Theft During Triathlon

Theft happens, but I would say its uncommon. A good race will have protocols to prevent bikes from disappearing from transition. 

Short of locking your bike up, I'm not sure thee is mush you can do about it beyond being really nice to the person monitoring the transition area and asking them to keep an eye on your stuff. Which they probably won't.

Have the crappiest gear in transition? 

At Ironman Coeur D'Alene, only athletes with writstbands got into transition (period) and they checked the number on your wristband with the number on your bike before you could take it.  At Steelhead (half ironman), they had wristbands and nobody was supposed to get into transition without the wristband.  I worked transition "security" and it seemed like I had to tell 200 people to put the wristband on (hey, they put it in your packet, it isn't like you need to "save" it for some other day).  We also matched bike number with race number as someone left with gear.  Wasn't perfect, but wasn't completely wide-open either. 

Having said all of this, gear does sometimes come up missing.  Wetsuits and then smaller items. 

I have always wondered about this. I am very paranoid about leaving stuff unlocked, unwatched, but I have never had any stuff stolen, and I have never heard of anyone getting any stuff stolen in any of the races I have done.

don't worry about it.  you've got more important things to worry about at a race.  i always figure that no matter how nice your gear is, someone's always got nicer gear that a "true" theif would prob go for. 

i'm sure there are very rare cases of theft, but i'd bet that 98% of what goes missing in transition is probably the owers faut for throwing it too close to their neighboors gear and it get's accidentaly grabbed at the end of the day.   and if that's the case, when your transition neighboor gets home and realizes they have two helmets or two wetsuits i'd bet they'd go through every effor to find it's origional owner. 

put your name and phone # on your gear if you're worried and enjoy your race.

I have to agree with others that it's not worth worrying about.  However, I did have my bike computer come up missing in transition this year.  First time anything like that has ever happened to me.  I suppose that perhaps it could have fallen off in transition and I like to think that's what did happen.  But just seems odd that it stayed on the bike for 56-miles and then fell of in the TZ.  But this is isolated and I haven't started taking any additional percautions since.  This stuff just doesn't happen too often.

It does happen, and several BT'ers have posted about wetsuits or other small items disappearing. 

As for smaller races being more casual, yup, but my experience has been that smaller races usually have competitors who know each other, know each other's gear, and would say something is an unknown person picked up something that belongs to a friend. 

 My friend's brand new P2SL (this was 5 years ago? something like that, when they first came out) was stolen at an Olympic.  Funny thing I was talking to him at transition just after the race. He called me when I was on my way home and told me that it was actually stolen out of the transition area.  This is a reputable race company (they do races in the Mid-Atlantic) and they took no blame for it, so he had to go through his homeowner's insurance.

So yes, it does happen.