Europe Crimewave: Thieves Steal Gear of Olympic Gold Medallist Days Before Opening

An Australian Olympian who travelled to Europe to compete in the Paris 2024 Olympics opening this week got off to an inauspicious start after thieved raided his team van.

Logan Martin, who won gold in the Tokyo 2020 Men’s BMX freestyle had been training for the Paris 2024 Olympics in the nearby city of Brussels, Belgium — well known to many Europeans as a city that has experienced high levels of immigration and soaring crime in recent years, particularly gang-related drug crime — but had that preparation interrupted this week when his team’s van was broken into and the contents stolen.

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Posting about his experience on Instagram, Martin uploaded a video chronicling the moment of discovery of the damaged vehicle, emptied of its contents and glass strewn on the pavement. He said: “so our van got broke into last night. Luckily my bikes weren’t in there… crazy start to the trip.”

His stolen bags had location-tracking devices, however, and gold medal winner Martin was eventually able to track down the remains of some of his equipment in a nearby park. In another video, the camera shows some remains strewn around the base of a tree where the haul from the van raid had clearly been picked apart by the thieves.

Looking over the detritus of the ruined equipment, one team mate expressed in disbelief: “they ate your choccies!” of the thieves who had eaten their energy food but left behind the specialised bike tools and empty bags.

Writing about the thefts, Martin reflected: “I lost my wallet, backpack and a few other things but overall it didn’t end up being too bad. It’s unfortunate when people feel the need to do things like this.”

The Paris Olympics opening ceremony will take place on Friday. Like Brussels, Paris has attempted to clean up its historic city centre by moving on problem populations, like unofficial migrant camps, to improve the visitor experience of late. These moves have been met with strong opposition by campaigners who claim cleaning up the city centre for the games is an act of “social cleansing”.