BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong crashed out of the Tour of California in a bloody heap Thursday not long after the peloton left the central farming town of Visalia.
Reports from the road said Armstrong and RadioShack teammate and three-time defending Tour of California winner Levi Leipheimer were involved in the crash with riders from at least four other teams.
Most of the other riders got up and returned to the peloton as it moved toward Bakersfield, but Armstrong and veteran Stuart O'Grady from Team Saxo Bank quit the race and went to a local hospital.
RadioShack team director Johan Bruyneel said via Twitter that Armstrong had scrapes and bruises and was taken to a local hospital for X-rays. Photos from the scene showed blood running from a cut under Armstrong's eye when he was helped from the ground and put in a RadioShack team car.
People are also reading…
The day began amid a media swarm as Armstrong rejected accusations by disgraced former teammate Floyd Landis that Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs and was involved in blood doping during his years as the world's leading cyclist.
The cycling community that had gathered in Visalia for Stage 5 of the Tour of California was stunned by the allegations made by Landis, who lost his own 2006 Tour de France title because of a failed doping test and was subsequently banned for two years despite his persistent denials of wrongdoing.
In a story published online late Wednesday night by the Wall Street Journal, Landis not only admitted his own use of performance-enhancing drugs during races but said he had sent e-mails to cycling and anti-doping officials detailing how fellow American riders Armstrong, Leipheimer, U.S. road racing champion George Hincapie and current Tour of California leader Dave Zabriskie schemed to engage in blood doping.
"I would say I'm surprised, but I'm not," Armstrong said at a hastily called news conference before the start of Thursday's competition.
Armstrong added that he and Landis had exchanged e-mail and text messages for nearly two years and that in the last month those messages had "reached a fever pitch."
"He has no proof," Armstrong said. "It's just our word against his, and we like our word. We like where we stand."
