A roadside spectator at the Tour de France yesterday captured on film what the TV cameras missed – Lance Armstrong’s crash at speed as he came off a roundabout after clipping the kerb of a roundabout with his pedal.
A couple of second into the video, Armstrong can be seen in his red and grey Team RadioShack kit sliding across the far side of the road from right to left. Even from a distance, he looks uncomfortable as he waits by the roadside for a new bike to be brought up, as two team mates wait to pace him back to the peloton.
It was the Texan’s second crash of the day, and although he got back onto the main bunch by the start of the day’s penultimate climb 12km after his fall, he was quickly dropped as Astana sensed his vulnerability and forced the pace at the front to put further pressure on him.
Armstrong eventually came home nearly 12 minutes down on stage winner Andy Schleck and lies a further minute back on maillot jaune Cadel Evans, and last night admitted that his dream of winning the race for an unprecedented eighth time was over, saying it was “not my year.”
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.