Fitness app Strava faces an uproar over an elite cycling user linked to doping – LA Times.
The fitness tracking service bestows a virtual crown to the fastest riders completing specific routes — and it alerts them whenever someone has bested their times.
For cyclists in Los Angeles, someone using the name Thorfinn Sassquatch has been a leading peddler of anguish.
Competitiveness on Strava has at times been so intense that it has been blamed for deaths. A cyclist in Orinda, Calif., died in 2010 after he was flung from his bike trying to avoid a car. His family sued Strava, saying he was trying to regain a title he’d just lost. A San Francisco judge later dismissed the wrongful-death lawsuit, saying Strava did nothing to increase the “inherent risks” of cycling.
Soon after the death, the company allowed users to mark a segment as “hazardous,” which blocked anyone from claiming a King of the Mountain record on the stretch.
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Gameify fitness trackers, eventually the dopers can and will win it. Pretty soon your phone will need to do a quick EPO test on you before you go for a ride to compete fairly within an app, an in-app purchase can delay testing! 🙂
But Strava, which generates revenue through paid features, doesn’t enforce fairness. “We’re not able to judge the nuanced debate about how people used [performance enhancing drugs] and how that use improved times,” Vontz said.
Why not have an open class where anything goes.
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