Just back from injury, Connor McConvey has been hit with more bad luck with his bike and all of his team's gear stolen in Lithuania overnight. However, the Belfast man looks to have replacement gear in place and hopefully his season will continue interrupted.
Enjoying a successful maiden season to date, disaster has struck for the Synergy Baku team headed by David McQuaid, with a gang of thieves having cleaned out the squad of most of its bikes and other equipment.
The robbery occurred overnight as the team prepared for the final stage of the Baltic Chain Tour (UCI 2.2) in the town of Panevezys in northern Lithuania.
The race has rallied around the riders, supplying them with bikes so they could start today’s final stage, apart from Irish rider Connor McConvey.
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Because he is much taller than the other riders, the team was unable to source a bike big enough to fit him.
However, while the assistance of the other squads is a welcome development after such a bitter blow, the squad is now faced with a nightmare scenario of having to source more bikes and equipment so the team can honour its racing commitments in the months ahead.
That task is made more pressing by the fact that some of the riders will be competing in the World Championships next month and cannot afford even a brief interruption to their training or racing schedule.
The squad is a UCI Continental ranked set up, with McQuaid as general manager and McConvey as one of its key riders. Three-time Olympian David McCann is also on the rider roster but has mostly filled a sporting director role this year.
McQuaid said the robbery seemed to be planned and whoever was behind it appeared to have targeted a specific vehicle with most of equipment packed inside.
“We have a pretty meticulous staff, in particular the staff that were working the Baltic event,” McQuaid said.
“The organisation re-assured the mechanic the hotel was surrounded by two-metre high walls and electric gates.”
He added those who made off with the gear seemed to know what they were doing.
“They got in the side door of the truck and over the wall, which is being finger printed. It looks like we were the target of a professional gang, as neither of the other vehicles were touched.”
The truck broken into contained all the equipment belonging to the team. The thieves took a total of 10 BH bicycles and all of the spare HED wheels and tools. They cleaned the vehicle out to such an extent that they also stole all of the High 5 energy foods the team had, along with work shop boxes of gear and brake cables and even a hose. The vehicle was left completely empty.
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“This is a disaster; there is no other way to put it,” said McQuaid.
He added when he awoke this morning to see six mixed calls from one of the team’s sporting directors Stefan Rucker, he knew immediately there was a serious a problem.
“My first thoughts were not of what was taken, it was for the next races. We have a total of five Azeri participating in Florence (at the World Championships). And the next weeks were all about them. Jeremy Hunt is currently on a plane up from Melbourne to go into camp with them until Florence.”
“We have two spare bikes out with the team in Borneo, but they go onto East Java. Because we are a new team, pretty much everything we owned was in that truck.”
While McConvey was unable to start this morning because he could not source a bike to fit him, the team bike owned by David McCann is at his home in Belfast and fits McConvey.
That means he should have no problem continuing his training uninterrupted and keep the next portion of his season on track.
McConvey is just returning from a fractured pelvis and the bike he was riding at the Baltic tour was only a week old.
While that fall forced him off the bike for a prolonged period, he was second overall in the An Post Rás back in May and has enjoyed perhaps his best season ever, taking a number of podium places in major races and winning the climbers’ classification in the Tour of Azerbaijan.
Despite his crash, he is still in the running, with a number of other riders, for a place on the Irish team at the World Championships.
McQuaid said he would now set about getting some equipment in place for the riders as early as tomorrow and then provide more soon after.
“I’ll speak to BH and HED, both of whom we were meeting next week at Eurobike. We need bikes as soon as possible, that’s the long and short of it. The Worlds preparation cannot be de-railed because of some thugs” he said.
It’s a bitter blow for the team but not the first time the Irish have been hit in this way. National Road Race Champion Matt Brammeier had his bike stolen in a robbery in France last year when riding for Omega Pharma Quickstep.
He was left very frustrated when the bike emerged for sale on the internet and yet the police seemed powerless, or disinterested, in trying to retrieve it or trace those who had stolen it.
Let’s hope it works out quickly for McCann, McQuaid, McConvey and their team mates and staff.
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