Lance Armstrong Abandons Amgen Tour of California Race - Just hours after the Floyd Landis accusations of doping were hitting our readers and bookmarks, word has it that headliner Lance Armstrong has abandoned the Tour of California today after a crash.

One of my favorite adages is that there’s no better revenge than massive success. Unfortunately for Lance Armstrong, his revenge against his accuser and former teammate will have to come in another race. Just tuning into the Tour of California Race on Versus, the first updates we heard were that there was a big crash at mile 13 that was not caught on camera. This lack of coverage is no surprise since most of the drama of this race has been missed by the amateurish coverage by Versus.

The next thing we see is Lance with a gash on his face and another teammate (I didn’t catch which one but it wasn’t Levi Leipheimer) with huge road rash marks.  Another good reason to wear your Road ID.

The next update was that Lance got on his bike and road for another 20 minutes but just couldn’t continue. There were pictures of Team Radio Shack’s Manager, Johan Bruyneel, talking to him and then helping him into the back of the team car. After that, Bruyneel tweeted that Lance was taken to the hospital for what are believed to be precautionary x-rays. We also learned that fellow Pro Tour competitor, Stuart O’Grady, has abandoned the race as well.

This is a big blow for Team Radio Shack as Lance is such a smart racer that his tactical experience is a great compliment to Bruyneel’s management from the radio. Levi Leipheimer is the one Team Radio Shack wants at the top of the podium but Lance wanted a better idea of his overall performance and I’m sure he was keying in on the time trial to lock in what he needed to do for the upcoming Tour de France.

Lance did address the media at the start of the race today regarding the Landis accusations. He did not want to waste a lot of time with the man but said that, he and his fellow pros, “had nothing to hide,” while the media (that would be Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen) thought Landis’ story, combined with his reported harassing emails were nothing but, “sour grapes.”

Here’s hoping that Lance and his fellow teammates and competitors recover quickly from this crash and are in fine racing form again soon.