Lance Armstrong posts a bloody selfie after bike crash in Colorado

Lance Armstrong fell during a bike ride near Aspen, and managed to snap a picture before heading to the hospital. (Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times via AP)

Bike crashes can happen to anyone — even seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.

The world’s best-known cyclist (though perhaps not the best-loved) posted a picture of himself after he crashed during a bike ride, and his face showed that he took a pretty serious tumble.

Well, sometimes you’re the hammer and sometimes you’re the nail! The Tom Blake trail (one of my faves) came up and tried to KO my ass today. Took quite the blow to the noggin’ so swung by the Aspen Valley Hospital (great facility!) to get my head checked. For the 46 yrs prior to today I completely would have blown off getting checked. Not now. Small world story – a few weeks back I posted a pic of @ghincapie, @mikekloser, and myself. Credit photo to “some dude at top of buttermilk”. Well, that ‘dude’ turned out to be @ajaxrider – the ER doc on duty today! Charlie, thanks for looking after me.

A post shared by Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) on Aug 8, 2018 at 1:27pm PDT

Yikes. In the caption, Armstrong said that he was on the Tom Blake trail, which is just outside of Aspen, Colorado, when he took a tumble off his bike and knocked his head. After snapping that pic, he went to the emergency room in Aspen to get himself checked out. (Incidentally, the guy who checked him out at the ER is the same guy who took this photo of Armstrong and two buddies a few weeks ago.)

Armstrong’s post also reveals how differently he (and many others) views head injuries these days. He said that for his entire life before the crash, he would have “blown off” going to the ER and getting his head checked. But “not now,” since Armstrong knows just how serious even minor bumps to the head can be. And as he said, the bump he had was more than minor — but that was easy to tell from the photo.

The Tom Blake trail is in Snowmass Village, Colorado, and it’s listed as an “intermediate” trail on the town’s website. There are a few videos of the trail on Youtube, and while it looks beautiful, it also looks fairly challenging.

That is a lot of downhill biking. It’s not hard to see how even a thoroughly skilled cyclist like Armstrong could get tripped up. Thankfully, Armstrong is fine, and according to his rep he’s resting up in Colorado.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on Twitter at @lizroscher.

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