Crash and Burn: Even the Toughest Have Their Limits

Don't know how much you've been following the Tour de France, but the past two stages have each seen a major contender lose any realistic chance of winning the overall. During Sunday's stage 8, Lance Armstrong was involved in three crashes. He fought back the best he could, but finally hit his limit and came in over eleven minutes down by the end of the day. The second video has full coverage of the day from Versus. They miss the second crash itself, but good footage of the damage to his jersey that resulted. The first is just shaky fan footage, but in the first couple of seconds you see Lance slide across the pavement on his back at 30+ miles per hour. Gives you a good idea just what he went through before climbing back on his bike and making a valiant effort to still compete.

At the end of stage 8, Australian Cadel Evans was in yellow as race leader. He's finished second twice before and is a very legitimate contender. But on stage 9 he lost over eight minutes during the climactic climb. He didn't say anything until after the stage, but he was also affected by one of the stage 8 crashes. The Versus video focuses on Lance just avoiding the first crash by riding through the ditch, but Cadel was one of the riders to hit the pavement. Turns out he broke his elbow when he did so, but was doing his best to ride through the pain without complaint. He pulled it off for over 200 miles of extreme mountains over the course of two days before it finally became too much to bear.