Ellen van Dijk's stolen bike found four months after theft

The Trek Madone ridden by Ellen van Dijk and stolen from a team room at the Lotto Ladies Tour has been found by German police.

The blue and white team bike went missing on the final day of the German race, Sunday June 2.

Stage six of the race started and finished in Altenburg Market.

At the time Van Dijk shared news of the theft, writing: "Woke up this morning to find out my Trek Madone is stolen. It was in the team bike room at the Lotto Ladies Tour, in the middle of a row of bikes from KNWU [Royal Dutch Cycling Federation]."

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The 32-year-old who is the reigning European time trial champion  posted a message on Twitter today saying she'd received notification that the bike had been found.

Van Dijk posted a photo of the aero road bike, still equipped with disc brakes, SRAM Red AXS groupset and bearing a name sticker confirming the rightful owner.

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Police data from Germany reports over 300,000 bike thefts over the course of 2017, with the number thought to be higher since authorities are not always alerted.

In the same year, the Office for National statistics put the number at 95,510 across England and Wales.

Whilst most of us worry about leaving bikes locked in towns and cities, statistics suggest that certainly in the UK we may need to focus our attentions closer to home.

An overview of bike theft produced by the Office for National Statistics in 2017 showed that bike theft is most likely to occur in a ‘semi private location nearby the victim’s home’, including outside of the premises and garages ‘not connected’ to the house.

In November 2018, former pro Yanto Barker had his Colnago Concept and a Prestige cyclocross bikes lifted from the Richmond/Twickenham area of south-west London.

He offered a £1,000 reward for information leading to the bikes' recovery.

In August last year, around £100k worth of bikes were stolen in a spate of thefts from bike shops.

Corley Cycles in Milton Keynes, Dean Forest Cycles in Gloucester, JC Cooks in Grimsby and Cornwall’s Clive Mitchell Cycles were all broken into during August, with top end bikes being the key target.