Social media has found new value around the 2009 Amgen Tour of California. Both 7th place finisher Lance Armstrong and 2nd place finisher Dave Zabriskie are consistent Twitter contributors. During this years race their postings took an interesting twist.
Day 1 saw Lance become the victim of thievery. His one-off time trial bike was stolen along with a few other Astana team bikes. Lance posted “Whoa!! They just came to my room and said our truck was broken into and someone stole my time trial bike! WTF?!? APB out to the twitterati.” Well this created quite a stir and wouldn’t you know it, the bike made its way back to Lance in time for the Solvang Time trial.
Fresh off of his 2nd place finish, Zabriskie found that his home in Salt Lake City had been cleaned out. We’re not talking your average smash and grab TV heist. We’re talking two cars, 13 bikes, computers, irreplaceable memorabilia and on and on. Dave reached out to his Twitter audience and his posting quickly made the rounds becoming headline material for the major cycling sites. From the goods stolen it’s pretty obvious that the thieves know something about cycling, probably even knew Zabriskie was out of town racing.
Things don’t stop with Twitter. Within hours of the report the “Help David Zabriskie Get All His Stuff Back” Facebook group was created. At this early stage the group is already up to 1,296 members.
The word is out and when an athlete’s fans are hungry, steer clear. We all know that fans want content, content and more content but it’s instances like these where the fans can and will give back.
