Imagine battling through a brutal, storm-strafed, 600-kilometre multiday off-road endurance race, and finishing with a victory… only to have your precious steed stolen before you even get back to your hotel. That’s exactly what happened to Justyna Jarczok this Easter weekend.
An ultra-cyclist visiting the UK from Poland to take part in a bikepacking event, Jarczok had her bike stolen just hours after winning The Dales Divide as the first woman. As she was cycling back to her accommodation in Leeds, having literally just left the race finish and caught the train back to the city, Jarczok paused for provisions at BP petrol station, briefly leaving her bike outside.
“I thought I will buy some breakfast and some drinks,” she told CW. “I’d stopped at this station a few times in the previous days.” But this time, when she emerged, it was to discover that opportunistic thieves had pounced.
“F*** me!” She recalls thinking, experiencing a rapid comedown after the elation of winning the race. “Maybe I wasn’t so thirsty and hungry after all…”
(Image credit: Image courtesy of Justyna Jarczok)
The bike was fully loaded with all her gear, stashed in Restrap bikepacking bags, and the visiting rider initially lost everything except what she had taken into the petrol station, which fortunately included her wallet and passport. After catching her flight home, some of Jarczok’s possessions were discovered abandoned in a local park. “The guy who found them gave them a wash and contacted me via instagram, and they got picked up,” she told us.
Thankfully, on Wednesday, it was revealed that the bike had been found. Writing on Instagram, Jarczok said: "Wrong place, wrong time – but this response showed the power of this community. So many people willing to help, share, and keep and eye out. It was stressful, but also genuinely uplifting. Thank you all again for the support. We got it back, baby!"
Jarczok had assembled the bike – a very distinctive Kona mountain bike, with a gold frame and red forks – for the Atlas Mountain Race and had ridden 3000km on it, including 40,000 metres of ascent.
Fellow competitors and endurance cyclists rallied to her support, with Dotwatcher.cc, which tracks competitors around the course, urging: "let's help make Justyna's, the winning woman, bike too hot to handle."
Jarczok’s post about the theft had hundreds of reposts and 77,000 views at the time of writing. “The cycling community is the superpower,” she says. “The amount of shares and messages is just…woah!”
Richard Stoodley, AKA rapid_rich, issued a detailed post on social media explaining exactly what happened and where, and asking people to be vigilant in order to try and help locate the missing bike.
A 600km bikepacking challenge that celebrated its seventh edition this year, The Dales Divide takes competitors on gravel bikes and MTBs on a circular coast-to-coast course during the Easter weekend. The scenic, but incredibly tough route begins in Arnside, Cumbria, and then sends riders right across the Yorkshire Dales, through the Vale of York and over the Yorkshire Wolds to hit England’s east coast at Scarborough, before bringing them back via the North York Moors and the Northern Yorkshire Dales.
The overall victor in the 2026 event was double Olympic triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee, who finished the cruel course in just under 35 hours, an impressive time considering the at-times horrific conditions, as Storm Dave clattered its way across northern England, unleashing winds of up to 80mph across parts of Yorkshire and taking down trees on the course.
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Having recently clipped in as News & Features Writer for Cycling Weekly, Pat has spent decades in the saddle of road, gravel and mountain bikes pursuing interesting stories. En route he has ridden across Australia's Great Dividing Range, pedalled the Pirinexus route around the Catalan Pyrenees, raced through the Norwegian mountains with 17,000 other competitors during the Birkebeinerrittet, fatbiked along the coast of Wales, explored the trails of the Canadian Yukon under the midnight sun and spent umpteen happy hours bikepacking and cycle-touring the lost lanes and hidden bridleways of the Peak District, Exmoor, Dartmoor, North Yorkshire and Scotland. He worked for Lonely Planet for 15 years as a writer and editor, contributed to Epic Rides of the World and has authored several books.
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