There is a saying amongst riders that the question is not whether you will ever fall, but when. It turns out that this even applies to great cyclists like Lance Armstrong evidenced by the fact that he took a nasty spill this week while preparing for the 2005 Tour de France. Luckily he was wearing his helmet or it is possible that this year’s tour would have been over for Lance before it started.

In Nice on Sunday, Armstrong pronounced himself fit for the race and tried to downplay injuries suffered in what he called a “silly crash” last Wednesday when he tried to fend off a wasp.

“The unfortunate thing is I hit my head which cracked the helmet in two,” said Armstrong, in the south of France for some final testing and training before the race starts on July 2.

“It wasn’t that serious and nothing was wrong - no breaks, no stitches. Just road rash and a little beat up. Fortunately, I haven’t felt any ill-effects from the crash in terms of pedalling. I feel I’m just as fluid as before.”

Lance was most likely wearing a Giro helmet (a company that has sponsored him for many years). Giro helmets are self-described as the “toughest helmet on the road.” Meaning if you go down a crack one in half, that is no small head impact. Lance is tough and it looks like the helmet did exactly what it was supposed to do, but just imagine what the cranial damage could have been if he hadn’t been wearing his helmet in this particular ride. This is truly one instance where an athlete can say that they couldn’t have made it without their sponsors and really mean it.

++++++++++++++

See all of our (off topic) Tour de France posts here. For complete TDF coverage visit TDFBlog.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France

This entry was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2005 at 10:00 am by Insider and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.