The 31-year-old officially retired at the end of the Games and hoping to pick the bike up after their end only to discover that it had been bought off.
Pendleton said: “I’d said I was willing to buy the bike – they sell them at the end of the season because obviously you get a new one each year. But no, it’s already gone.”
Pendleton’s bike, on which she won the gold in the keirin, was sold and bought anonymously. “I don’t know who sold it or who they sold it to but it’s gone and now I can’t have it.”
“Luckily,” she says, “I got my pump and my bottle cages from it but that is all I’ve got – oh, and a couple of pedals and a spare inner tube.”
Pendleton told sources she was “relieved” her career had come to an end she now says that she is “furious” over the sale of the bike.
Another gold medal cyclist, Kristin Armstrong, ran into similar trouble when both of her Olympic bikes were stolen while being shipped from Europe to Boise, Idaho.
Armstrong told reporters her gold medal bike is a symbol of all the hard work that she had put in and that it made her sad that someone would take that away from her family.
Armstrong’s bikes, each of them valued at roughly $30,000, were stolen sometime after being on display in Germany at an event called “Eurobike.”
On September 7 the bikes were shipped from Bremen, Germany and made stops in both Frankfurt and Atlanta. When they arrived at Armstrong’s house Tuesday the shipping crates were empty.
While it’s unknown when or where the bikes went missing, Armstrong’s team “Exergy 2012,” is offering a sizeable award for the return or knowledge of the bikes.
Image via Getty
