Group ride KOM’s are legit. Cheating is if you did it in a car. Over time, you can expect all KOM’s to sit with some assistance (group ride and/or lead out and/or wind). If the KOM you took was held by a single rider, it’s likely not a very heavily trafficked route. So, yeah, they are taking it too seriously but you shouldn’t either.
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I’ve never really tried for KOMs myself, usually I’m trying to keep a strong average pace. I’m obviously happy to see it if I get high up on the leaderboard but I don’t care when I get knocked back off.
Getting angry when someone takes it away is really weird to me. Just get out there and try to get it back if you really want it.
Too funny. My son has had a number rides flagged because he beat someone’s KOM or Best time of the year etc. A lot of which has to do with that he goes out of his way to say it was on a track bike with flat bars and often with a backpack commuting. What they don’t realize that he’s 21, super-competitive, built for speed as a former ski-racer, and college lacrosse player at 6’3" 170lbs, stubborn like his old man and rides a 51-16 gear (264 gear-inches) to commute.
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I won’t be taking any of your sons KOMs anytime soon then! 
HAHAHAHAHAHA This kind of thing is crazy. Flagging the ride!? KOM’s on road have soooo many variables. Wind and paceline being 2 major ones. I just assume that every KOM on road, unless it’s a hill, was nabbed by someone in a paceline or got lucky with the wind. On mountain, I’ve seen the top 47 out of 50 times on a segment be completely wrong and off route. Not the riders fault. All they did was press record and strava did the rest.
I love strava. It’s great at tracking my own progress as well as RPE compared to my actual results. It’s incredible for that. I know people who target KOM’s. By that I mean, dog it and take it really easy for the first half of the ride so they show up fresh to the segment and they can lay down a solid time. It’s corny.
I read some of that viral strava thread. Break out the syringes!!! Hahahaha ‘stealing’ a KOM. Targeting a KOM?! That whole argument sheds more light on the accuser. And for a friend to chime in. hahahah. Can’t wrap his head around the fact that someone is faster than him. People’s identities are way too wrapped up in their segment times. This is why every time I ride on the road, which is probably 5 times a year, I am just laughing the whole time. Everyone is so serious.
Me neither. I feel lucky to just to keep him in sight most days.
Haha, what a wet blanket.
If someone ever pulled that with me I would immediately make plans with that same ride group to go out and absolutely smash all of crazy pants’ KOMs. And then probably name that ride “Thanks for the inspiration, XY”.
It’s Strava. We’re all out there having a blast. Using a draft is a legitimate race tactic (depending on the discipline, of course) why the hell would that be cheating on open, public roads? Would this bro get his panties in a twist if he knew some of my segments were done on a TT bike instead of my roadie? Oh, the scandal!
In the absence of a power meter, Strava segments (on proper climbs, not flat segments) are my best estimate of my form. I keep track of weather and wind on every ride so can compare like with like. Competing with myself and assessing times and RPE is a great motivator to beat PBs and see how fit I am.
At 54 years old I still hold a handful of proper local hill KOMs that I’m rather proud of, although I’m not deluded; I know that I hold them only because nobody proper-fast has ridden up those hills!
My response to them would be “train harder, make friends, take it back”
Let them flag the ride. You’ll get a notification on it from Strava later, all you have to do is click the Flag link, say it wasn’t done in a car, and the flag will be gone.
I too would also proceed to purposefully take any KOM from them, and have friends knock them out of any top 10’s they hold as well. You want to take it too seriously…OK!
The 0.1 mile segments are a complete joke, I’ve been on rides sprinting at ~30mph and Strava awards it to someone at 37mph?!
Easy to cheat those short segments on Garmin devices - just set to smart recording instead of 1 sec recording rate.
The other problem is that at 30mph and 1 sec recording rate, trackpoints are 44 feet apart. However you need to consider that GPS accuracy is 16 feet horizontally. So that 0.1 mile segment at best has 12 gps trackpoints, and due to GPS accuracy its pretty easy to lose 2 and only have 10 trackpoints which will inflate speed estimate.
I filed a ticket with Strava about that 18+ months ago, had a long conversation, and after an interesting discussion they concluded with “Unfortunately, this is simply a limitation of our segment matching process at this time and there isn’t any way to change this unless and until we do interpolation of your GPS points to time segment efforts.”
I love me a good (friendly) KOM battle!
And as far as fitness goes there are a lot of loop segments, hill segments in my area so on these its a true test to pop the top 10 on many!
I personally think this is so funny that he cares this much about the KOM. Group rides, solo rides, races are totally free game to claim a KOM. Wind assisted seems unfair but that’s how it goes. Life is unfair.
Moto drafting is cheating out right but you can’t police it.
I say get a group of riders together and go out and steal the rest of his KOMs. They mean way to much to him. Ride your bike and enjoy it. Kom’s are just gravy.
I love you folks 
Part of me does want to make an effort and go KOM Hunting but I can’t see that helping anyone. I’m not trying to be judgmental and if KOMs are important to him, or anybody else for that matter, so be it. It’s your bike, your time and your ride. Do what you please.
What did concern me more was the need for a message. That kind of friction isn’t necessary.
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I’ve had some friendly battles with a local guy who first grabbed a few of mine. Dude is over 60! Noticed he goes out and crushes it each time looking to get the best he can on certain segments. I used to do longer rides where I rode the strava segments hard and if I happened to get a KOM or two out of them so be it, but since he started battling me, I went out there and had to target a few specific segments to really make sure that they’ll stick.
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That is really funny - can’t believe he’d flag a ride as it was a group ride. Strava will ignore him- flag is for cars etc not group rides!
Would never message someone who took a Kim off me (not that I have many!). Never gone looking for KOM but do sometimes have a blast on certain segments on my regular commute.
Only fun thing I do with them is I know 2 other blokes who commuting routes are similar to mine, each fortnight we take it in turns to pick a segment on our commuting route for us all to target - let battle commence. Good fun, one guy likes hilly segments, one sprints and I prefer longwr ones so nice mix
Just my style!! Love it!! 
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This is the best thing I’ve read in a while. Guy is losing his mind over losing a KOM he made to get it .
I don’t care much for cycling KOMs. Most around here are usually snatched when a race come along, then there’s the weather factor and dodgy GPS data. Recently on MTB climbs I’m losing quite a few to middle aged bald guys, I’m guessing e-bikes. we have a few trails where we track and compete for the descending KOMs, but most are kept private for obvious reasons.
I’m taking running CRs quite serious because there group and weather dynamics have less of an impact and you’re competing somewhat fairly.
I’ve never flagged or annoyed someone who took a crown form me. Usually it is just someone who did a better job than I did and I give them Kudos. And if it’s “unfair” I still let it go, because frankly no one should take this stuff so seriously.
I know a guy locally who lost a KOM to one of our riding buddies, so drove out to the Segment, did a full warm up (as if he was prepping for a TT), then went out and retook the KOM. Sad but true.
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That’s too much!