T1 & T2 safety

In general, bikes are safe.  Bring it in to the corral the morning of the race, and you'll generally see volunteers monitoring who goes in and out.  The number on the bike is checked to match the number on the athlete, to help ensure safety.

Or just leave your bike next to a much more expensive one...

And yet a dude had his new Pinarello stolen very recently from transition at IM France, even though it was guarded and "Removal of a bike from the transition area after the event requires matching a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) coded ankle bracelet worn by the runner, a wrist bracelet worn by the runner and a sticker fastened to the bicycle. To ensure complete security, the runner’s RFID tag must be surrendered after the bike is identified and retrieved."

The story is here: 

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1915483;search_string=stolen%20pinarello;guest=40689178&t=search_engine#1915483 

My faith in humanity fails when trusting volunteers to guard my bike so I make sure I take all my gear and pack it up right after finishing. It was hard enough justifying the cost of it to the Missus the first time

A thief strolling out of transition with a $1000 bike will not garner the looks of a thief trying to walk off with a $10,000 pony, and the cheaper bike would be easier to fence.

I've seen a couple of guys take the time at T2 to throw a simple lock on their bike; just enough to deter, I guess, and if it takes you only a few seconds and you're not out to podium, I guess it's a good idea. I'm still more comfortable getting my bike out of transition ASAP at the end of my race.

Trying to picture a racer in T1 - "Dang, where's my key?" or "Shat, what was that combination?".

The one racer I saw had a small cable lock that didn't require a key to close - he just threw it on, snapped it shut and off he went, taking all of about 10 seconds. He didn't bother with having it locked between the race start and T2. Just found it interesting and thought-provoking.

IF races are insured against this type of theft, you are at their mercy for filing the claim and dealing with their insurance company and the couple of stories I've heard of people in this predicament did not feel they were dealt with well, if at all. Your best bet would be to bring this question to the RD pre-race if it was a grave concern.

I'm not sure if homeowner's would cover; I wouldn't put much faith in recovery of bike or cash if this were to happen.

Dude...  Don't mean to sound mean here but...

Your $1,000 bike is a '74 Pinto parked next to Corvettes!  I don't think you have much to worry about considering there'll be bikes that cost as much as 6 times more just a few feet away.

And besides - the number of bikes stolen out of transition for the MILLIONS of triathletes could probably be counted on one hand for the past 5 years.

I worked transitions as a volunteer at Steelhead this year. 

You needed the athlete wristband (on your wrist) to get into transition.  Not that there weren't a few without, but we stopped people without them. 

We tried to match bike # with participant # (preferably the mostly-worn bodymark, not the running #.  Is it perfect?  Hardly.  We did try to make sure everyone had the sticker on their bike before bringing it in.  A few took the stickers off before exiting, and a few had such faded body mark numbers that it was hard to verify.  Perfect?  No, but not too bad. 

I'd like to think I worked with as much diligence as I'd expect of anyone else trying to make sure my bike didn't leave without me.  I don't have a $5000 bike, but I'd sure be grumpy about replacing a $600 bike under these circumstances. 

Well la-dee-da.  It worth enough to him to be worried about.  And yeah you do sound mean for no reason. 

The moral of the story being: don't park your Toyota in the transition area