Six invaluable bikes including Mathieu van der Poel's rainbow-striped special stolen by group of thieves

Six unique bicycles belonging to the biggest stars of the cycling peloton, including a special one belonging to world champion Mathieu van der Poel, were stolen by a group of experienced thieves from public exposition in Valkenburg during the night from Thursday to Friday. Police is looking for any leads.

"Six irreplaceable bicycles were stolen on Thursday night," reads a message on the LinkedIn page of Shimano Europe Group. "On Friday morning, our colleagues discovered that the locks had been broken and the bicycles were gone. We are relieved that no one was injured, the theft took place at night without any staff on site."

According to Wielerflits, thieves entered the Shimano Experience Center in Valkenburg in an extremely professional manner. The bikes are still owned by the teams, but were temporarily on display to the public. The center is extremely popular with 160,000 visitors per year.

One of the stolen bikes is Mathieu van der Poel's Canyon Aeroad. It is a unique example in rainbow colours, with which the Brabant world champion rode to third place in Liège-Bastogne-Liège this year.

Also stolen: the black Specialized S-Works that Julian Alaphilippe rode in yellow for eleven days in the 2019 Tour de France, a Specialized S-Works Tarmac, including green rear fork, belonging to seven-time green jersey winner Peter Sagan from the 2020 Tour. The Pinarello Dogma F12 X-Light of Egan Bernal - with yellow and pink stripes referring to his final victories in the Giro and Tour - from the 2021 Vuelta. The Merida REACTO that Matej Mohoric won the Tour stage to Poligny with last year. And a Scott Foil bike from this year belonging to Fabio Jakobsen.

Each one of these bicycles worth much over 10,000 euros with invaluable stories behind them. "They are priceless because they played a role in writing cycling history, in the Tour de France, at the World Championships, at the Olympic Games and countless other important events in the cycling world."