Lance Tweets His Collarbone Surgery

You forget that it's not ironic or annoying when Lance Armstrong signs off with "Livestrong," because he's the guy who actually started the whole thing, survived cancer before returning to cycling to claim sole ownership of the Tour de France, and then made everyone wear little yellow bracelets in the name of charity. When he does it, it's not like the fat guy at the gym who claims to be a martial arts expert, or the douchebag you saw with a livestrong bracelet getting tossed from a bar this past weekend, or any photo ever of Jeremy Piven wearing one in public. Lance is the guy who did it. He can do that.

"Livestrong" is exactly how he signs off on his twitter feed from the hospital in Austin, where Lance posted a picture of himself going into surgery for a broken collarbone suffered in a crash on Monday. It's not Shaq staring blankly into his cellphone camera at four in the morning, but it's pretty indicative of Twitter's power to make an athlete's life very real and very immediate to a reader in a way little else can:

Armstrong has said he plans to race in the Giro d'Italia even though the race is only five weeks away, and the bone may not be completely healed before then. The Giro is the Italian version of the Tour de France, meaning it's the same race but with two crucial differences: a) it's in Italy, and b) riders gesture wildly with their hands and wear $700 designer loafers while racing. Other than that, it's basically the same.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.