{"id":738742,"date":"2026-02-03T04:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/738742\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T04:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:13:08","slug":"strava-is-coming-after-you-cheaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/738742\/","title":{"rendered":"Strava is Coming After You Cheaters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\tSupport us!\t\t Bikerumor may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article.\t\tLearn More<\/a><\/p>\n

Justice was finally served a little over a week ago. Strava removed over two million rides recorded as \u201cnormal\u201d rides, but apparently accomplished on an e-bike. They made the announcement on their subreddit<\/a>, where they addressed a \u201cfull global backfill aimed at problems\u201d expressed by many commenters.<\/p>\n

Strava is using \u201cMachine Learning\u201d (ML) models to help clean up logged riding errors, intentional or not. James, an engineer at Strava, explained in the post that the recent crackdowns were threefold.<\/p>\n

First, they introduced a new ML model, specifically aimed at catching e-bikes. This \u201cEnhanced E-Bike Detection\u201d flags and removes activities logged as a normal ride, but that were clearly recorded with electric assist.<\/p>\n

Secondly, they cleaned up the leaderboard. Strava accomplished this by reprocessing \u201cthe top 100 activities on every global ride segment.\u201d They claim this move helps confirm that the leaderboards for these segments are free of vehicle and e-bike use and also of \u201cincorrect sport types,\u201d such as logging a ride as a run.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Strava introduced ML that focuses on its run leaderboard, better indicating when a logged \u201crun\u201d is actually completed on a bike.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, according to Strava\u2019s post, the results of these new actions are pretty astonishing. On the pedal-assist side, they removed 2.3 million apparent e-bike rides. They also detected and removed 1.6 million logged activities using a vehicle. And, because of this, \u201c293k athletes restored to their rightful spot in the top 10.\u201d<\/p>\n

How Does Strava Know?<\/p>\n

\"Strava<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a good question, and Strava provides more information in a previous Reddit post<\/a> from almost a year ago. This time, Nick from the product team provides some context to the longstanding \u201ccheating\u201d issues the app has had. While this previous post doesn\u2019t focus on e-bikes, we can gleam some ideas as to how Strava is tackling these issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery run activity was broken up into chunks from 800m to marathon length. If a user \u201cbroke the world record\u201d during any of those chunks, we know it can\u2019t be a real run. So, we automatically exclude that portion of the activity from segment leaderboards. This keeps the sections recorded in cars or on bikes off leaderboards. But a system like this has a lot of drawbacks. Notably, it doesn\u2019t work on hills. There is no \u201cworld record\u201d for hills, especially not hills with different gradients and surfaces. It also doesn\u2019t work if a car drives slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nick also notes that the system can be difficult to detect cycling \u201ccheaters,\u201d especially regarding descending.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor cycling, we also break the activity into chunks and have rules based on the limits of human performance. But in cycling, it\u2019s much trickier to determine what the \u201cworld record\u201d for riding over uneven grades actually is. If you \u201csprint\u201d faster than world-class sprinter Mark Cavendish on a flat or net-uphill road, we know that\u2019s not possible and exclude that part of the activity. But it\u2019s possible for an amateur cyclist to go faster than Cavendish on a given downhill. On the uphills, it\u2019s difficult to say what the limit of performance is. We experimented with using VAM, but these efforts still let vehicles through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strava goes into more detail on how their ML systems work on a post on their website<\/a>. But, essentially, they look at users\u2019 times that break world records and flag them. Yes, there may be some controversy around users legitimately getting top spots and having their activity flagged. However, we imagine there are ways of proving a run or ride if you\u2019re setting a world record<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some commenters asked for details on how the ML models detect e-bike rides, but Strava hasn\u2019t released them yet, as it did with its previous ML models. But, they acknowledge that their work isn\u2019t done, and appreciate the subreddit for bringing the \u201canamolous activities\u201d to their attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Support us! Bikerumor may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article. Learn More Justice was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,2066,65721,85003,31486,63156,148362,79,25852,16,15,28121],"class_list":{"0":"post-738742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-e-bike","10":"tag-gravel","11":"tag-kom","12":"tag-mountain-bike","13":"tag-record","14":"tag-road-bike","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-strava","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-world-record"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116004756113455905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}