Chase of thief who stole bike from Rapha Cycle Club posted to Strava

Edward Dorsey has perhaps understandably been getting a lot of kudos for a recent Strava ride, entitled “Just your average morning ride to bike thief chase, to rugby tackling and eventual apprehension.”

If that sounds a bit garbled, he gave a clearer account in the comments. It seems Dorsey – who works for Strava – had arrived at the Rapha Cycle Club café in San Francisco only to spot someone taking a bike. He and the shop’s owner, Andy Goessling, then set off in pursuit – Goessling riding one of the customers’ bikes “that was kind of the right size for me, almost.”

“Andy (barista at Rapha, pretty sick on a bike) and I chase after him on our bikes. Find him nearer Van Ness, and he's trying to lose us by riding into traffic and up Frankin etc. Andy is on the phone to the police telling them that we are following the guy on a stolen bike and where we are.

“Heading north on Van Ness, Andy kicks him and knocks him off balance, but comes off too (as you know, he's only got one hand on the bars the other on the phone he's calling the police with) and I did some sort of odd CX dismount rugby tackle. Moderate tussle and held him down until the police came, then took the bike back to the owner at Rapha. All is well that ends well.”

Commenting a little further down the thread, the bike’s owner, Meredith Storton, didn’t ration the exclamation marks: “You guys are my heroes!!! I feel so incredibly lucky to have had my bike stolen in front of daring bike racers! Thank you!!!!”

Dorsey told Bicycling.com that the thief had tried to lose them by riding through crowds and up one-way streets.

“We didn’t want to end up following him to somewhere where all his mates were waiting,” he said, so the two of them tried to “ride the guy into the sidewalk and some trees and things like that, but it didn’t really work.”

Although Goessling ended up falling after kicking the thief, this did put him off balance, “so I just tackled him off the bike,” said Dorsey.

The two men then held him down until the police arrived after three or four minutes, several bystanders having called them.

“He clearly didn’t want to be a bike thief,” said Dorsey about the man they caught. “It was a bit sad really to see how the guy ended up feeling like he needed to steal a bike.”