Originally Posted by
PeteHski
I believe it was a Zwift software bug allowing those super high speeds in some specific scenarios. I don’t know the details, but I’ve heard people discuss it before. I presume the bug was fixed long ago, but it borked up the Strava KOMs. I never experienced it first hand.
I mentioned it above, but all of these KOM times appear to be from rubber banded group rides. This feature allows all riders in a group to stay together, regardless of speed. So someone riding at very low power can be pulled along (and conversely someone riding at high power is held back).
I've done a few of these, and there are definitely times where slower riders who fall behind and get gapped will suddenly get a big "push" from the software to catch them back up. It seems entirely plausible that these Strava KOM's were recorded during one of these situations.
Zwift probably filters this out and doesn't record it as a KOM in their software, but Strava didn't catch it. I don't see any new ones, so my guess is that this has been "fixed" or the rubber band feature is less abrupt than it used to be.
To be clear, I don't actually think there's anything malicious going on here. Calling this "cheating" is a massive stretch.