Author Topic: Should Lance Armstrong be banned from Strava?

Should Lance Armstrong be banned from Strava?
« on: February 21, 2013 »
Matt Seaton of The Guardian writes:

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If you're not familiar with Strava, it's an app that's become very popular with recreational and sports cyclists (and also runners) that enables users to upload all their trips to Strava's site. More specifically, it creates an unlimited online community of competitive amateur athletes, many of whom love to "own" the fastest time on a particular segment – especially, the coveted "King of the Mountains" (KOM) spot on their local climbs. Enthusiasts go "Strava-bombing" in an effort to clock up new personal records and claim those KOMs…

It turns out that Armstrong himself has been a busy Strava user since 2011. He holds no less than 150 KOMs.

Chief executive Michael Horvath says that it's not Strava's job to police its community and ban users. But the fact that Armstrong has admitted his doping and been stripped of his Tour de France titles has left some in the Strava community distinctly unhappy.

Should Lance Armstrong be banned from Strava?

Everyone who has an ego – and that's everyone – finds it more pleasurable to have it stroked by someone other than oneself. Having been defrocked of his yellow jerseys and suffering the further bruising of sending his handlers to liaise with Oprah's handlers, it may be that collecting coveted KOMs with the resultant peer validation are all that is keeping Armstrong from sinking back into chemical dependency. Banning him could break him bad.



A compromise which might satisfy unhappy runners-up while showing Lance a bit of mercy would be for Strava to program an "ignore" function into their software to allow for private censure. Many sites already have this facility.