One additional factor is the "maturity" of a segment. You can find a segment with little traffic and no riders with competitive tendencies and find yourself with an easy good placing. I would attribute that to the "immaturity" of the segment. Most anyone can gain a top-10.


On the other hand, if you find a segment that's been hammered by a bunch of highly competitive cyclists, top-10's can be very hard to come by. It's a "mature" segment. One segment about 4 miles from my home was hotly contested for a couple years. It seemed that every other week somebody would knock 1 or 2 seconds off the KOM time. Lots of highly competitive cyclists made runs to try to get the KOM and it went back and forth among 3 of us. But then, one of the guys set a KOM that nobody's been able to touch for over 18 months. Since a lot of people gave their very best to beat that time, the pecking order was established. Nobody's moved up on that segment in a long time. Mature. No trophies for you.