Lifeplus-Wahoo woke on Friday morning to seek out all 14 of its bikes had been stolen from its resort on the Tour of Britain Girls.
The British Continental workforce are actually utilizing borrowed bikes to proceed on the four-stage race, which continues on Friday with a stage beginning and ending in Wrexham.
Posting on X (previously generally known as Twitter) on Friday morning, the workforce wrote: “We woke this morning to seek out all 14 of our Ribble Endurance SLR bikes stolen from our mechanic’s van.Â
“We hope to discover a resolution to allow us to begin in Wrexham right now. Stolen from Macdonald Hill Valley Resort, Whitchurch, Shropshire.”
The distinctive inexperienced Ribble bikes the workforce use are value a minimum of £5,000 every model new, however geared up with Hunt Aerodynamicist wheels, are seemingly value much more.
Biking Weekly has contacted the workforce and West Mercia Police for extra info on the incident, in addition to the Tour of Britain Girls’s organisers, British Biking, who’re understood to be working with Lifeplus-Wahoo on an answer for the next phases.
Jon Dutton, the CEO of British Biking, wrote on Twitter: “Actually sorry to listen to this. Our workforce will do every thing we will that will help you this morning.”
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Groups together with Liv AlUla Jayco, Cofidis, and Human Powered Well being are understood to have lent bikes to Lifeplus-Wahoo.
Lifeplus tweeted: “All of our thanks and appreciation goes out to the various groups that provided and gave their spare workforce bikes and their mechanics time to get our ladies on the highway. We wouldn’t be beginning with out them!”
Talking at sign-on, Heidi Franz stated: “Regardless of the actually unlucky circumstances, it’ll hopefully give us that further little bit of combat and motivation. An enormous because of the groups that pulled collectively to assist us out.”
As issues stand, the squad’s highest-placed rider is Babette van der Wolf, who’s in twenty second, 4:02 behind Lotte Kopecky, the race chief, who gained stage one in Llandudno.
Heidi Franz with a borrowed Liv from Liv AlUla Jayco
(Picture credit score: Future/Joseph Lycett)
It has already been an unlucky week for the workforce, with Kate Richardson pressured to skip the Tour of Britain after being knocked off her bike by a hit-and-run driver.
“Initially, he simply drove on however rotated and got here again later to verbally abuse and threaten me earlier than getting again in his automobile and driving off once more,” she stated, “Fortunately one other driver got here throughout the scene fairly rapidly and kindly helped me up and drove me residence.”
Groups having bikes stolen at races is nothing new. In 2022, Trek-Segafredo, as they have been then, had two bikes stolen through the Girls’s Tour, the Tour of Britain Girls’s precursor.
In 2022, the main girls’s workforce, SD Worx, introduced that a variety of its bikes had been stolen in a “brutal housebreaking”. In 2021, Staff BikeExchange had 12 of its bikes stolen through the Tour de l’Ardeche.
We woke this morning to seek out all 14 of our Ribble Endurance SLR bikes stolen from our mechanic’s van.We hope to discover a resolution to allow us to begin in Wrexham right now.Stolen from Macdonald Hill Valley Resort, Whitchurch, Shropshire. pic.twitter.com/XWogWGZ8CGJune 7, 2024
