Video: Phil Gaimon's new hobby is collecting Strava KOMs (and he targets those held by a convicted doper)

The tension's unbearable. Retired pro Phil Gaimon has tried to break Chris Horner's record on the Strava segment for Mount Palomar. He's long since finished – he's even stopped at a café – but he's now uploading his ride and HIS LAPTOP BATTERY'S ONLY AT SIX PER CENT.

This is the climactic scene in part one of Phil Gaimon's Worst Retirement Ever, a new video series in which the former pro tries to claim Strava KOMs.

“This year I'll train before work and on weekends I'll go after hill climb records with a light bike and some of the fanciest, dorkiest gear I could find. I still don't know if I can break any, but I'll use what's left of my pro fitness to find out.”

Gaimon says the pros don't generally care about their Strava times, and jokes "but now this is all I have left."

That said, he does have a theory that Chris Horner removed his KOM ride when he heard that Gaimon was out gunning for one particular segment to deny him a screengrab of supremacy – only to later reinstate it upon discovering his time hadn't been beaten.

Even without appearing, Horner doesn't come out of this video well. Gaimon says the 2016 Vuelta a Espana winner came back to US racing with "an attitude and a cockiness that I thought was rude."

He says that it was, "fun to beat him in his last year of racing – that was a little joy that we took."

Cycling Tips reports that Gaimon has also been targeting the KOMs held by the infamous California rider Thorfinn-Sassquatch, otherwise known as Nick Brandt-Sorenson.

Brandt-Sorenson last year pleaded guilty to selling performance-enhancing drugs online. He was also banned from racing for two years from September 4, 2011 after testing positive for Efaproxiral, a substance which artificially enhances delivery of oxygen to the tissues.

“It’s a pretty complicated story,” says Gaimon. “But the executive summary is that this guy has been cheating.”

He says he feels like some kind of protective elder brother figure. “There’s this bully on the playground pushing people around, and I’m the one who can do something about it. I mean, I know a ton of guys who could take these KOMs clean — Mike Woods and Joe Dombrowski could take them with one leg – but unlike me, those guys have better things to do.”