Bolton's Olympic cycling star Sir Jason Kenny has had his bike seat stolen from outside a branch of Tesco. It was swiped while he shopped inside the supermarket in Congleton, Cheshire.
Now Team GB's most successful Olympian, who was knighted last year in the Queen's New Year's Honours to add to his CBE, has taken to social to try and get it returned.
The 34-year-old, who won seven gold medals, had the seat taken from a Tern GSD model. He asked if someone's 'little darling' had just arrived home with the seat and said he'd 'very much like it back please'.
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Seven-time gold medallist Jason has lived in Cheshire with wife Laura, herself a five-time Olympic champion, for a number of years. As of last year, the pair lived in the village of Chelford, near Knutsford.
Speaking to CheshireLive last year, Laura revealed why she 'fell in love' with Cheshire and would never want to move back down south.
She said: "I wouldn't go back, as much as that's going to upset the southerners, Cheshire is my home, it just is, it feels like home, everything about it and I just wouldn't go back.
"Everyone is just so welcoming, like it doesn't matter whether you're going into the corner shop or whether you're going into the butchers, it's such a nice feeling. Every time someone's like 'congratulations' even now, we're two months down the line and people are still so happy about it.
"It's just so friendly, I'm not saying that the south wasn't like that because I know I'm going to upset southerners by saying this is home but it's just always been so welcoming to me."
Sir Jason rose to stardom after winning the World and European Junior titles in 2006 and won medals in the under-23 European championships in 2007. He was selected to compete for Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, winning gold in the team sprint and smashing the world record in the qualifying round.
In 2012, Kenny won his first world championship title, when Grégory Baugé's results were nullified after a backdated 12-month ban for missing a drugs test, and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) promoted him to the gold medal.
At the London Olympics in 2012, he won gold medals in both the team sprint and the individual sprint, beating Baugé in the final.
He followed that up the 2016 Olympics by winning the Team Sprint and the Individual Sprint again and also won the Keirin. In the 2020 Olympics, he repeated his success in the Keirin.
Kenny's wife, Laura Kenny, holds the same cycling records on the female side, and together they are the most successful married couple in Olympic history. The shy, unassuming Kenny has had numerous accolades in his home town, where its main sports and health centre is named after him. He is a former pupil of Harper Green School in Farnworth, where he grew up.
