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Another side of the story to Lance Armstrong's Stolen Time Trial Bike. "Lance – Ride this one like YOU stole it."

Lance Armstrong is in the process of returning to competitive cycling after retiring following his last Tour de France victory. Since returning, Trek Bicycle and his other sponsors have jumped in to make sure he has the best that he needs. Trek in particular has gone above and beyond by painting some special bikes for Lance. But, then it was stolen. And we all learned about it on Twitter.

Earlier this week Lance Armstrong sent out the following on Twitter:

This set off a significant amount of Twitter activity surrounding the stolen bike. Including numerous links to this photo of the bike. Over the next several days Sacramento’s finest did their thing and recovered the much sought after bicycle, which Lance had ridden to a 10th place finish earlier in the week in the prologue of the Amgen Tour of California.

Reports that initially appeared on Twitter of the bike’s recovery started to circulate mid-day on Wednesday, Feb. 18th during the Tour of California stage that day. One of the first photos that would confirm the story appeared on Cyclelicio.us with a photo of Detective Stella Bonasera, who the story notes is single, and was to thank for helping recover the elusive machine.

Another side of this story was quietly unfolding back in Waterloo, Wisconsin at the headquarters of Trek Bicycle, thousands of miles away.

After initially learning of the theft of Lance’s signature bike on Twitter, the Creative Group at Trek made some calls to check on the situation and learned that Lance had requested a replacement bike. So, the team sprang into action.

The team decided to follow the paint scheme of the missing bike, which tells a significant story for Lance and the meaning behind his return to cycling. His return, riding for no salary, is one dedicated to spreading the message and promoting the fight against cancer. I mission the his LIVESTRONG organization supports.

The number 1247 indicates the number of days it had been since Lance’s last race (the final stage of the 2005 Tour de France) to his return at the Tour Down Under in Australia in January.

Also, the number 27.5 indicates the number people – IN MILLIONS – around the world who have died from cancer in those 1,247 days. A shocking figure.

Coincidentally, I was visiting Trek Bicycles in Waterloo on Tuesday to pre-interview Eric Lynn, the company’s Creative Group Director for Wednesday’s Comet Branding Radio show. The meeting was originally focused on the company’s new Creative Group Studio space.

There is a nice VIDEO with Eric Lynn in which he discusses Lance’s bike situation and more.

As with all bikes that Trek’s sponsored athletes ride, Lance’s frames come right off the production floor. This means the general consumer and enthusiast can ride an identical frame to the ones the pros ride. Very cool.

So, the creative team walked down the hall and got the process going quickly. They basically had 24 hours to get the frame painted and ready for shipment. The mechanics at the Tour of California would need it by Wednesday to prep it for racing on Friday.

Considering new developments at Trek, including their new Creative Group Studio space that has recently been opened, they now have all elements in house needed to expedite a request like this. Including an impressive in-house photo studio that Trek can use to capture images for use in a multitude of areas – from social media to the Trek website – or a subsite focused on Lance’s 1274 bikes.

One interesting difference in Lances new frame was the new decal that reads “Lance – Ride this one like YOU stole it.” Eric was kind enough to let me snaps some photos on Tuesday – only if I agreed not to share them before Lance could Tweet about it. So, I waited and last night Lance Tweeted:

“I’m riding the old “hot” tt bike tomorrow. Had a replacement made too. Only diff was a line that said, “ride it like you stole it”. Haha!”

Lance’s personal photographer, Liz Kreutz (@lizkreutz) even put out a photo on Twitpic showing the quote.

Even though Lance noted that he has decided to ride the recovered stolen “hot” bike, this is still interesting story of how the warp-speed of the Twitter newscycle reported on and broke different elements of this story and caused a company to spring into action.

So, now I am going to share some cool photos of the bike, from Tuesday, before it left Trek.

Tags: Lance Armstrong's Stolen TT bike, Trek Bicycles, Twitter