A world champion sprint duathlete has discovered that two of her high-end racing bikes were stolen overnight, leaving her feeling unsafe in her own home.
The bikes, which included a measured to fit Giant Propel worth around £7,000, were stolen from her locked garage sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, the Bournemouth Echo reports.
Zoe Tucker said, “We saw it last night from the garage, which is locked. The two bikes were stolen.
“Bikes are really difficult to replace, particularly if you’re racing on them and competing on them. They’re all made specifically to measure, and they’re adapted so that you can participate in the races you want to participate in.”
She is due to compete at the European Championships in July and the World Championships in Abu Dhabi in November.
Zoe came first in her category and fastest British woman overall at the last world championships.
“I’m at a bit of a loss of where to go from here… that is my racing bike and that’s what I use it for,” she told the BBC.
“It’s measured up, it’s specifically designed for racing, it’s got aero bars which are for the time trial distances.
“That’s what I won the world championships on, that would be my racing bike that I compete on, so without that it’s a game-changer.”
She added: “It’s an absolute sense of loss… It’s the loss of knowing that your training is going to have to change direction overnight, and not knowing how long it will take to go through the whole hoops and processes of replacing that bike.”
She had only just moved into the property and had recently replaced the garage door to provide added security.
She added that “it feels, I mean, it feels quite invasive. It feels really sort of security in the house is compromised and don’t feel that safe anymore
“And we’ve only been in this house for about four weeks and a really quiet residential road. So, it’s just such a shock.”
A spokesperson for Dorset Police said: “We received a report at 10 am on Friday, 12 December 2025, that two bikes had been stolen from a garage in Gainsborough Drive in Sherborne.
“It was reported that the incident occurred between 10 pm on Thursday, 11 December and 6 am on Friday, 12 December 2025.
“We are carrying out enquiries into the matter; no arrests have been made at this time.”
6 thoughts on ““An absolute sense of loss”: Winning bike stolen from world champion duathlete”
Never leave your bicycle(s)
Never leave your bicycle(s) unattended. Store them inside your home. That says a lot about the dire state of our society.
MaxiMinimalist wrote:
No it doesn’t. Bicycle theft has been a problem since the bicycle was invented. Writers in ancient Rome used to complain about organised criminal gangs who would steal any unattended horses. Elizabethean London was plagued by “priggers of prancers”, horse thieves who specialised in stealing horses from outside properties and selling them in rural districts. In 1911 Sir Henry Kimber asked Winston Churchill (then home secretary) in parliament what measures could be taken to end the plague of bicycle theft in urban districts. Our society has some pretty severe problems, as virtually every society ever created has, but there’s no point in pretending that things are worse than they are by thinking that problems that have existed throughout history are somehow unique to our age.
But bike theives have changed
But bike theives have changed in recent times.
They used to be a person acting alone, using minimal tools, often acting on opportunities.
Today, they are organized, ruthless gangs. Selectively targeting individuals in the streets and prepared to use extreme violence, which has led to one fatality. Or seeking out homes and premises to burgle, sometimes using sophisticated (mission impossible style) methods.
Some truth to that, but I don
Some truth to that, but I don’t think it necessarily proves some point about society? I guess it could be a data point but our friend with selective rose-tinted (MABA?) glasses hasn’t done that work. They’re just leaving more nudge-nudge conspiratorial hints.
Organised violent gangs aren’t new either…
That’s probably a reflection
That’s probably a reflection of the massively increased value of bicycles; the same types of gang with similar methods were operating decades ago targeting jewellery and similar valuables, now bicycles are so expensive it’s worth the same sort of effort. It’s horrible and it’s frightening but, as I was trying to point out, it’s nothing new apart from the commodity the criminals are seeking and it doesn’t really “(say) a lot about the dire state of our society”.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Going to guess it was a nod to “can’t control borders / foreign criminals, coming over here, taking bikes that should be stolen by our *local* criminals”? Or “bring back hanging for bike theft – they won’t do it again”.