava as well, but it wasnt?

Lastly, i fail to understand the whole point of cheating in the first place. Great, you got KOM on something, and everyone saw this, knows you cheated and so?

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#63

Post by kenned3 » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

stereocodes wrote: post #56

nradov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that Strava doesn't even try to automatically flag activities that are obviously fake or cheating. Their developers just seem completely lazy or incompetent. Like it should be trivial to automatically flag any activity that is significantly faster than the world record for that distance.

> developers just seem completely lazy or incompetent why? you really don't need to go down that road. Are you a developer yourself? because I'm sure you don't enjoy someone saying you're lazy because you haven't implemented a feature that some rando on the internet thinks you should. You must not be a developer because you can't possible think that this decision lands squarely on the shoulders of the dev team.

I've had my GPS go haywire and tell me my average speed was 833km/h. Do you think it is unreasonable to assume strava should have flagged this?

Strava needs to take more ownership of the rampant cheating. It is costing them users, and causing the overall quality of the product to go downhill. I use to be a big strava fan, now the only thing i use it for is to benchmark myself as anything else isnt worthwhile given the rampant cheating that takes place.

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#64

Post by rdiddly » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

Just a few random thoughts in no particular order:

It's ironic that his fake career arc kind of paralleled a lot of people's real ones. After fake-achieving everything he wanted to in the corporate world, he had a crisis moment and/or reached an age where he probably started thinking more about what fake career could come next and be more fake-fulfilling. Hence, the fake cycling thing. (On the other hand, it might just be that the Alexium lies collapsed and he was forced to move on, literally reinventing himself like he did again later when he ended up in the gun trade.)

Lindsey Graham's expression looks like he has already figured out this guy is full of shit. Bob Brookins also. (Though of course my eye has been pretty well jaundiced by this point in the piece.)

I guess Cycling Tips doesn't want to guess publicly what really happened to his wife, presumably due to defamation case law, but I'll go ahead and publicly "muse" that maybe she was about to blow the lid off his fakery. Anyway I've watched enough Dateline NBC to know that

1. Spouses always kill each other 100% of the time. (That's actually just a joke about Dateline.)

2. People who are already hiding something often turn out to have pretty strong motives for murder.

3. Regardless of 1 or 2, lies or changing stories about a person's cause of death (even if, and kind of especially if, it's by a guy who's lying about everything else) is at least cause for an investigation.

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#65

Post by rdiddly » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

doogerdog wrote: post #59

I'm an avid cyclist and this was a fascinating article. Well researched and well written. The author put in a lot of time to track down all the lies, but it sort of glosses over one point. There had to be a ton of people that knew it was made up and did nothing. Why did't anyone make him put up or shut up? If I lived within a few hundred miles of his shop, I would have dropped by just to meet him and get something I…

Yeah that part is interesting while unfortunately being largely unknowable. A lot of people might've been aware of one or two lies and thought "Well what's the harm?" It's only when (as the author says) you start to appreciate the full picture that you realize what the harm is.

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#66

Post by rdiddly » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #45

saila wrote: post #44

KOM = king of the mountain. Apparently it's an award you get when you beat the current best time for a given segment in Strava. The article doesn't expand the abbreviation anywhere which is extremely annoying.

I'm a big fan of always expanding acronyms when used for the first time myself, so I hear ya on that point. That said, I find it slightly more excusable here because the source publication (cyclingtips.com) is targeted to a specific audience, and most members of that audience (as opposed to the public at large) would generally know what a Strava KOM is. I'd find this a more egregious issue if this were in the Washing…

Or "HN" for that matter

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#67

Post by rdiddly » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

lom wrote: post #2

I started reading this, but then realized it was almost 20000 words long.. how much is there to say? He faked his career, then got called out after some time, this topic really isn’t worth all the effort that was put into it

Well I enjoyed it. And to some degree (as I've said elsewhere on this thread and as the author himself kind of indicates), in order to appreciate the scale of the deceptions, you have to see the whole picture. And getting there takes some effort. But yeah, if I weren't reading this for entertainment I would want to be paid, for sure.

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#68

Post by smackeyacky » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

kenned3 wrote: post #62

cyberpanther wrote: post #32

I created a Strava segment in my neighborhood and started to monitor it. I quickly found a couple cheaters and flagged them. Some I could tell some were just bad GPS data, such as riding a bike in a lake. I usually take mine down if the GPS is totally off. However, some were definitely blatant cheating, such as cycling at 80 mph when the road speed is 40mph.

I gave up on Strava long ago and now only use it to "benchmark" myself. How well did i do on this ride vs the last time i took this trip? The cheating on Strava is just shameful. you often see people with impressive KOM scores, but then check their ride history and it is pathetic and clear they cheated. Someone with 3 rides and an average speed of just 8km/h posting a 55KM climb up a 6 Degree incline? Sure... As the…

I gave up on it, but for a different reason. Strava is basically "done" in that all the roads have been ridden tens of thousands (and even hundreds of thousands) of times. Take away the cheating and the ranking on climbs just becomes ossified over time. It basically started out as a fun activity and turned into a public performance that nobody else cared about.

There are plenty of other apps out there you can use to track your personal progress that don't have the "social" bit attached.

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#69

Post by nradov » Sun, May 01, 2022, 1:36 AM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #57

nradov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that Strava doesn't even try to automatically flag activities that are obviously fake or cheating. Their developers just seem completely lazy or incompetent. Like it should be trivial to automatically flag any activity that is significantly faster than the world record for that distance.

There are a few cases that are trivial, but there are a lot more that can be very difficult. I'm sure the devs err on the side of avoiding false positives, because that could really enrage a user.

The problem is that the Strava developers have been too lazy to even catch the most obvious cases where there is zero risk of false positives. Like if someone "runs" a mile in 3:25 on a flat segment, is that really possible? It would be absolutely trivial to automatically flag those cases, but they haven't bothered to even try.

Re: Exposed by a Strava KOM: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist

#70

Post by sleepytimetea » Sun, May 01, 2022, 3:12 AM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #64

Just a few random thoughts in no particular order: It's ironic that his fake career arc kind of paralleled a lot of people's real ones. After fake-achieving everything he wanted to in the corporate world, he had a crisis moment and/or reached an age where he probably started thinking more about what fake career could come next and be more fake-fulfilling. Hence, the fake cycling thing. (On the other hand, it might ju…

The mystery about the wife's illness and cause of death is actually a very good endorsement of HIPAA health information privacy laws. Not too long ago, medical records were leaked and all sorts of privacy was violated. I am happy to see the preservation of privacy in this case, although I am curious as heck too.