Johan Bruyneel: Cycle helmet saved my skull

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.”

Lost balance, innocent crash. This would've happened 2my skull, hadn't I been wearing a helmet. #ProtectYourHead pic.twitter.com/2zRhWRHdPG

— Johan Bruyneel (@JohanBruyneel) November 10, 2015

To the many followers who have been asking: I'm completely fine. The only damage was the helmet. Both my body and my bike are doing well.

— Johan Bruyneel (@JohanBruyneel) November 10, 2015

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.