Strava to automatically flag suspicious activities in hopes to improve leaderboard accuracy

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:

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 get a PM. 

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 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 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 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:

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, 

I think there are a great many strava users who are not likely to trouble any KOMs

Except that KOMs can also be downhill! Beyond a certain gradient/over a particular type of segment, e-bikes are of little help.