Thieves raid Northern Irish MTB centre for entire fleet and paralympian’s specialist wheelchair stolen

Spread the word, it’s time to nail some bike thieves. Northern Ireland’s Rostrevor Mountain Bike Centre, one of the territory’s top trail centres, has had its entire fleet of 20 bikes pinched.

The theft appears to have been well organised, with a group of four breaking in at around 1.30am on Monday morning.

The fleet, which is worth many thousands of pounds, is made up of Nukeproof Scouts, Trek 8,5s and 4300s, all of which have some element of customisation on the original build.

Ian Cumming, a director at Rostrevor told Belfast Live: “We are utterly floored by this. Deflated, demoralised. Our entire fleet of hire bikes was taken by what can only be described as an organised group. At the mouth of the season, this can only be described as devastating for this small business.

“Our fleet has been meticulously maintained, with none of the original components and they are numbered on specific locations on their frames. We only hope that someone out there has some information to help us to find our fleet.”

We;ve also just heard that paralympian John Smith has also had his customised £5,000 racing wheelchair stolen from a van.

Having just qualified for the Rio games, the one of a kind wheelchair was custom built to Smith’s requirements and of no use to anyone else.

The distinctive build weighs in at only 5kg and was taken from Neal Road in West Kingsdown, Kent.

Read more on that theft here.