{"id":459297,"date":"2026-02-07T07:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T07:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459297\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T07:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T07:38:12","slug":"millions-of-strava-cheats-exposed-for-pedalling-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459297\/","title":{"rendered":"Millions of Strava cheats exposed for pedalling lies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The popular exercise app Strava has been forced to step in after amateur athletes were caught cheating to climb up its internal leaderboards \u2014 with some users recording rides taken on an e-bike as a pedal bike. <\/p>\n

The app, which is used to record runs, cycles and other exercises, said it had removed more than 3.5 million activities from its database it judged to be suspicious.<\/p>\n

The fitness app used by about 180 million people said that, as well as users from across the world recording rides taken on an e-bike as a pedal bike, others were posting runs that had been completed by bike or car.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

It removed more than two million e-bike rides recorded as pedal bikes and more than 1.5 million activities recorded as bike or runs when they in fact took place in a vehicle. <\/p>\n

The cheating meant athletes were able to achieve high places on the internal leaderboards for a specific stretch of road, known in the app as a segment. <\/p>\n

Although coming high on a leaderboard grants no physical prizes, athletes can earn a virtual trophy for a top ten finish or, if top, will be crowned \u201cKing or Queen of the Mountain\u201d (KOM).<\/p>\n

Most significantly, however, whenever any other athlete completes the same segment, the profile of whoever is towards the top leaderboard is visible, potentially earning them extra \u201ckudos\u201d \u2014 similar to a \u201clike\u201d on Facebook. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Editor at Runner\u2019s World accused of posting false marathon time<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Davidson, senior reporter at Cycling Weekly, said a trophy or mountain award can give credibility to an amateur cyclist despite there being no monetary gain.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a lot of people, it\u2019s the best title they can go for,\u201d he said. \u201cI have one KOM in all my years of riding. It\u2019s a tiny hill near my dad\u2019s house and it\u2019s sacred to me. I was never a racing cyclist; it\u2019s the only title or crown I\u2019ve won as a cyclist and it feels special.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a KOM you live in a dread that someone will beat it and you get a notification on your phone that someone has taken it away from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many this means going beyond what is deemed acceptable in order to achieve it.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Over the hill e-bikers cheat their way to top<\/a><\/p>\n

It is not known how many of the removed rides were completed in the UK. The Times has contacted Strava for further information. <\/p>\n

In an update on its official Reddit page, an engineer from Strava, called James, said the app had returned almost 300,000 athletes to the top ten on segments. <\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past few weeks, we reprocessed the top 100 activities on each of all ride segment leaderboards to address long-standing issues with anomalous activities showing up in results,\u201d he said. \u201cThis wasn\u2019t a small tweak \u2014 it was a full global backfill aimed at problems many of you have been pointing out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Strava allows runners and cyclists to be crowned \u201cKing or Queen of the Mountain\u201d<\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

He added that, because of the bad behaviour of some athletes, Strava has now brought in \u201cenhanced e-bike detection\u201d that is \u201ctrained to catch activities recorded on an e-bike but uploaded as normal rides\u201d.<\/p>\n

It also has a new model that he said will \u201cbetter identify when an activity uploaded as a run is actually a bike ride, so cyclists don\u2019t disrupt run leaderboards\u201d.<\/p>\n

This, he said, will be done by AI software which will examine 57 signals such as heart rate or power levels to determine anything suspicious. \u201cWe hope this update clears up many of those concerns and puts us on better footing going forward,\u201d James added. <\/p>\n

Users can also report an activity themselves if they believe it to be false, including a specific complaint which says \u201cactivity was in a vehicle\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Times has previously reported that The Royal Parks had asked Strava to remove the Outer Circle of Regent\u2019s Park as a \u201csegment\u201d to discourage cyclists from trying to break the speed records.<\/p>\n

Strava was contacted for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The popular exercise app Strava has been forced to step in after amateur athletes were caught cheating to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-459297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}