A British team had £70,000 worth of bikes stolen during Tour of Britain tournament last week in Shropshire, England.
The group, titled Lifeplus-Wahoo, were at the Macdonald Hill Valley Hotel, in Whitchurch, when their entire fleet, totalling 14 Ribble Endurance SLR bikes, was stolen.
The bikes were taken out of a mechanic’s van overnight, and were said to retail in the range of £5,000 each, although individual additions and upgrades could raise that estimation further.
The team were scheduled to race in Stage 2 of the event in Wrexham on Friday morning, and, following the incident, took to social media to explain what had happened.
“We are hoping to find a solution to enable us to start in Wrexham today,” they said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at 8.10am on Friday.
Various people and cycling groups got in contact with them to offer their support, as did British Cycling’s chief executive Jon Dutton, who said the organisation would “do everything it could” to help.
Then, just hours later and with the start time fast approaching, at 10.39am the team posted an update as to their situation.
“Wrexham we are here. All of our thanks and appreciation goes out to the many teams that offered and gave their spare team bikes and their mechanics time to get our girls on the road,” they said.
“We wouldn’t be starting without them,” they added.
Team have £70,000 worth of bikes stolen during Tour of Britain - has this happened anywhere else?
Lifeplus-Wahoo haven’t been and won't be the only victims of such criminal acts however, with there being a surge in the theft of professional bikes in recent years, at the Tour of Britain and beyond.
For example, last season Euskaltel-Euskadi and Baloise Trek Lions were both forced to withdraw from the Tour of Slovenia and Baloise Belgium Tour respectively due to overnight robberies.
Similarly, two years ago, an American team at the Tour of Britain, Trek-Segafredo, suffered similar unfortunate circumstances.
They had £50,000 worth of “bikes, wheels and other items” stolen from a car park on Phoenix Way, Swansea.
Further instances in recent times have arisen in the Netherlands, France, Italy and more.
