Well it’s ridiculous that IM or any event organization provides overnight security and bikes still get stolen. And then the event organization doesn’t provide a full cost replacement (TBD for this specific event) when bikes get stolen.
If event security is questionable and event organizations aren’t going to make you whole, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for athletes to take a few extra precautions to deter any bad actors.
Any cable lock would do. It’s not full proof but all you are looking to do is to deter someone from taking your bike. Air tags or some other kind of tracker just in case it does get taken.
Feel free to do what you want. But I think this is worthy of educating athletes of what can happen. And a few precautions they could take to help their chances.
Pretty minor cost and a minor thing to lock it up. Both pretty minor (cost and procedure) when looking at all the other things I do before a race and the cost of racing.
Not a bad idea. But anything solid in IM transition areas to lock your bike too? Or at other triathlons? Most that I have done have laughable racks, where any lock could be slid off pretty easily.
Six athlete bikes were stolen from transition at IRONMAN Copenhagen this past weekend, marring the final race of the 2025 IRONMAN World Championship cycle.
The six athletes, all age groupers, had their bikes stolen from the first transition zone prior to the race. IRONMAN Copenhagen’s first transition zone is located at the Amager Strandpark, a few kilometers from the city center.
IRONMAN provided athletes with replacement bikes so that they could participate in the event. Speaking with an IRONMAN official this morning, IRONMAN is assisting athletes to ensure full-cost replacement of their bikes. IRONMAN will also provide impacted athletes with a race entry to next year’s event in Copenhagen or an entry to an event of their choice in 2026.
As with nearly every IRONMAN event, athletes in Copenhagen were required to rack their bikes the day before the race. Transition is a secure zone, limited exclusively to race staff and security, racers, media, and volunteers working transition. Transition areas are also lit with spotlights overnight, and feature paid security details during the overnight hours in order to provide security.
Despite these measures, occasionally theft does take place at large scale events. For example, some members of our forum reported thefts of bikes or cycling computers at past IRONMAN events. Bikes of professional athletes are also a frequent target of thieves at cycling races. Thieves stole 11 bikes from the Cofidis team at this year’s Tour de France, requiring near immediate action by sponsors Look and Campagnalo in order for the team to toe the line on Stage 2. Those bikes were recovered later in the week.
The only “lock” in Ironman rules is preceded by “b” and has an “ing” suffix - 300sec/60sec penalty.
Transition Area rules are at 7.01.
Guess individual events may have a supplementary rule proscribing locking bike to rack.
I’m so glad Ironman will replace the stolen bikes. That is great news!
IM Copenhagen is a really special venue and race and hope this was an outlier.
And I think it’s a great idea to bring a lock for your bike overnight. While it may not be difficult to steal the bike with the lock, a thief will go for a bike w/o a lock as they will have at least 1K bikes to choose from. They most likely won’t go for the few the at have locks. They want to get in and out as fast as possible.
I still have an air tag with my spare tube on my tri bike but wondering if two would be better. If they find one and toss it, they might not be expecting a bike to have two air tags. Just a thought.
Good decision by Ironman (I’m not sure what other decision you can make since they took possession of the bikes and then had them disappear).
Though I’m curious - how do they assess an athletes bike for value? In an IM, there’s a wide range of bikes ranging from the $300-500 garage special, to the $20k dentist special. Presumably, a thief is going to target the higher end bikes…
I would think most people have receipts from a high-end bike. I have email and hard copies. And photos of the bike would help too. But I get your point. Without proper documentation, it could be tricky. Also, a $10K bike purchased around 2020 might be more like $13K to replace now that costs are much higher. But at least IM is willing to do something. Sounds like in the past you were out of luck.
I’m sort of wondering if Ironman’s liability is different depending on where the race is. I could certainly believe the EU is more likely to put them on the hook for reimbursement than the U.S.
