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 Ladies.
The British Continental group at the moment are scrambling to seek out bikes with a view 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 group 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 answer to allow us to begin in Wrexham at the moment. Stolen from Macdonald Hill Valley Resort, Whitchurch, Shropshire.”
The distinctive inexperienced Ribble bikes the group use are price a minimum of £5,000 every model new, however geared up with Hunt Aerodynamicist wheels, are possible price much more.
Biking Weekly has contacted the group and West Mercia Police for extra data on the incident, in addition to the Tour of Britain Ladies’s organisers, British Biking, who’re understood to be working with Lifeplus-Wahoo on an answer.
Jon Dutton, the CEO of British Biking, wrote on Twitter: “Actually sorry to listen to this. Our group will do every part we are able to that can assist you this morning.”
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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.
It has already been an unlucky week for the group, 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 automotive and driving off once more,” she stated, “Fortunately one other driver got here throughout the scene fairly shortly and kindly helped me up and drove me dwelling.”
Groups having bikes stolen at races is nothing new. In 2022, Trek-Segafredo, as they had been then, had two bikes stolen through the Ladies’s Tour, the Tour of Britain Ladies’s precursor.
In 2022, the main girls’s group, SD Worx, introduced that quite a lot 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 answer to allow us to begin in Wrexham at the moment.Stolen from Macdonald Hill Valley Resort, Whitchurch, Shropshire. pic.twitter.com/XWogWGZ8CGJune 7, 2024
