Lance Armstrong_01
© Max Whittake/ReutersLance Armstrong: leaving no stone unturned.
Seven-times winner of the Tour de France widens search for stolen time trial bike

What do you do if your bike has just been nicked? If you're the Tory leader, David Cameron, you get laughed at and call for the reintroduction of sharia law for bike theft. If you're the seven-times winner of the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, you turn to Twitter.

"Someone stole my time trial bike! Wtf?!? APB out to the twitterati," he told his 112,000 followers on the microblogging site after a gruelling stage on the Tour of California.

He later posted a TwitPic of the missing bike pointing out that "there is only one like it in the world" and that it is "therefore hard to pawn it off". He added that a "reward is being offered".

A spoof ad has already appeared on Craiglist offering a "funny-looking time trial bike".

Armstrong's bike was stolen not because he had chained it to a short bollard like Cameron, but because his team's truck was broken into. Three other bikes were also stolen in the raid.

But of course it is Armstrong's machine that is now being referred to as the "hottest bike on Earth". Let's hope the Sunday Mirror is on the case - it found Cameron's bike within a few days of it getting pinched.