‘I sleep well at night knowing I’ve caused a civil war’ – How a cyclist's KOM-equalling climb on San Francisco’s steepest segment triggered a Strava battle
Hill-climbing legend Harry Macfarlane matched a record that had stood for five years, and the locals came after him
Early this week, news broke that English rider Harry Macfarlane had just made a spirited attempt to set a new KOM on Bradford Street, the steepest segment in San Francisco.
He challenged and ultimately equalled a record that had stood untroubled for five and a half years.
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A veteran gravity battler, Macfarlane is the UK’s reigning National Hill-Climb Champion, but he's also a content creator with a flair for making engaging material, mainly around his extraordinary exploits on a bike. And his audacious ascent of Bradford Street – along with the posts he put up about it, which featured inserts of British iconography ranging from Big Ben, baked beans on toast and cups of tea to Union Jacks and a portrait of George I – seem to have ruffled some feathers among local riders.
"Yankee hate mail incoming" Macfarlane commented on his own post, and sure enough, over on Strava folks were queuing up to question the validity of the climb – especially the British rider’s performance on the very short, extremely steep part of the climb that makes it so notorious.
The rearing 70-metre stretch of road is considered by some to be the world's steepest street, thanks to a small 10-yard section that inclines at a ferocious 41%, but this is contested, and the average gradient is 24.7%. Nevertheless, viewed from the bottom, over the handlebars of a bike, it's unarguably a heartbreaking hill.
While Strava shows Macfarlane had definitely equalled Scanlon’s KOM for the overall segment, people started zeroing in on that 10 yards of 41%, over which it appeared to show the British rider in the sixth-fastest spot.
Soon enough, though, it wasn’t just commentary – local riders started having a crack at the KOM themselves, attempting to reclaim it once and for all. And, to be fair, they succeeded.
On Tuesday 28 April a local rider called Gino Gabuyo rode the relevant stretch of Bradford Street in 12 seconds, and the very next day the newly minted record fell not once but twice, with Jake Lanich doing the climb in 11 seconds and then local lad Ivan Linser taking the crown (for now) with a stunning 10 second ascent of the segment.
Unfazed, Macfarlane, who was on a flight back to Europe by the time the new records were being set, commented: “Knew this would be gone within a week. SF I’ll be back’, This was followed by post acknowledging his role in the record slaying frenzy, saying: “I sleep well at night knowing I have caused a civil war in San Francisco.’
