While it’s quite flattering at the moment I don’t think that’s why Strava have added this feature. I think it’s more about keeping people competitive. My wife and I went out for a steady ride this afternoon, I got 4 2015KOMs. None are better than my personal best for those segments, a couple are close (< 10 seconds) but one is 50% greater than my PB. One of the KOMs is just 4 seconds slower than my PB, if I knocked 2 seconds off my PB I’m top ten. My wife got 15 2015QOMs but also got two genuine top ten cups. Now at some point I’m going to get the “X has taken your KOM, go get ’em!” emails, so will it make me try harder? … what do you think?
An analogy with the old system would be turning up at the Olympics, winning the 1500 metres and because you didn’t beat the Olympic record you don’t get the gold medal. Listen to the commentary of a televised athletics meeting and you’ll often hear “X has done the fastest time in the world this year”, this is essentially the same. What I haven’t found yet is how to show the top ten for a particular year for a segment but it might need a premium account to see that.
Came across a graph that I hadn’t seen before: View a segment then click the “View full leaderboard” button at the bottom of the fastest times. You get a graph of all your attempts on that segment.
