This will be making a fine wall ornament for someone.  Lance Armstrong’s custom Livestrong Equinox TTX 9.9 time trial bike was stolen from Team Astana’s trailer Saturday night after the time trial prologue at Tour of California.  Seriously, what’s anyone going to do with this bike?  They can’t sell it, they shouldn’t ride it for fear of being caught, and they can’t really show it off to their friends.  Perhaps it’s the thrill of the chase…but now they’re stuck with something that is priceless and worthless at the same time.
As with most of what’s on Facebook, there’s a group for people looking for the bike if you want to join.  I say joining is almost as pointless as stealing the bike, but it’s a free country.
There were also three Astana Team Madone bikes stolen from the team trailer, which can be identified by their painted seattube caps.  This is different than the black caps used on Project One Astana retail bikes.  Loosely related, the front wheel is the new Bontrager Aeolus 9.0 we posted about recently…it starts shipping to retail this Tuesday.
Read “more” to see how you can differentiate a stolen bike from a non-stolen bike…
A different pic of Lance’s TT bike, without the disc wheel.
Above is the Project One Astana Team look alike bike and has a black seatmast.  If you see someone riding this, it means they dropped $10,000 and, depending on who you ask, they may be the ones who got robbed.  (Personally, I like Trek’s bikes and have the original Postal Edition from Lance’s first Tour de France win, but that joke was just too easy to pass up…).
But, if you see a bike like this with a painted seatmast, it belongs to either Janez Brajkovic, Steve Morabito or Yaroslav Popovych, and they want it back.
