British team has entire fleet of bikes stolen at Tour of Britain Women, continues race

Lifeplus-Wahoo woke on Friday morning to find all 14 of its bikes had been stolen from its hotel at the Tour of Britain Women.

The British Continental team are now using borrowed bikes to ride at the four-stage race, which continues on Friday with a stage starting and finishing in Wrexham.

Posting on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday morning, the team wrote: "We woke this morning to find all 14 of our Ribble Endurance SLR bikes stolen from our mechanic's van. 

"We are hoping to find a solution to enable us to start in Wrexham today. Stolen from Macdonald Hill Valley Hotel, Whitchurch, Shropshire."

The distinctive green Ribble bikes the team use are worth at least £5,000 each brand new, but equipped with Hunt Aerodynamicist wheels, are likely worth a lot more.

The Tour of Britain Women's organisers, British Cycling, are understood to be working with Lifeplus-Wahoo on a solution for the following stages.

Jon Dutton, the CEO of British Cycling, wrote on Twitter: "Really sorry to hear this. Our team will do everything we can to help you this morning."

Teams including Liv AlUla Jayco, Cofidis, and Human Powered Health are understood to have lent bikes to Lifeplus-Wahoo.

Lifeplus tweeted: "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. We wouldn’t be starting without them!"

Speaking at sign-on, Heidi Franz said: "Despite the really unfortunate circumstances, it’ll hopefully give us that extra bit of fight and motivation. A huge thanks to the teams that pulled together to help us out."

West Mercia police confirmed that an investigation has been launched. 

"We would encourage anyone who may have been in the area last night, and may have seen anything suspicious, to contact Shropshire’s Serious Acquisitive Crime Team by emailing dl-fshrewsburyproactiveunit@westmercia.police.uk," a spokesperson said.

As things stand, the squad's highest-placed rider is Babette van der Wolf, who is in 22nd, 4:02 behind Lotte Kopecky, the race leader, who won stage one in Llandudno.

On Friday afternoon, Ribble said on X that the brand had arranged for a set of bikes to be sent to the team so that they could continue the race as normal from Saturday.

It has already been an unfortunate week for the team, with Kate Richardson forced to skip the Tour of Britain after being knocked off her bike by a hit-and-run driver.

"Initially, he just drove on but turned around and came back later to verbally abuse and threaten me before getting back in his car and driving off again," she said, "Thankfully another driver came across the scene pretty quickly and kindly helped me up and drove me home."

Teams having bikes stolen at races is nothing new. In 2022, Trek-Segafredo, as they were then, had two bikes stolen during the Women's Tour, the Tour of Britain Women's precursor.

In 2022, the leading women's team, SD Worx, announced that a number of its bikes had been stolen in a "brutal burglary". In 2021, Team BikeExchange had 12 of its bikes stolen during the Tour de l'Ardeche.