Downhill segments are still on Strava. But they will no longer show up via the Live Segments function. But is this the thin end of the wedge?

>>> When will Strava have mountain biking as a specific activity?

First things to point out is that downhill segments are still present and creating new downhill segments is still possible.

Live Segments is the subscriber-only function that alerts riders on-the-fly as to the proximity of the start of a segment. It also shows you how you ranked upon completion of said segment.

Here are two quotes from the Wahoo support page about this move: “downhill segments greater than -.25% grade will not be synced due to the strava API for safety precautions.” and “Downhill and similarly steep descending segments will not be synced.”

No, that “-.25%” is not a typo. Even the relatively mildest of descending segments have been removed from Live Segments.

This probably won’t really affect most riders but if you’re a Strava user who also uses their Live Segment feature, you may not like the changes.

The reasons for reducing the significance of descents from Strava is obviously to do with safety. Both rider and non-rider safety.

More interestingly, this continues a slight anti-downhill theme with Strava. A while back they stopped sending out “Uh-oh” automatic emails when people get their KOM taken from them on a descent segment.

How long before downhill segments are removed entirely from Strava?

We’d be surprised if they did that. Well, not while mountain biking is lumped in with road cycling on Strava. Maybe this is another reason to have ‘mountain biking’ as a distinct activity on Strava?