How disabling virtual partner on Edge 1030?

Nobody cares to be honest. If it bothers you set your target speed to a very low (1km/h) or very high (99km/h) number and the virtual partner will desapear from your sight pretty quick. It is however very easy to just ignore it.

Agreed the "Virtual Partner" feature can be very annoying & really need the option to disable/switch off.

Most annoying are difficult navigation situations where you might accidentally misinterpret the virtual partner as your own location. Happened to me several times when the VP was nearly the same speed like me. 

I would not say that it is on my wish list - not being able to deactivate the VP does not meet my expectation...

Worst idea Garmin had was this virtual partner, this thing is annoying, as it is useless, its like my edge 1000 has a mind of it's own, I find it amazing that  tech is not working on finding a way to disable this feature. And it always pops up at the wrong time.

Agree, a simple solution to comply with this widely requested fix takes way too long.

 Virtual Partner is worse than useless for me. It also mucks up data screens that are features that brought me to Garmin. Please give me a “Disable” option. 

Where in Garmin Connect is this option located?

On Garmin Connect (Web or Mobile) goto trainings -> courses 
-select a stored course
-edit the course
-at the bottom you‘ll find a field to set the speed of VP

Garmin guidance 

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=9aaItduDZd4rzKRriZKTp9

tells of another possibilty via VP widget on your device.