One of the greatest feelings as a runner is uploading a run to Strava and finding out you’ve bagged yourself one of the coveted crowns known as CRs. Whether you were intentionally targeting that segment or you topped the leaderboard on accident, the feeling is almost akin to winning a race or setting a new PB. All your Strava followers get to see it, and you’re guaranteed an influx of Kudos.
But what if you could get those feelings, along with all the fame and glory that comes with a CR, without actually doing any of the work?
Enter the Strava “Jockey.”
For runners with more money than time, you can pay someone to snag that Strava crown for you.
It all started when 17-year-old Wahyu Wicaksono, a fresh high school graduate from Jakarta, Indonesia, was looking to make a quick buck while waiting for an entrance test to join the police in September.
Wicaksono began advertising his Strava jockey services on X, and “it is booming there.”
He charges the equivalent of $0.62 per kilometer for a 4:00/km pace and the equivalent of $0.31 for every kilometer run at 8:00/km pace. His most lucrative job so far has earned him $6.19. While that may not seem like much, the minimum monthly wage in Indonesia is around $100, so he’s made over 5% of a month’s wage in one run.
Clients pay up before he runs, and then Wicaksono will either run using his own Strava account and give the file to the client, or using login details provided by the client.
The jockey service has begun to gain traction in Indonesia, with more youngsters grabbing the opportunity to make a few bucks from folks needing validation on Strava. For now, it seems to be isolated to Indonesia; however, we could soon see a worldwide black market for Strava kudos and CRs.
So, while the saying goes, “if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen,” it also turns out that even if it is on Strava, it might not have happened.
