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

cyclingtips.com

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

#71

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

Phew! What a (doxxing) "ride".

But to be honest, I wouldn't have been curious about that climb. Doesn't seem that remarkable to me, because I think I've done similar in my youth, beginning around 1981/2, until around 1995/96. After that time not so much anymore, because of time constraints, work, and so on.

Anyways, on a 27x1 1/4 Hercules, for about 600,- DM, 10 speed only, really nothing special, but robust. "Entry level" at best. Err, and no doping at all!

I did this in 4 minutes https://goo.gl/maps/UwG86KBp1QiFuwt1A which has parts at 8% in Quellenstraße, and 12% in Freier Weg, with only 2 short flat parts, the rest is all uphill untill the end. I remember doing 45 to 48 kph on the 8% part, and 40 to 45kph on the 12% part, otherwise short bursts up to 60kph where possible.

Repeatedly, this was my "home run" to get warmed up for zipping trough the adjacent "Kottenforst" (With up 70 to 75kph on flat grounds, at times, when it was mostly empty)

I also did https://goo.gl/maps/88dwer9hSYyHij9c9 in 24 minutes, which is one minute less than very progressive drivers did by car :-) Repeatedly.

And https://goo.gl/maps/oRvGeu41hPxeZrSU9 in 19 minutes, which is slightly downhill for the first part, but still impressive. Not alone. Together with a classmate who was member of a bicycling sports club and had a much better bike. We synced our wrist watches at the start. He was knocked out for a while, while I felt almost nothing, just elation :-)

Nobody believed us the next week in school. (We did this on a saturday, around noon)

And https://goo.gl/maps/t1soU1WKtb7UBuwA9 in 55 minutes, less impressive, but still...

Oh! And https://goo.gl/maps/aV83yCj9WHFUs52FA and similar many times, in anything between 25 and 18 minutes, really strong uphilling, there is a reason for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drachenfels_Railway :-)

At these times I did at least 80 to 150km daily, depending on the weather, sometimes even 300km, which I didn't even notice at first. Other people noticed the trip distance, while I've been only fixed on the needle, because speed is what I need! ;->

Whatever, that were only the most memorable things where I can be absolutely sure I don't remember them wrong.

So I guess what I'm saying is that when I could do these things, while not professionally trained, not member of some bicycling sports club, with only an entry level road cycle/"randonneur", not doped, just for fun, in my youth...

...then that piece which made others suspicious initially, wouldn't have seemed unlikely to me at all.

Edit: And when my bicycle was broken, or lacked spare parts, I did a Marathon through the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kottenforst , sometimes 2km less, sometimes 2 more, depending on route. Though I don't remember the time anymore, probably fast. Running was mostly 'uninteresting' to me. I could do it easily, but bicycling was more fun.

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

#72

Post by spearo77 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #68
kenned3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been enjoying this one– https://wandrer.earth/

The game mechanic is novel and I'm surprised how many good areas I've been purely because I'm looking for trails I've never been before.

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

#73

Post by PrefixKitten »

hervature wrote: post #40
abdel_nasser wrote: post #7

wow that was really long but i read almost all of it. a lot of it is just going into details that are necessary to condemn him without committing libel, i feel like. the most impressive bit is that he became the CEO of a publicly traded company with totally fake CV and no education and was paid more than a million dollars. and now he works at a gun shop literally across the street from the old bike shop, peddling lie…

I'm going to push back on the Lance Armstrong bit. As you point out, anyone who followed racing at the time knew that the top tier were all doping or at least some if you wanted to pretend your hero was clean. Here is a retrospective article about its pervasiveness [1]. But, it does not take much intelligence to figure out that a banned substance, EPO, that did not have a test until 2000 was being used in the 90s. Th…

Reminds me of these here stories from Darrell Waltrip about some of the ways the NASCAR teams use to cheat back in his era lol very interesting bit of racing history that doesn't usually get talked about =p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLNT8_ZkwaE&t=218s

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

#74

Post by PrefixKitten »

cycomanic wrote: post #5
ck2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was how many other lives and how much money was affected by just one person and to unravel it. I mean there are several books and movies written about Armstrong and the like, cycling is full of drama and people apparently like it because Armstrong has a huge fanbase and is still very successful/wealthy despite all his exposed corruption and doping. I am sure there are plenty of serious amateurs who…

When I read statements like this, I always wider what people think is happening in other sports, especially those where there is much more money involved. I mean the US professional sports don't even have proper testing. Baseball has had plenty of steroid abuse, for basketball one only need to look at how players look after a year of playing in the NBA (Dirk Nowitzki was a tall skinny boy when in Germany, he gained >…

All of the friends of mine that have competed in competition level E-Sports have each told me individually at some point or another that literally - every - professional player uses either Adderall or methamphetamine during tournaments

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

#76

Post by naikrovek »

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.

thank you. "extremely annoying" doesn't come close for me, and neither does the gratitude I expressed with "thank you."

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

#77

Post by naikrovek »

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…

it's not excusable. if it cost $1000 to define it, sure, and it doesn't. it's four words surrounded by parentheses.

no one is born knowing these things, and a lot of people discover a new hobby or interest via reading articles about areas in which they are otherwise uninformed.

no excuse for this. just put the meaning in. takes you less time than it takes one person to Google it, nevermind multiple (dozens/hundreds/thousands of) people who are actually going to need to Google it because you're too presumptuous to type four words and two parentheses in a 10,000 word article.

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

#78

Post by saila »

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…

You make a good point about knowledge domains and what can be assumed about the intended audience, but KOM isn't a technical term and pretty much anyone could understand what "king of the mountain" means. Adding a quick aside or popover would make the article approachable to just about anyone.

On the other hand, someone who doesn't know what TCP is isn't going to understand the expansion to "Transmission Control Protocol" either. They would need to read up on at least basic networking first, so links to further reading would be more helpful.

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

#79

Post by stereocodes »

nradov wrote: post #69
notacoward wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

again you call the devs lazy. you really need to sit back and think about what you say. There is nothing more apparent to me that you have no idea what you're talking about when you say that. Obviously you've never worked on a large team or in development at all. Strava probably doesn't think its worth it, and has absolutely nothing to do with the development team.

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

#80

Post by trustBUTverify »

marcodiego wrote: post #31

"There was a time, about a year ago, when I swear that there were even references to Nick Clark the pro cyclist in articles in the New York Times, and the Arianna Huffington-owned Thrive Global. The latter was a loving profile of Clark, titled “The story of an entrepreneur, businessman, and cyclist.” Both have since been deleted." Journalists should learn to use archive.org. EDIT: Just finished reading. Fine piece of…

Totally agree. I suppose I was one of the duped. But really I didn’t know much about pro cycling and didn’t understand what he was lying about. But when it started coming out 2 years ago, I found everything online within a few hours. Makes me wonder how this got published: https://seancycles.com/2020/07/24/aussie-nick-clark-gets-pez... Why didn’t Pez news doing any research?
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