Johan Bruyneel has tweeted a picture of his cycle helmet which cracked following a crash today – and says that if he hadn’t been wearing it, it could have been his skull that was broken.
The 51-year-old Belgian, who as manager of US Postal and Discovery Channel led Lance Armstrong to the seven Tour de France victories between 1999 and 2005 he was stripped of in 2012, told his followers he had “lost balance” in what he described as “an innocent crash.”
As a rider, Bruyneel won two Tour de France stages and also wore the race leader’s yellow jersey.
While most closely linked with Armstrong as a team manager, he also guided Alberto Contador to overall Tour de France victories with Discovery Channel in 2007 and Astana in 2009.
The latter race took place during Armstrong’s comeback season with the Kazakh team, the Texan finishing third overall, although he would be stripped of that result too, with Bradley Wiggins moving up to take the final podium spot.
Bruyneel subsequently moved with Armstrong to the new RadioShack team for the 2010 season and remained with it when it merged with Leopard-Trek to form RadioShack-Nissan.
He was sacked by the Luxembourg outfit in October 2012 after the United States Anti-Doping Agency published its reasoned decision following its investigation of doping at US Postal.
In April last year Bruyneel, who is based in London and Madrid – this week, he’s been riding in Spain – was banned from involvement with sport for 10 years as a result of the US Postal scandal.
Unlike Armstrong, who confessed to doping in early 2013, Bruyneel had protested his innocence and chose, unsuccessfully, to submit to arbitration.
Another one where my reasonable and necessary use of the highway to park something in is impeded by selfish people just dumping stuff on the road...
OMG! Went camping with son and tried to do most of the transfers early. That worked!
I tried it once, but instead of slowing down, the daft old nit just turned into the verge at about 40mph and the car jumped up and I suddenly had...
Just think how bad it would be if the average Range Rover was reliable enough to be on the road 12 months of the year instead of having to spend...
" a "single, brief incident" in which the damage caused to the train was "minor". " Good to see you back
It is effectively a cap on energy suppliers' profits. It was never intended to cap energy prices across the board; the intention was to prevent...
It's so wrong, but in Celeste, so right...
Good working with you at Dunfermline Iain Park (and all the others!)
I got hold of some clinchers as my gp 5000 clinchers have seen better days, and the Vittorias are on a par speed wise (well they don't seem to be...
I have been assaulted just for shouting at a close pass, simply shouting "Whoa!" in surprise 8s enough for a driver to stop and have a go verbally....