It was a tour de theft – thieves have stolen Lance Armstrong’s unique, $10,000 bike.
The Tour de France legend announced on Twitter Sunday that his distinctive, yellow and black time-trial bike was snatched in Sacramento.
“There is only one like it in the world, therefore hard to pawn it off,” he Twittered.
He also posted a photo of the stolen bike and offered a reward.
Armstrong is taking part in the nine-day Tour of California, and his bike – along with road bikes of three team members – was stolen after he rode it in Saturday’s prologue.
The bicycles were taken from an unmarked truck parked behind a Sacramento hotel sometime before early Sunday morning.
“We do have surveillance video of the area, so we’re going to follow up,” Sacramento Police Officer Laura Peck said yesterday. “It’s a distinctive bike, so we are cautiously optimistic.”
Peck added, “At this point we don’t have any information that [the truck] was specifically targeted because it was Lance Armstrong.”
Armstrong, 37, who won the Tour de France seven times and is seeking to make a comeback, is the major attraction in the California race.
He finished fifth in the rainy opening stage, and afterward wrote on Twitter: “Holy hell. That was terrible. Maybe one of the toughest days I’ve had on a bike, purely based on the conditions. I’m still freezing.”
The missing bike is not the one that Armstrong uses to race every day, CNN reported. It’s only used for time trials.
The 750-mile Tour of California ends Sunday. It’s the second major competition that Armstrong has entered since he announced his comeback in September. Last month, he raced in Australia’s Tour Down Under, finishing 29th.
In 1996 Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer that had spread and he was given less than a 50 percent chance to survive.